Last weekend, the Ukrainian Air Force Command admitted the pilot was a “superhero legend whose character was created by Ukrainians.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-admits-ghost-kyiv-isnt-real-wartime-myth-russia-rcna26867

'All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they're all fictional.' -Shahab Moradi

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
      ·
      3 years ago

      From what I understand from them, all pilots fear the SAMs infinitely more than enemy fighters. The air defense system is what is going to get the most kills

      Guess what the Soviets, and the post-soviet CIS states specialize in - and why NATO doesn't let the best fighter in the world, that being the F-35, nowhere near them

        • star_wraith [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Between this and how everyone suspects the US' carrier fleets are sitting ducks in a war against a country like China, the bloomer in me is hopefully that I live to see the day the US military gets completely humiliated (and destroyed) on a scale never before seen in world history

          And that 1,000 years from now, when they talk about this time period, they'll point out the humiliation of the supposed greatest military ever came about largely because the entire structure of the thing was built on lining the wealthy's pockets more than building an actual capable military.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        F-35 isn't supposed to be a fighter anyway. Its basically flying recon and artillery. In theory it should be operating outside the range of your air defense.

        Admittedly, in practice...

        Either way, the premise of Western hype around Ukraine was that Russia's military was so completely sclerotic, even a rag tag band of high schoolers with pluck and moxy could defeat them.

        So "The Ghost of Kyiv" could shoot down six planes in thirty minutes because Russians were sitting ducks. And the Russian war machine would grind to a halt because nobody in the military knew how to move fuel to the front lines. And then Vladimir Putin would die of embarrassment for even dreaming of challenging the West. And everyone would clap.

        All fiction.