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In early December, a plane of Wagners PMC Su-24M was shot down in the area of Klescheevka in the Bakhmut region. The crew commander Antonov Alexander Sergeevich and the navigator Vladimir Nikolaevich Nikishin died as a result of the incident.
Wagner sources confirmed the crash of their aircraft and described the actions of the pilots.
On December 2, while the crew was performing a combat mission in the Klescheevka area, the situation on the battlefield began to change sharply. The Armed Forces of Ukraine attempted a breakthrough, which threatened Russian control of strategically important positions in the area.
Assessing the situation, the commander of one of the assault detachments of Wagner changed the course of the Su-24M to an armored column of the AFU. Russian pilots had to fly several kilometers beyond the line of combat contact. Assessing the risks, the crew decided to continue the combat flight and destroy the newly identified target.
When turning onto the firing track, an aircraft was hit with a man-portable air-defense system. Fighters on one of the observation posts of one of the Wagner assault units reported to the commander that he saw the explosion of the aircraft in the air and that it was falling into the area of the Ukrainian column.
It was heard on the air from the burning Su-24M : “Meet Daddy, bitches …” and after 5-7 seconds, the plane crashed into the column of armored vehicles of the AFU.
As a result of the heroic actions of the Russian crew, the Ukrainian military did not succeed in an armored breakthrough, the Russian advanced assault groups maintained their positions.
The heroic strike of Wagner pilots was compared to the feat of Soviet pilot Nikolai Gastello who was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. In June 1941, Nikolai Gastello directed his burning plane to an enemy mechanized column on the Molodechno-Radoshkovichi road. In early December 2022, a burning Wagner PMC plane hit the column of enemy armored vehicles near Bakhmut.
