After four F-16 fighter jets, Ukraine has now lost its first French-supplied Mirage 2000 fighter jet during a mission on Tuesday, with the pilot ejecting safely, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
France began delivering the supersonic aircraft to Ukraine earlier this year to help Kyiv defend its airspace against Russia.
“Unfortunately, we lost our combat aircraft. A French aircraft, very effective, one of our Mirage jets,” Zelensky said in an address early Wednesday morning.
“The pilot managed to escape and it was not shot down by the Russians,” he added.
The Ukrainian air force said the incident took place during a flight mission on Tuesday evening and that there were “no casualties on the ground”.
“The pilot reported a failure of aviation equipment to the flight director. He then acted competently, as is expected in a crisis situation, and successfully ejected,” the air force said.
The incident marks another blow for the Ukrainian military, which is suffering a shortage of air defences to counter Russian attacks.
Ukrainian pilots and mechanics have been trained in eastern France to use the jets, which have undergone modifications to combat Russian jamming.
Earlier, a Ukrainian pilot was killed after his F-16 fighter was lost while repelling a large-scale Russian missile and drone attack. It was the third such loss of an F-16 of the war, the military said. However, this could have been the fourth crash, as per EurAsian Times’ estimates.
“The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude,” the Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app.
Earlier, on May 16, Ukraine lost an F-16 Fighting Falcon (the 4th loss) as EurAsian Times reported.
Announcing the incident on Facebook, the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said: “On May 16, 2025, around 03.30, communication with the F-16 aircraft was lost.” The F-16 in question was repelling a Russian aerial attack when it developed some unidentified problems.
The first crash happened just weeks after Ukraine received its first F-16 and claimed the life of the pilot. While the accident was initially attributed to a technical malfunction or pilot error, a Wall Street Journal report later floated the possibility of friendly fire from a Ukrainian Patriot missile defense system.
The second crash of an F-16 occurred in April 2025, killing the pilot again. Initially, several theories, including that of an air-to-air combat between Russia and Ukraine, as well as friendly fire, were floated. However, Russia put all speculations to rest by announcing that the F-16 was shot down by an air defense system.
The third crash was the May 16 incident, where experts suggested that the S-400 AD missile was behind the kill.
May 16 incident was the latest loss of Fighting Falcon.
France delivered the first batch of Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets to Ukraine to help Kyiv defend its airspace against Russia, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu had said.
“The first of these aircraft have arrived in Ukraine today,” Lecornu said on X, without saying how many had been delivered. After France helped train Ukrainian pilots over recent months, “they will now help defend Ukraine’s skies,” he added.
Lecornu had said, “Mirage 2000s could be flying in Ukraine in the first half of 2025,” without giving a specific date for the delivery of the aircraft that French President Emmanuel Macron promised to the Ukrainian Air Force earlier this year.
Mirage 2000-5 is a fourth-generation jet and belongs to the same class of aircraft as the F-16, which is already in service with the Ukrainian Air Force. Kyiv has deployed the F-16s mainly for air defense and combat patrols.
With AFP Inputs
