Air-to-air kills have been the rarest currency of the war over Ukraine. Both sides fly at the edges of each other’s missile range, lob long-shots, and turn for home. So when Moscow claims a single fighter dropped two enemy jets in one pass, it is worth a very close look — and a very large pinch of salt.

On August 12, on the 114th anniversary of the Russian Air Force, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces Sergey Kobylash told the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that a young pilot flying a Su-35S had shot down two Ukrainian Su-27 fighters with three missiles in a single dogfight. Ukraine has not confirmed losing the aircraft, and no independent evidence has surfaced. Treat it as a claim, not a confirmed result.

Even as a claim, it is a striking one. The Su-35S is a single-seat, twin-engine multirole fighter — the most capable Flanker Russia flies in numbers — and the Su-27 is the original heavyweight air-superiority Flanker it descends from. One cousin of the family, Moscow says, beat two of the others while outnumbered.

What Moscow says happened

By Kobylash’s account, the Su-35S was flying a combat air patrol to cover a Russian ground advance when it picked up two Su-27s on radar despite Ukrainian jamming. Outnumbered two-to-one, the pilot maneuvered into an advantageous position and fired three air-to-air missiles, claiming both jets.

It is the kind of set-piece that reads well in an anniversary interview. It is also, conveniently, unverifiable: no gun-camera footage, no wreckage, no Ukrainian admission. Russian and Ukrainian air-loss claims are routinely inflated by both sides, and neither releases the data that would settle them.

Why two Su-27s would sting

Ukraine started the war with only a modest number of Su-27s and has lost several since. Every one is close to irreplaceable — the production lines closed decades ago and no friendly nation flies the type in numbers to backfill it. Losing two in a single engagement, if true, would be a genuinely bad afternoon for the Ukrainian Air Force.

That scarcity is exactly why the claim deserves scrutiny rather than a headline. The more valuable the target, the more incentive there is to announce a kill — and the less likely the losing side is to confirm it.

Il quadro generale

The context cuts against the triumphalism. Just weeks earlier, in July, a Ukrainian F-16 was credited by the top U.S. general with the first confirmed F-16 air-to-air kill of the war — a Russian Su-35. The Flanker-E has been on the losing end of headlines lately, which makes an anniversary-day two-for-one all the more useful to Moscow’s messaging.

None of that makes the claim false. It simply means the honest verdict is the boring one: Russia says a Su-35S pilot pulled off a rare double kill, and until Ukraine or the wreckage says otherwise, that is exactly all we know.

Sources: TASS (Aug 12, 2026); Krasnaya Zvezda interview with Gen. Sergey Kobylash; The Aviationist; Military Watch Magazine.