Ukraine Claims It Shot Down A Russian Backfire Bomber

The Ukrainian government claimed it shot down one of the Russian air force Tupolev Tu-22M Backfire bombers on Friday, which, if confirmed, would be the second or third loss of a swing-wing Tu-22M since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022—and the first loss in the air.

The shoot-down would underscore Ukraine’s enduring ability to target the biggest and most powerful Russian warplanes, even though Ukrainian air-defenses are struggling with desperately low supplies of their most up-to-date missiles.

The 139-foot Tu-22M is a Cold War icon that once threatened to hunt down U.S. Navy aircraft carriers on the open ocean. Today, it’s a cruise missile carrier—and, from Ukraine’s point of view, a terror weapon.

The Russian air force’s 60 or so Tu-22Ms routinely launch their missiles at Ukrainian cities, wounding and killing civilians who are often sleeping during the nighttime raids.

The threat the Backfires pose to civilians means the bombers are top targets of Ukraine’s military and intelligence service. In 2022 and again in 2023, Ukrainian drones targeted the giant warplanes at their bases inside Russia, apparently destroying one and at least damaging another.

But the Tu-22M the Ukrainians reportedly destroyed on Friday morning was hit in mid-air. “It should be noted that this is the first successful destruction of a strategic bomber in the air during a combat mission during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” the intelligence service in Kyiv stated.

Ukrainian forces reportedly hit the supersonic Tu-22M as it was flying over southern Russia after launching its cruise missiles. Those missiles reportedly struck the city of Dnipro and killed at least two people.

Ukraine’s intelligence service claimed it used the same weapon to strike the bomber that it also used to shoot down a rare Russian air force Beriev A-50 radar plane on Feb. 23. That likely means either an American-made Patriot air-defense battery, with a range of up to 90 miles, or an ex-Soviet S-200 battery with a 150-mile range.

Smart money is on the S-200, as the Ukrainian air force ran low on Patriot missiles last week. The shortage of Patriots is so severe that the Ukrainian forces were unable to defend Kyiv from an intensive missile barrage that destroyed the city’s most important power plant on April 11. “We ran out of all missiles,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told PBS NewsHour.

The S-200’s eight-ton 5V28 “is a honking big missile with a really heavy and voluminous seeker space,” Trent Telenko, a former quality auditor with the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency, wrote on X. The 5V28 packs a 500-pound warhead that can inflict serious damage on even the biggest airplane.

Whichever missile the Ukrainians used, they reportedly just damaged the bomber at first. The stricken plane flew on, ultimately tumbling to the ground in flames near the Russian city of Stavropol, 300 miles from the front line in Ukraine. It’s unclear whether the crew ejected in time.

The Russian air force still has scores of Tu-22Ms. But the Ukrainian air force, while short of new Western surface-to-air missiles, might have hundreds of missiles for its old S-200 batteries. It’s increasingly apparent that any big Russian jets that approach within 150 miles of the front line in Ukraine are at risk of interception.