Russia shoots down its own military plane in bombing raid: reports

Unconfirmed reports said a Russian plane or drone was shot down over Ukraine's Donetsk region on Saturday, possibly in a friendly fire incident.

According to the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, the Russian plane fired targeted bombs at Ukrainian positions and was shot down by its own troops on the ground.

Footage shared on social media showed a plane being hit by a missile in mid-air and the remains of a plane after it crashed to the ground. However, it is unclear whether they were taken during the same incident. A former Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser suggested the crashed aircraft was either a Su-25 ground support jet or a Hunter S-70 drone.

Russian forces have slowly advanced in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region, which President Vladimir Putin annexed in September 2022, but at the cost of heavy casualties. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian military confirmed that it had withdrawn from Vuhledar, a town in Donetsk province that had a population of about 14,000 before the war, after weeks of heavy fighting.

However, Putin's troops are still struggling to recapture parts of Russia's Kursk province that were taken by Ukrainian troops in a surprise offensive in August.

Ukrainska Pravda, citing a Ukrainian Air Force source, reported that a Russian aircraft was shot down in a friendly fire incident over Donbas. The newspaper said it was hit while dropping glide bombs, large but cheap explosive devices used to destroy Ukraine's defenses. Russian military bloggers also reported that one of their aircraft was destroyed, but some details remain unclear.

Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, shared footage of a destroyed plane on X, adding: “Videos appeared on the Internet showing a Russian Su-25 crashing in the Donetsk region.”

“There is unconfirmed information that it may have been friendly fire from the Russians themselves.”

Gerashchenko later said, citing a Russian military broadcaster Telegram, that the plane may have been “a Russian Hunter S-70 drone that was supposedly conducting a reconnaissance flight.”

Newsweek contacted the Ministry of Defense of Russia and Ukraine by email outside regular office hours on Saturday for comment.

Separately, the Ukrainian military released a video on Saturday showing the destruction of a Russian tank by a drone that dropped molten thermite over it.

Several videos have been released showing Ukrainian “kite drones” dropping thermite, a mixture of aluminum and rust that burns at extremely high temperatures, over Russian positions in recent weeks.

On Saturday, Ukraine's Defense Ministry also released its latest estimate of Russian casualties in the last 24 hours. However, Kiev claimed that the Russians suffered 1,280 casualties and lost eight tanks and 31 infantry fighting vehicles during this period Newsweek has not independently verified this claim.

Angelica Evans, a Russia researcher at the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, reported that as of October 3, Moscow controlled 98.8 percent of Ukraine's Luhansk province. The Luhansk and Donetsk provinces together form the Donbas.