Ukraine Air Force Has Carried Out 2,200 Attacks On Russian Positions

Ukraine's Air Force has carried out more than 2,000 strikes against Russian positions, the Ukrainian military announced.

"The Air Force carried out almost 2,200 attacks on the invaders' positions," Yuriy Ignat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Armed Forces' Air Force Command, was quoted as saying by Media Center Ukraine.

Ignat, who made the announcement at the civic initiative's headquarters in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, also revealed that Russian forces were attacking along the entire front line in Ukraine's south and east.

While the Ukrainian Air Force has reportedly "exerted maximum effort" to defend Ukraine's airspace, Ignat said that cities along the front line are still under threat because Russian forces can attack Ukrainian positions from extremely low altitudes.

"Our defenders bring them down whenever they can," said Ignat, who urged the public not to ignore air raid alerts.

The Air Force of Ukraine, much like the Armed Forces' other branches, mostly operates Soviet-era equipment such as the MiG-29, a multirole fighter that first entered service in 1982.

The Russian Air Force also operates Soviet-era equipment, but unlike Ukraine, newer aircraft have been added to its fleet.

"We are fighting with the equipment of the '70s and '80s, they are fighting with the equipment of 2010 and later," Ignat said back in March.

Efforts were already underway to modernize the Ukrainian Air Force before the Russian invasion, and the ongoing conflict has led Ukraine to request modern aircraft from the U.S. to replace its aging jets.

Among the planes that the Ukrainian government requested were the U.S.' F-15 and F-16 fighters, according to The Telegraph.

President Joe Biden's administration has made no decision on the request yet over worries that American equipment would be used to attack Russian territory.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed at the Aspen Security Forum on July 21 that the U.S. was open to sending A-10 attack aircraft to Ukraine.

However, Yuriy Sak, an advisor to Ukraine's defense minister Oleksii Reznikov, said in an interview with Air Force Magazine that his country needed "fast and versatile" aircraft like the F-16, not the A-10.

"[The A-10s] are slow. And to operate them efficiently — and we know this from our pilots— they are really vulnerable to the enemy's air defense," Sak said.