Dozens of people gathered outside a Catholic church in Kiev on Tuesday to pay tribute to a fighter pilot who lobbied the West to supply Ukraine with F-16s.
Andriy Pilshchykov, better known as Juice, died last week during a training flight in the northern region of Zhytomyr.
Pilot Andriy Pilshchykov’s hat rested on his coffin, which was draped in the yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine.
“He wanted to fight bureaucracy so we could get American-style pilot training – not a waste of time, just improving skills,” Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Dovgal told AFP.
Considered a “fly bait,” Pilshchykov was inspired to modernize the air force after training in the United States, he added.
Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk placed flowers at the coffin and expressed his condolences to Pilshchykov’s mother. Ukrainian national anthem plays in the 20th-century Catholic cathedral on the banks of the Dnipro River.
Last weekend, Ukrainian officials praised the pilot’s contribution to the Russian invasion during this war.
Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said Pilshchykov was a young man with “tremendous knowledge and talent”.
“I actively spoke to the Western media about the issue of supplying modern F-16 aircraft to Ukraine,” he said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to the victims of the crash in his speech last Saturday, praising them as champions of the “free skies of Ukraine” and promising an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Source: DN
