Zelensky fires air force commander after F-16 crash

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday he fired his air force commander, making the decision just days after a pilot crashed an American-made F-16 in Ukraine.

Zelensky said in his nightly address that he had dismissed Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk but offered few details on why.

“I am immensely grateful to all our military pilots, all engineers, all warriors of mobile firing groups, air defense units,” he said. “The same goes for the command level — we must strengthen ourselves. And take care of people. Take care of personnel — take care of all our warriors.”

The army’s general staff said Lt. Gen. Anatoly Mykolayovych, head of the Air Command Center of the air force, is temporarily assuming the duties of top commander.

Oleshchuk had a public dispute with a Ukrainian member of Parliament, Maryana Bezugla, over the F-16 crash.

A pilot operating an F-16 died Monday while defending Ukraine against a major Russian attack. The F-16 was not downed by Russian fire and appears to have crashed because of a mechanical failure, pilot error or another cause, according to Reuters.

The U.S. has joined the crash investigation.

Bezugla alleged in a post on Telegram that the F-16 was shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, possibly a U.S. Patriot system.

Bezugla claimed at least two other incidents have involved air defenses shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet, and the air force tried to “keep silent and hide information about this case until it appeared in foreign sources.”

“This indicates a lack of proper conclusions and an objective investigation,” she wrote in the post Friday. “This needs to be changed! This cannot continue any longer. A culture of lies leads us to defeat.”

Oleshchuk said in a Friday post on his Telegram page that “no one has hidden anything” and a detailed investigation was underway.

“But it doesn’t matter to the people who chose Maryana Bezugla as a tool to discredit the top military leadership,” he wrote, accusing her of pouring dirt on him personally and on the air force and discrediting the U.S. as the manufacturer of weapons Ukraine is using.

Ukraine had asked for the F-16s since nearly the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, arguing the prized American fighter jets could help defend the skies.

The first batch of F-16s arrived in late July.