{"id":225090,"date":"2025-06-29T22:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T22:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/225090\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T22:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T22:35:10","slug":"ukrainian-fighter-pilot-died-like-a-hero-fighting-off-russian-attack-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/225090\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian fighter pilot \u2018died like a hero\u2019 fighting off Russian attack | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Ukrainian fighter pilot has been posthumously awarded the country\u2019s highest honour after being killed while fending off a \u201cmassive\u201d Russian attack<\/a>. Ukraine<\/a>\u2019s air force said Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko \u201cdied like a hero\u201d after downing several Russian targets.<\/p>\n

The F-16 pilot was helping to intercept a bombardment of hundreds of Russian drones and missiles in what one Ukrainian official said was Moscow<\/a>\u2019s biggest aerial attack of the war yet. In a post on social media, Kyiv\u2019s air force said: \u201cThe pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The air force said he did \u201ceverything possible\u201d, flying the US-made aircraft away from a settlement but didn\u2019t have time to eject.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe died like a hero,\u201d the post added.<\/p>\n

President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> has conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine<\/a> to Lt Col Ustymenko, born in 1993.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelensky made the announcement at the start of his nightly address and described Lt Col Usymenko as \u201cone of our very best\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis record includes truly significant achievements for Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d Mr Zelensky said, explaining he had served on the frontline for several years.<\/p>\n

It is believed Ukraine<\/a> has now lost three F-16s during the conflict.<\/p>\n

Kyiv\u2019s air force said Russia<\/a> fired 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles across Ukraine<\/a> overnight on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed, it added.<\/p>\n

Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine<\/a>\u2019s air force, said the onslaught was \u201cthe most massive airstrike\u201d on the country since the beginning of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion<\/a> in February 2022.<\/p>\n

The attack targeted several regions, including western Ukraine<\/a>, far from the front line.<\/p>\n

Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft to ensure the safety of Polish airspace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three people were killed in each of the drone strikes in the Kherson, Kharkiv and the Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said.<\/p>\n

Another person was reported to have been killed by an airstrike in Kostyantynivka, while a man died in shelling in Kherson and the body of a 70-year-old woman was found under the rubble of a nine-story building also hit by Russian shelling in the Zaporizhzhia region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Ukrainian fighter pilot has been posthumously awarded the country\u2019s highest honour after being killed while fending off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11501,33889,88810,88811,12,332,7661,657,88809,658,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-225090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-aircraft","9":"tag-f-16","10":"tag-lieutenant-colonel-maksym-ustymenko","11":"tag-maksym-ustymenko","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-ukraine-air-force","17":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky","18":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114769043578572988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}