The Sukhoi Su-24M supersonic bomber that shot down and crashed almost over Ukrainian positions outside Bakhmut on December 2 piloted by two veteran airmen under contract with The Wagner Group, the famous and mysterious Russian mercenary company.
The Su-24 is at least the third fighter jet piloted by Wagner that the Ukrainians have shot down since Russia expanded its war against Ukraine in February. Wagner also lost a pair of Sukhoi Su-25 attack aircraft.
The losses underscore the lingering risk Ukrainian air defenses pose to Russian aircraft, and also highlight Wagner’s significant, even developing, percentage in the Russian air crusade over Ukraine.
It is evident that when Wagner deploys giant floor forces, he also puts his own pilots in the cockpits of older Russian fighter jets and flies those planes directly from his fighters on the ground.
However, the legal, logistical and command framework for Wagner’s air operations remained murky. Does Wagner buy or lease Russian aircraft or simply borrow them?Who compensates families for the growing number of Wagnerian pilots killed in combat?
Wagner’s involvement in the Ukrainian air war became evident last May, when Ukrainian troops fired an infrared-guided Stinger missile at the shoulder, shooting down a Su-25 over Popasna, 20 miles east of Bakhmut in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
The BBC showed that the guy who died at the controls of the Su-25 while supporting the Russian attack around Popasna was Kanamat Botashev.
Botashev, 63, retired. He left the Russian Air Force as a general in 2012 after “borrowing” a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter, for which he was unqualified, and crashed it after a brief aerobatic trip. After his retirement, Botashev is said to have signed with Wagner.
A month later, Ukrainian infantrymen from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade carrying a missile on Igla’s shoulder shot down the Su-25 and captured Andrey Fedorchukov, the plane’s elderly pilot. Fedorchukov told his interrogators he had a contract with Wagner of $3,200 a month.
Ukrainian troops also used a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down the Su-24 over Bakhmut in December. Both pilot and co-pilot were killed and Russian forces recovered the bodies. Russian media know the team as Alexander Antonov and Vladimir Nikishin. The footage implies that either of the airmen was in middle age and possibly had retired from active military service before joining Wagner.
If Wagner lost 3 planes, almost in fact he exploded several times that number. Consider that the Russian aviation company as a whole has written off about a fifth of the roughly 300 tactical aircraft it has deployed in and around Ukraine since February. loss rate applies to Wagner, the mercenary company can monitor dozens of aircraft.
It is evident that the cells are, or were until very recently, in the active stock of the Russian Air Force. The Su-24 that crashed at Bakhmut at the time of its destruction still bore the markings of the Air Force and its government series. number, RF-93798.
But the Su-24, like the Su-25, is among the oldest types of Russian Air Force service. The air arm repositions both types with new variants of the Sukhoi Su-27. Perhaps the Kremlin will allow Wagner to place his pilots in the cockpits of jets that the air force has already retired.
It does not explain precisely how Wagner supports planes with fuel, weapons and portions, and how he plans departures. However, it is clear that Wagner performs aerial movements in the same spaces where the company’s battalions conduct floor operations. Wagner for months strangely directed to capture Bakhmut, a city of little strategic value. The company’s airstrikes basically target Ukrainian forces in the same area.
Wagner’s air corps appears to be new and possibly immature. “In Libya and Ukraine, reports imply that members of the Wagner Group flew Russian fixed-wing Air Force aircraft, and that in Ukraine, pilots included retired Russian Air Force officers,” Kimberly Marten, a political scientist at Columbia University, told an American reporter. House Subcommittee in September. ” But there have been no reports of a connection with the Air Force until 2020,” Marten added.
The eventual settlement of the Battle of Bakhmut, whatever it may be, may also shed light on Wagner’s commercial style for air warfare. Once Wagner captures Bakhmut, or gives up capturing Bakhmut, will he get his pilots on Russia’s wider air campaign?Or will Wagner’s pilots, in the cockpits of government planes, continue only Wagner’s floor forces?