Pilots Claim: Too Early to Write Off Ukraine’s Air Force

Not one Ukrainian military pilot has handed in his resignation in connection with the tragedy in Lviv. “The staff is determined to prove it can pull the Air Force out of the nosedive it has been sent into,” says Deputy Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Air Force Borys Korotkov. In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, he said that the information appearing in the press about resignations allegedly submitted by military pilots in the aftermath of the tragedy in Lviv could not be any farther from the truth. “What the pilots most want now is to take to the air and prove that the Air Force is alive,” he said. According to Gen. Korotkov, morale in the ranks of Air Force officers has been weakened “by the heartache accompanying the Lviv tragedy... In every military pilots’ mind this tragedy conjures up feelings of pain and shame as well as an ambition to prove that we still can face up to the challenge, a keen desire to see Ukraine’s aeronautics thrive, a longing to rise into the sky.”

The deputy commander stressed that the Air Force has begun “to realistically assess the prospects for the future.” As Gen. Korotkov put it: “While previously our aspirations for a stronger Air Force were largely unsupported by the economic capabilities of the nation, now we proceed from a real military budget. The pending changes will be quite drastic and painful. Nonetheless, they are imperative. Romanticism will have to make way for rational thinking.” According to him, fuel supplies of the military are just about adequate “to start systematic combat training of the vanguard defense forces and to eliminate the flight training deficiency in other air units.” As the deputy commander underscored: “Flight training has been resumed.”

Speaking of the attitude of military pilots toward the crew of the ill-fated Su-27 fighter, Gen. Korotkov stressed that “in almost all air units, including flight test center 168 where Volodymyr Toponar served, pilots generally agree that Colonel Toponar would do better by being more objective and honest.” As Gen. Korotkov put it: “Professional pilots saw Toponar’s fatal mistake, and his blatant disregard of the warning given by (copilot) Yury Yehorov is perplexing.”