"Buy me a combat aircraft": an initiative to raise funds for fighter jets has started in Lviv. Photos

It is reported by Espreso.West.

From today, a fund will operate to accept contributions from those wishing to take part in raising funds for combat aircraft for the Air Force of Ukraine. The approximate cost of one aircraft is 50-60 million dollars.

"We are convinced that our Ministry of Defense is doing everything possible to receive these aircraft from other partner countries. But there is a big policy behind it, someone is afraid to transfer these aircraft, someone doubts, they transfer them to one airfield, to another. Here, the story is that we give private donors and private investors the opportunity to contribute on a human level. This fund makes it possible to buy an aircraft as a private fund and then transfer it, or several aircraft, to the balance of the Air Force of Ukraine. That no longer requires those big political decisions and discussions between states. And we believe that today we can turn to quite rich people on the planet who can contribute to this struggle", explains Yuriy Nazaruk, co-founder of Galician Aviation.

Also during the presentation of the initiative, the organizers showed the remains of the downed invader aircraft SU-34, a large piece of the wing and other details.

As Sergiy Drozdov, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2015 to 2021, notes, now the Ukrainian military has destroyed twice as many aircraft as the invader. However, our aviation also has losses, so there is a great need to upgrade air weapons.

"At the initial stage, we paid attention to the fact that we were given such aircraft, which we are immediately ready to fly on and perform tasks. Aircraft which were in service in the post-Soviet space, these are the MiG-29, Su-27 and Su-25. But now, calling on our Western partners, we are saying that there is a need to increase the combat potential, more modernized aircraft with better radar stations, with better missiles that can fire at long distances, in order to bring victory to us all", says Sergiy Drozdov. 

According to a Ukrainian military pilot (name withheld for security reasons), they will be able to master the latest technologies quickly: "We really need aircraft, the latest modernized, the latest technology, the newest weapons, we will be able to master them, we know what to do with them, we'll manage".