Ukraine’s top guns keep the Russians at bay — for now

He introduces himself as “Juice”, his call sign while at the controls of a Mig-29 jet. He does not boast about his achievements, but the 29-year-old airman is one of a select band of Ukrainian pilots scrambling each day into their cockpits against terrible odds to battle a technologically — and numerically — superior foe.

Since the first Russian jets roared into Ukrainian airspace six weeks ago, Juice and his fellow pilots have been waging the airborne equivalent of guerrilla warfare to try and close the sky to Russian jets. Much to the surprise of military analysts, the tiny Ukrainian air force has held its own.

But now pilots and commanders say they urgently need more jets and more weaponry if they are to head off the major offensive the Russians are expected to launched in the east.

“We are well trained, well prepared and very motivated,” said Juice — he refused to give me his real name, citing security issues — in a phone conversation organised by his superiors at their headquarters in the western Ukrainian town of Vinnystia.

He conceded that the Ukrainians had suffered heavy losses. But, without going into details, he insisted that they had inflicted the same on their enemy. Oryx, a website that visually tracks losses on both sides, has documented the loss of 20 Russian aircraft and 32 helicopters. They have counted 16 destroyed aircraft and three helicopters on the Ukrainian side.

 “We are ready to fight, and to be killed in this fight,” said Juice, who belongs to a “tactical aviation brigade”. He went on: “But if we have to take all these risks, we want to be effective. Not just to be killed but to kill somebody, as many as possible ... it’s our job. But still we want to be more effective to save our families, to save our children.”

The Russian invasion began on February 24 with a wave of attacks on Ukrainian targets, many of them airstrips. The goal was to destroy the defenders’ aircraft and secure areas for Russian troops to land. But thanks to a timely tip-off from US and UK intelligence, Ukraine was able to move a lot of its fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems out of harm’s way, according to Yuri Ignat, an air force colonel and spokesman in Vinnystia.

“The Russians hit some targets, but not to the extent that they planned, and we can still control our sky, to an extent, and continue working,” Ignat said.

He added that in the first days of the war, Russian pilots often came out worse in dogfights with Ukrainian jets. Sometimes it would fall to just one Ukrainian fighter to take on up ten Russian planes.

 “They were trying to get into our airspace from almost all available directions,” said Juice. “They had a lot of ground-based air defence on the front line. We weren’t able to fly at high altitudes, just very, very low.”

The Russians have now learned to be wary of crossing into Ukraine’s airspace — partly because of the effectivelness of its anti-aircraft systems, including BUK missiles. Ignat said that around 50 per cent of Russian air losses were caused by Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems, 30 per cent by drones and 20 per cent by fighter jets.

Juice said his main task was “the interception of Russian missiles and jets”. He was given his name by US air force pilots when he went on a military exercise there — his preference for soft drinks had attracted attention, apparently, in a hard-drinking crowd.

He and his comrades-in-arms are at an enormous disadvantage, he said, partly due to the limited range of Ukrainian radars. “Sometimes they are blind, we can’t lock on to an enemy target. [The Russians] have much more advanced situational awareness, an early-warning radar system. It’s their eyes in the sky and they can see us just after take-off. They know everything about us.”

A US pledge last week to provide more than $800 million worth of weapons to Ukraine, including transport helicopters, would not be enough to cover their needs, said Juice.

“Unfortunately our jets are very old,” he said. “It’s almost a suicide mission to fight face-to-face with Russians because they have very advanced missiles. We are trying to do our best but it’s very, very difficult.”

The Ukrainian air force has asked the US for F-16 fighters. Juice believes he could be trained to use them in just a few weeks. Western defence officials, however, are skeptical.

Ukrainian air force officials and analysts say with new jets they could soon achieve air superiority, allowing them to carry out escort missions for ground-attack aircraft and Ukrainian armour.

 “Even though our aviation forces are not very numerous, we use them effectively,” said Oleg Zhdanov, a military analyst and a reserve colonel in the Ukrainian armed forces. “The secret of this effectiveness is that we use our assets wisely. We try to save each life and each plane, we don’t throw them away. And the second is that our pilots are highly trained.”

In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian “republics” in the east declared their independence from Ukraine, the country’s air force was far less effective. The planes then were in very bad condition, Zhdanov said. Since then, training and maintenance have been improved.

 “If we get jet fighters and anti-air defence systems at small and medium range we’ll defeat the Russians in the air,” he said. “And air dominance provides victory for land operations.”

In the first week of the war, he said, about 30 per cent of losses in Russian ground forces were caused by Ukrainian aircraft.

 “They underestimated the high quality of our pilots’ training, because we have very old planes. But even with these old planes, our pilots can still destroy Russian planes and Russian columns,” he said.