Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade announced on Thursday that it downed a Russian Su-25 “Frogfoot” fighter in the Donbas, posting footage from what seems to be a video game.”We promised that the genocide of Russian ‘Sukhois’ would continue, we’re keeping the promise!” the brigade’s official Facebook account wrote in a caption for the clip.The brigade said its announcement marked the second Su-25 downed by antiaircraft guns on Thursday, with Ukrainian outlet Kyiv Independent reporting that this was the sixth such fighter reported destroyed by Ukraine in May.The video posted by the 110th shows two planes flying over a virtual grass field before the camera switches to a frontal view of the jet’s cockpit. The aircraft sustains damage and dives nose-first into the ground.Before impact, the clip switches to a blurry view of smoke rising above a field.The footage resembles gameplay from titles such as Arma 3, Digital Combat Simulator, or War Thunder, all of which feature the Su-25.Notably, footage from Arma 3 is often found in misinformation about active conflict zones, such as the war in Gaza. Recordings from the online multiplayer game have repeatedly been used to misrepresent battles in Ukraine.
But the 110th’s intention behind posting the clips is unclear, as the brigade neither claimed it was a video of live combat nor addressed it as virtual footage.On May 19, the same Facebook account announced that its forces had destroyed four Su-25s with a video of 3D-rendered jet models.The 110th Mechanized Brigade and press teams for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Armed Forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.Several pro-Russia social media accounts have seized on the clip as a means to throw doubt on Ukraine’s reports of casualties inflicted on Moscow’s assets and troops.”Official account of the 110th Mechanized Brigade posted another ‘alleged downing’ of a Su-25,” wrote one milblogger.Ukraine claimed on Thursday that it’s destroyed 355 Russian fixed-wing aircraft since the war began in February, a tally that hasn’t been verified by its allies. British intelligence said in April that it estimates Russia has lost at least 100 fixed-wing combat aircraft.Russian forces have been intensifying attacks on the frontline in recent weeks, with its Defense Ministry saying on Thursday that it captured the village of Andriivka in the Donbas.In the north, Moscow’s troops pushed weakened Ukrainian lines back from the border and carried out missile strikes on the city of Kharkiv, which CNN reported killed seven people on Thursday.Meanwhile, Kyiv has been receiving a renewed flow of military equipment from the US as part of a long-awaited tranche of $61 billion in aid, which Congress passed in April.
