“The Air Force reliably defends the Ukrainian sky and worthily repels the Russian attacking it,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a tweet early Sunday. “Thank you for your professionalism and dedication to the defense of Ukraine!” On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also released a video to celebrate Air Force Day of Ukraine. Posting the video on social media, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Adviser Anton Gerashchenko described his “eternal gratitude” to all the country’s “sky defenders”. It comes after the Pentagon announced that US-supplied weapons are preventing Russia from gaining air superiority in its war against Ukraine. During a July 29 briefing, an unnamed senior military official told reporters that Ukrainian forces successfully used US-made HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems) to strike Russian targets. “We know they were able to hit surface-to-air missile sites and destroy some SAMs,” the official said. They added: “I think the fact that the Russians continue to not have air superiority certainly speaks volumes about the kind of will the Ukrainians have, both in terms of their ability to prevent the enemy from shooting down their aircraft and also to shoot down Russian aircraft . .” Ukraine said a strike that killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in eastern Ukraine last week was an attempt to stop arms supplies from the West. Russia claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, located in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine, on July 29. Zelensky called it a “deliberate Russian war crime.” And a Facebook post on Sunday from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said: “The terrorist act in Olenivka was a special Russian operation against the supply of arms to Ukraine. “By all means, Russia is trying to prevent the supply of Western high-precision weapons to Ukraine.” The White House said US intelligence officials believed Russia would seek to create false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces using HIMARS were responsible for the prison strike. “We expect that Russian officials will try to flank the Ukrainian Armed Forces in anticipation of journalists and potential investigators visiting the site of the attack,” National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said Thursday. “In fact, we’ve already seen some false press reports to that effect where they’ve planted evidence. And we have reason to believe that Russia would go so far as to make it appear that the Ukrainian HIMARS – which have been in the news so much lately — they’ve been at fault. And let’s do this before the reporters get to the scene,” he added. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment. Russian MiG-31BM fighter jets fly over Red Square during the dress rehearsal of the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 7, 2022. Russia marked the 77th anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany on May 9. GETTY/YURI KADOBNOV/AFP
