They will hardly dare to fly into Ukrainian airspace – Ukraine’s Air Force comments as Russian aircraft being pulled to border

This was stated by the spokesman for the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuriy Ihnat, Radio Liberty reports.

"We also saw it (the Financial Times article - ed.) right away, and we were also a little surprised that this kind of information was being published. Perhaps this is a matter of a slightly incorrect headline. You can't pull aviation to the borders – it's not tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, or personnel. These are aircraft that should be at airfields. As it was deployed, let's say, at the beginning of the war, it remained there. These are hundreds of airplanes and helicopters. At the beginning of the aggression, it was 750, and now, depending on the tasks, this figure can change in one direction or another. It is clear that Russia will continue to use these airfields. These are about 40 airfields: in the occupied Crimea, in the occupied territory of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia," Ihnat said.

According to him, changes at Russian airfields are happening all the time, and aircraft are constantly being redeployed.

"Yes, it is hardly to be expected that there will be an accumulation close to the borders. On the contrary, they have dispersed their aircraft, especially after the explosion we had in Ryazan and Engels, they are trying to disperse their aircraft deeper into Russia to avoid greater damage to their aircraft in case of any possible explosion ," said the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force.

Ihnat reminded that for more than 10 months now, Russian warplanes have not been flying into Ukrainian airspace, as they did at the beginning of the aggression.

"And even then, at the beginning of the invasion, no one was fighting with some large hordes of planes... As a rule, nowadays, people fight with aviation units. It can be a couple of airplanes, a unit, a squadron, etc. A maximum of 12 aircraft can be used in one direction to carry out precision strikes with high-precision weapons and so on. This is not World War II, so we can hardly expect anything here. The Air Force is not what it used to be. The Air Force today is also armed with modern Western equipment, such as IRIS-T, NASAMS, as well as numerous man-portable air defense systems of various types and air defense systems of the Ground Forces, such as the French Crotale or German Gepard. So it will not be an easy ride, I can assure you of that. The Russians will hardly dare to fly into our airspace," said the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force.

• The day before, Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, named the targets the aggressor plans to hit.