Ukrainian MiG-29 Pilot's Front-Line Account Of The Air War Against Russia
A MiG-29 pilot talks tactics and tribulations in the desperate fight to keep Ukraine’s skies free from Russian domination.
BY THOMAS NEWDICK APRIL 1, 2022
THE WAR ZONE
When The War Zone first made contact with the 29-year-old Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot known to the outside world only by the callsign ‘Juice,’ he’d just stepped out of the cockpit of his jet. “bleep night patrol,” he remarked, with typical candor. Our first scheduled attempt at an interview then got pushed back after we had received a message from Ukraine that Juice’s base had just been issued an alert warning of a potential incoming Russian missile strike. Hours later, he checked in again, having scrambled from his home airbase and touched down at an alternative airfield elsewhere in the country, to protect his jet from the bombardment.
This, it has become clear, is very much the life of a Ukrainian Air Force fighter pilot these days. There is also doing battle with hordes of Russian aircraft, of course.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Juice is probably among the most in-demand fighter pilots anywhere in the world right now. In what’s been an unprecedented air war so far, Juice has become something of a semi-official spokesman for Ukraine’s fighter arm. Before The War Zone managed to sit down with him for a videoconference meeting, he had already described the air force’s heroic defensive actions to several outlets, fitting interviews (that are well worth a read) in between Russian missile strikes and alert scrambles. But in the two hours we spent with Juice, he painted an incredibly detailed, if not unprecedented picture from his incredible vantage point of the sometimes heart pounding and at other times outright bizarre air war over his beloved homeland.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/45019/fighting-russia-in-the-sky-mig-29-pilots-in-depth-account-of-the-air-war-over-ukraine
