Ukraine Shoots Down Russian Su-35 Bomber Over Black Sea, Air Force Says

A Russian fighter jet has been downed over Kherson, the Ukrainian oblast whose southern region lies on the shores of the Black Sea, according to Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Air Force posted on Facebook on Monday that a Sukhoi Su-35 jet had suffered a "negative take-off" on Sunday over "Ukrainian territorial waters."

In a now deleted post, the local Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Pletenchuk, earlier reported that the plane had been taken down by air defensesr. "The spectacle of the downed Su-35 was incredible," he said in the post, according to Ukrainian Pravda. "Air defense is power!"

The purported downing was later confirmed by Ukraine's General Staff, which said that the "circumstances are being clarified."

The Twitter account OSINT defender said that the aircraft had been armed with KAB-500S guided-aerial bombs, "which were being utilized against air defense sites in the Kherson region" and that Ukrainian reports had said that the pilot was killed in the incident.

OSINT defender also shared footage of what is claimed to be the Su-35 "launching its guided-aerial bombs and flares off the coast of the Mykolaiv region at targets in Kherson right before it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile."

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry over the claims.

Developed by the Sukhoi State Design Bureau, the Su-35 is a fourth-generation Russian multirole fighter and an improved version of the Su-27. Since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost 82 aircraft, including three Su-35s, according to the open-source website Oryx, which is tracking Moscow's losses.

Ukraine's General Staff also reported on Monday that four Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles and 20 Shahed drones had been destroyed. Kyiv said that Russia had attacked military and infrastructure facilities in the city of Dnipro.

The mayor of the city, Borys Filatov, asked residents not to film anything and not to post any footage. Meanwhile the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, reported that the region had "withstood the attack."

An emergency facility and a private business were damaged, as well as several vehicles and some equipment. A 27-year-old man was also injured, Lysak added.

It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky insisted that the Donetsk town of Bakhmut has not fallen to Russia after months of fighting, as claimed by the head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin .

At the G7 summit in Japan, Zelensky said that Bakhmut was "not occupied," while Ukrainian military sources have said they still control a handful of buildings on its outskirts.