Video shows Ukraine shooting down an Su-25 war plane from miles away with a shoulder-mounted missile, officials say
- A Ukrainian military video showed a soldier shooting down a Russian SU-25 jet.
- Su-25s are used to provide air support to Russian troops on the ground.
A Ukrainian military video shows a soldier seeming to take out a Russian Su-25 jet using an shoulder-held missile launcher from a great distance.
In a video posted on Telegram by the Ukrainian 10th Mountain Assault Brigade, a soldier is seen firing a rocket across flat landscape, and there is a distant explosion as the jet is hit.
On seeing the missile connect the soldier who fired it is starts pointing, yelling, and swearing in jubilation.
"Today soldiers from the anti-aircraft missile division of the Edelweiss 10th Mountain Assault Brigade deployed an Igla anti-aircraft missile system to shoot down a Russian Su-25 [jet]," the unit said in a post, reported Ukrainska Pravda.
It is unclear where the video was filmed.
The Su-25 is a Soviet era jet, designed to fly low and provide support to Russian troops on the ground. But this makes them vulnerable to strikes from anti-aircraft missiles fired by ground troops using shoulder-held launchers, reported The Economist.
The Igla is a Russian-made anti-air weapon which Ukraine is using alongside donations from Western countries.
According to Oryx, a Dutch website that tracks equipment losses in the Ukraine war, Russia has lost 29 SU-25s in the planes in the war so far, the most of any type of plane.
Wednesday's downing of the Su-25 came weeks after Ukraine's last announcement that it'd shot down one of the planes, though again it didn't specify where, reported the Kyiv Post.
Ukraine has in recent weeks launched a counteroffensive aimed at driving Russian forces back from territory they occupy in east and south Ukraine.