Ukraine’s Zelensky fires Air Force chief, days after fatal F-16 crash

By Kostyantyn Gak, Radina Gigova, Svitlana Vlasova and Rob Picheta, CNN

(CNN) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk on Friday, a day after the Air Force announced one of Ukraine’s top pilots had died when a US-made F-16 fighter jet crashed.

Zelensky said the command level of the Air Force needed to “strengthen,” but did not say whether his decision to sack Oleshchuk was related to the F-16 crash on Monday.

“I am infinitely grateful to all our military pilots, engineers, soldiers of mobile fire groups, air defense units. To everyone who really fights for Ukraine. And it is necessary also at the command level: We must strengthen. And protect people. Protect personnel. Take care of all our soldiers,” the Ukrainian leader said in his nightly address on Friday.

Lieutenant General Anatoliy Kryvonozhka will serve as acting Air Force commander, he said.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov denied that Oleshchuk’s firing was connected to the death of the pilot. “I would probably say this is a rotation,” said Umerov in an interview with CNN’s Alex Marquardt on “The Situation Room.”

“This is two separate issues… at this stage, I would not connect them,” he said, calling the pilot’s death “unfortunate” and that Ukraine is investigating what happened.

Ukraine’s air defenses have been under intense pressure, with Russia pummeling its neighbor with aerial assaults. F-16 pilot Oleksiy Mes, known as “Moonfish,” was killed in the crash while “repelling the biggest ever aerial attack” by Russia against Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian military source.

His death was a particularly hard blow for Ukraine; the first F-16s only arrived in the country earlier this month and Moonfish was one of the few pilots trained to fly them. The Ukrainian Defense Forces do not believe pilot error was behind the incident, the source added.

Earlier on Friday, Zelensky cited recent attacks to again press Western countries to step up their military support for Ukraine.

A deadly strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday “would not have happened if our Defense Forces had the ability to destroy Russian military aircraft where they are based. We need strong decisions from our partners to stop this terror,” he said.

“This is an absolutely fair need. And there is no rational reason to limit Ukraine’s defense. We need long-range capabilities.”

The Friday strike killed a child in a playground and left others dead in a residential building, Ukrainian authorities said. At least five people were killed and 28 wounded in the attack, according to local authorities.

“The occupiers killed a child right on the playground. A girl,” Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said, adding that others died in a burning high-rise building in the city’s industrial district. A gliding bomb also struck the city center, Terekhov said.

Moscow strikes as Kyiv advances

Moscow’s decision to ramp up strikes on Ukraine comes amid Kyiv’s continued push into Russian territory, an embarrassing assault for President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Friday that Kyiv’s forces have made further advances in their incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, pushing up to two kilometers (about 1.2 miles) further into the border region over the past 24 hours.

Syrskyi relayed the information during a staff meeting, in which Zelensky added that the replenishment of the “exchange fund” of forces was “extremely important for strengthening our positions.”

The Ukrainian offensive and the Russian aerial response have distracted attention from the ground campaign in eastern Ukraine, but Syrskyi said fighting “of varying intensity” was continuing along the entire front line.

“The most difficult situation remains in the Pokrovsk sector. The enemy is trying to break through the defenses of our troops, but as of this morning all attacks have been repelled, the enemy has not succeeded,” he said.

Russian forces have been pushing hard to capture Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, even as Moscow struggles to contain the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region.

The front line has moved so close to Pokrovsk that the fighting was audible in the city center, according to a CNN team that reported from the town earlier this week.

Pokrovsk, a strategic target for Moscow, sits on a key supply road that connects the town with other military hubs, and forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that is still under Kyiv’s control.

Fierce fighting is also ongoing in the town of Karlivka, about 30 kilometers (or 18.6 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.

“Today the enemy is actively trying to enter Karlivka. The fighting is ongoing right now, there are many of them,” a serviceman of Ukraine’s 59th brigade told CNN on Friday. The Russian forces don’t have control over the town yet, he said, “but the situation is difficult. ”

Long-range weapons use

Speaking with CNN, Umerov said the Biden administration was still considering his request, repeated Friday in his meetings with administration officials including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for the US to lift restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons to strike deeper inside Russian territory.

“We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard,” said Umerov.

Umerov pushed back against an assessment from a US official to CNN that many of Ukraine’s high value targets in Russia are outside the range of long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS).

“We are showing that the airfields that they are using to hit our cities are within the range of deep strikes,” said Umerov.

Asked about whether Ukraine was aiming to trade the Russian territory it has captured in Kursk for territory Russia has captured in Ukraine, Umerov said Ukraine was more focused on the “capabilities” that territory allows them.

“We are focused to increase our capabilities to withstand, to repel the Russians from the temporary occupied territories,” said Umerov.

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CNN’s Michael Conte and Alex Marquardt contributed reporting