Ukraine says it hit 2 prized Russian command aircraft in just one day

• Ukraine said it hit a Russian A-50 and Ilyushin Il-22 on Sunday.
• Russia only has a few of each prized aircraft, which serve as command planes.
• Ukraine's air defenses have stopped Russia's air force from playing a bigger role in the war.

Ukraine said it hit two Russian command aircraft in a single day over the weekend.

Sources in Ukraine's military intelligence agency, HUR, told the Kyiv Post that a Russian A-50 radar early-warning plane and Ilyushin Il-22 airborne command post had both been hit on Sunday.

The claim came after reports in Ukrainian media that an A-50 was downed over Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region shortly after it took off, with an Ilyushin Il-22 damaged in the same attack and forced to make an emergency landing, the report said.

Ukraine's claim has not been independently verified.

The A-50 is able to locate enemy planes at long distances and can also act as a mobile command-and-control center that can direct Russia's air strikes and other attacks.

In total, Russia has only nine of the aircraft, Forbes reported.

Meanwhile, Russia has heavily relied on the Ilyushin Il-22, a special-mission aircraft, during its invasion of Ukraine, as Business Insider's Jake Epstein previously reported.

The UK Ministry of Defence said in June that Russia only has a small fleet of the aircraft but considers them "high-value assets" because they can fly securely in Russian airspace where they are out of reach of Ukraine's air defenses.

It is unclear what weapons Ukraine used in Sunday's attacks. The HUR sources said they would not comment on how the attack was carried out.

Russia has already lost some of these aircraft since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Even though Russia had tried to keep its Ilyushin Il-22s far enough away that they could not be hit by Ukraine, an Ilyushin Il-22M was shot down by Russian mercenary Wagner Group during its short-lived uprising last year.

And opposition activists in Belarus said they destroyed a Russian A-50 in their country last February.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia release figures for how many of their aircraft have been destroyed, and no fully verified figures exist.

But Ukraine has destroyed multiple Russian aircraft in the conflict. Some of those have been destroyed while they sat on airfields on Russian soil.

Russia has a significantly larger fleet than Ukraine, but both sides have powerful air defense systems, meaning aircraft have often stayed away from the front lines.

Even so, Ukraine is warning that it needs to boost its air defense arsenal to stop Russian aircraft and the drones and missiles that have hit its towns and cities.