One of the handful of F-16 warplanes that Ukraine has received from its Western partners to help fight Russia’s invasion has crashed, Ukraine’s air force said Thursday.

The fighter jet went down on Monday, when Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage at Ukraine, a military statement posted on Facebook said. Four of those Russian missiles were shot down by F-16s, the statement said.

The crash was the first reported loss of an F-16 in Ukraine, where they arrived at the end of last month. At least six of the warplanes are believed to have been delivered.

The Defense Ministry has opened the investigation into the crash.

Earlier Thursday, Russia conducted a heavy aerial attack on Ukraine for the third time in four days, again launching missiles and scores of drones that mostly were intercepted, Ukraine’s air force said.

Russian forces fired five missiles and 74 Shahed drones at Ukrainian targets, an air force statement said. Air defenses stopped two missiles and 60 drones, and 14 other drones presumably fell before reaching their target, it said.

Authorities in the capital, Kyiv, said debris of destroyed drones fell in three districts of the city, causing minor damage to civilian infrastructure but no injuries.

Russia’s relentless and unnerving long-range strikes on civilian areas have been a feature of the war since it invaded its neighbor in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials have recently become more vocal in their long-standing insistence that Western countries supporting their war effort should scrap restrictions on what Ukraine is allowed to target inside Russia with long-range weapons they have provided.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his pleas for Western allies to untie his hands in deciding what to strike on Russian soil.

“All our partners should be more active — much more active — in countering Russian terror,” Zelenskyy said late Wednesday. “We continue to insist that their determination now — lifting the restrictions on long-range strikes for Ukraine now — will help us to end the war as soon as possible in a fair way for Ukraine and the world as a whole.”

The European Union’s top diplomat on Thursday backed Zelenskyy’s push for international backers to end their limits.

Ukraine has deployed domestically produced drones to strike Russia.

The Russian military said Thursday it had thwarted an overnight attack on Crimea. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces destroyed three Ukrainian sea drones aimed at the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev added that four Ukrainian aerial drones and three sea drones were destroyed “at a significant distance” from the peninsula’s shore.

In the meantime, Ukraine’s Army General Staff acknowledged Thursday Ukraine’s involvement in strikes this week on oil depots deep inside Russia, where blazes broke out.

The attacks in the Rostov and Kirov regions were part of Ukraine’s effort to disrupt logistical infrastructure supporting Russia’s war machine.

(AP)