Ukraine’s air force said Thursday that one of the F-16 warplanes that Ukraine had received from its Western partners has crashed.

The fighter jet crashed on Monday, when Russia launched a significant missile and drone attack against Ukraine, according to a military statement on Facebook. The jet crashed while repelling a Russian airstrike. The pilot died in the incident.

This marks the first reported loss of an F-16 in Ukraine. The warplanes arrived in the country at the end of July.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is investigating the crash.

Earlier Thursday, Ukraine’s military said that Russia attacked overnight with 74 drones and three guided missiles, with Ukrainian air defenses shooting down 60 of the drones.

The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Poltava and Sumy regions, the military said.

Officials in Kyiv said the Ukrainian capital faced its third round of drone attacks in four days. Serhiy Popko, head of the city’s military administration, said on Telegram that air alerts were in place for almost six hours and that none of the drones hit their targets.

Popko reported debris from downed drones hitting residential buildings in three districts in Kyiv, but he did not report any casualties.

Serhiy Lysak, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, said air defenses shot down five Russian drones. He said Russia also attacked the region with artillery, and that a post office, cathedral and power lines were damaged.

Also on Thursday, at least one person was killed and six were injured during Russian shelling of the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka, the local governor said.

Just miles from the front line, the town “comes under enemy fire almost every day,” Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin wrote in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters in Brussels ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers Thursday that Ukraine is asking allies that provide weapons to Ukraine to allow Ukrainian forces to use the weapons to strike “legitimate military targets” inside of Russia.

Kuleba said Ukraine’s main goal is to be able to strike airfields that Russia uses to launch bombers for attacks on Ukrainian forces and infrastructure.

“If we are supplied with sufficient amount of missiles, if we are allowed to strike, we will significantly decrease the capacity of Russia to inflict damage on our critical infrastructure and we will improve the situation for our forces on the ground,” Kuleba said.

Kuleba is also pushing for allies to shorten the gap between when they pledge military aid and when that aid is delivered to Ukrainian forces, saying sometimes the wait is “excessively long.”

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters he would push member states to fulfill their commitments and try to increase support for Ukraine.

“It’s clear that Ukrainian forces well-equipped can change the course of the war, not only defending themselves but pushing back the invasion,” Borrell said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will meet with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov at the Pentagon on Friday. Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday that Austin will get a battlefield update, including on the offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, and will “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported shooting down six Ukrainian drones Thursday, with intercepts taking place over the Belgorod and Bryansk regions and the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

The ministry also said it thwarted an attempted attack by sea drones that were headed toward Crimea.

VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report. Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse, Reuters and The Associated Press.

Source: voanews.com