Whatever Happened to the Ghost of Kyiv? (Part 5) Moonfish and the Legacy of the Ukrainian Viper Pilot
Lt. Col Olemski Mes in California before flying the F-15
While writing the legend of the Ghost of Kyiv, I had to imagine how a single Mig-29 would have any chance of taking down more advanced fighters with only semi-active radar missiles and a radar with a worse detection range than a disabled bat with no sonar ability. My solution was to pretend the Ukrainians had some sort of primitive datalink which could be programmed onto an iPad or some cheap device. If you are not familiar with a datalink, think of a sort of encrypted internet for the sky, with agreed upon symbols to track the location of both friendly and enemy aircraft.
The United States Military uses a datalink called LINK-16 (Often called JTIDS in some circles). For the longest time, the Navy was the oddball, using a much older datalink called LINK 11. Nowadays the Navy uses LINK 22 – a more secure link designed for maritime operations. I digress. Why am I giving an info-dump on tactical data links when this is supposed to be the final entry of my Ghost of Kyiv series?
Ukraine has command and control deconfliction issues. In the first few days of the war, one of the nation’s best pilots Oleksandr “Grey Wolf” Oksanchenko was shot down in his SU-27 over Kyiv by friendly fire. Therefore, explaining this problem to someone in the Ukrainian Air Force would be like telling them water is wet. Yet you, my meager audience of readers, need to understand the challenges of integrating an Air Force with Soviet and NATO technology, and then trying to fight a war at less than 2000 feet with fighter aircraft. It might have cost one Ukraine’s best pilots his life. If Ukraine had Link 16, Oleksiy Mes might still be with us.
Lilia Averyanova accepts a flag in memoriam of her son Andrii
I would like to help you get to know Moonfish a little better like I did for Juice and Major Tarabalka, but there isn’t a lot out there on this fine young pilot unless you pair him with Juice. I hope to change this with an interaction with a new source someday soon. I would like to tell you how he got his callsign, but asking a pilot that question is a bit like asking a woman her age. You just don’t do it. What I can tell you is that Moonfish loved to fly like all the others, and that he had reached the rank of Lt. Colonel at only the age of 30. He grew up in Shepetivka, Ukraine. This town is West of Kyiv, and has a rich history. In addition to the usual nations trying to claim ownership of Ukraine, this area has also periodically been part of Poland. And then while in school the young Oleksiy Mes became fast friends with one Andrii Pishchykov. That’s right. Juice and Moonfish were brothers and wingmen from the very start.
Because they were so close, a few tidbits about Moonfish actually come from Andrii’s mother, Lilia Averyanova. She describes Oleksiy as the responsible eldest sibling of a large family, and the hard working grandson of a beekeeper. The “salt of the earth”.
When Juice went down in training, Moonfish never had time to manage his grief. In addition to flying and fighting in the first few days of the war, they had been successful ambassadors for bringing the F-16 to Ukraine. They had faced politicians wary of Putin’s nuclear threats and the growing distrust of a public being fed misinformation and Russian propaganda. The day before Moonfish took off an did not return, he sent a letter to his dear friend’s mother, writing:
"I was very lucky to be friends with Andriy. It is hard to remember this day, a year ago we all lost a lot. I hope he is looking at us and is proud of what we are doing. I hope we are not letting him down. I still miss having him around to talk to and get advice. May he rest in peace. Our sincere condolences." (Ivanytska, 2024)
While Juice would never get to drive the Viper, Moonfish had the privilege of becoming one of the first. He completed the training in a little under six months. Because of his crash, some criticize the training for being too fast, but pilots from the Ukraine and the California national guard could attest to his skill.
Lilia, Juice’s mother, sits in the aircraft her son never got to fly for Ukraine.
We should dismiss hostile fire immediately. If Russia had known a Viper had gone down, they would have claimed immediate victory. However, Russian propaganda channels were silent until several days later when controversy erupted. Some Russian media eventually claimed an S-400 guided by an SA-21 Weapons system made the kill, and I have encountered that argument online in a few different fighter pilot blogs. Keep in mind cruise missiles skim the surface at 500 feet or less, and would have been headed toward Ukrainian targets. Moonfish and his wingman would have been chasing at low altitude headed away from Russian radars most of the time. It is possible, but unlikely, that an SA-21 could have targeted Moonfish while he was searching for targets, but his awareness would have been very high in that situation.
While the Ukrainian Air Force was still investigating the cause of the crash, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Maryana Bezuhla, made the following post on Telegram. (Ukrainians tend to use telegram as one of their primary social media sources).
“According to my information, the F-16 piloted by Aleksey ‘Moonfish’ Mes was hit by a Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to discoordination between units.” (Durden, 2024)
Maryana Bezuhla is a member of Ukraine’s Permanent Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and headed the "Reform of the Armed Forces medical supply system" program in the Ministry of Defense. From a very limited amount of research on Wikipedia, she seems to have built her career in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) around reforming the military and its relationship with the people of Ukraine. Therefore, in my mind, we should take her word as sincere and informed but also coming from a place of general distrust for the military. As I have pointed out earlier in this blog, in Ukraine the military still has quite a bit of Soviet doctrine in place, to the point not even the pilots were willing to remain in the Air Force until their very families were threatened by Russia.
Of course, Russian media pounced on the news implied by her telegram post and triumphantly proclaimed the fratricide as fact. As a result, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk had to respond, presumably also on telegram.
“No one was hiding anything and is not hiding anything!” He wrote. “The entire top management immediately received a report on the crash. Our partners from the United States also received a preliminary report and have already joined the investigation.” (Ivanytska, 2024)
He went on to accuse Bezuhla of playing right into the hands of the Russian propaganda machine, writing “the whole of Russia applauds you.” Within hours of this response, Zelensky fired Oleshchuk from his position and replaced him with Lieutenant General Anatolii Kryvonozhko. And this is where Ukrainian politics gets tricky. Was Zelensky protecting Bezuhla, who is a member of his same political party? Or did he make the move because an F-16 had gone down and he could not afford the distrust of the military Bezuhla might cause? A few facts to consider: First, Zelensky awarded General Oleshchuk “Hero of Ukraine” for his command of the Air Force in the opening days of the invasion. Second, a month after this incident, Parliament unanimously voted to remove Maryana Bezuhla from her position of deputy chair of the National Security Committee. It seems that, unlike in the United States, there are at least some consequences in Ukraine for posting confidential or classified information on social media.
A F-16 “Viper” splashes a drone
Despite all the controversy, there is a real chance Moonfish fell victim to a patriot missile fired by his own nation. A classified investigation would reveal a timeline of all patriots fired and if any could have potentially hit Moonfish’s jet. If they could rule out a patriot based on firing logs, then they would have announced this by now to discredit Russian media. I agree with experts who hypothesize Moonfish fell victim to debris from his own destroyed target. Several Ukrainian pilots, including Karaya have had this misfortune already. Ideally, you want to shoot a cruise missile or drone from a distance above the target, but in their desperation to protect civilians, the Ukrainian aces often have no choice but to pursue co-altitude, especially with Russian SAMS hunting them. I do not have a bad example, but I do have an example of a safe shot from a Mirage 2000. Notice how the pilot makes the shot from well above. This deconflicts the debris. A cruise missile or drone is a slow target and very dangerous to engage head on.
Regardless of what brought him down, fratricide or debris, a proper nationwide command and control network with Link 16 might save the lives of pilots in the future. As of this article, a second F-16 was lost in a similar scenario – chasing cruise missiles. This time, Russia was ready to claim victory. By all accounts, we can assume Captain Pavlo Ivanov was trying to defend Sumy when he went down. A Russian SAM is out of the question, but it is possible an SU-35 might have scored a long-range look-down shoot down shot.
Despite this possibility, given the odds of running into missile or drone debris with no choice but to stay low to engage threats, I think it is clear the biggest threat to a Viper pilot in these engagements is debris and sage angle of attack.
For two years people have been hoping the F-16 would help turn the tide, but what we are seeing is not only are the numbers not favoring the Viper’s capability for Air-to-Air engagement, but its clear command and control is lacking cohesiveness. Ukraine’s meager fleet of Vipers has Link 16. But not their GCI (Grund control intercept), Not their French Mirage 2000s, and not their patriots. This is why it was such a big deal when the Trump administration cut off intelligence from Ukraine. It’s not a bargaining chip like a tariff. It costs lives. Despite this, Ukrainians have been knocking as much as 70 percent of missiles and drones out of the sky.
The Ukrainian version of the missing man salute uses two aircraft in shadow
We need to be all in on Ukraine. We could easily help them be set up with NATOS command and control structure. Ukraine has long accepted foreign warriors into their ranks. They could easily accept foreign fighter pilots, maintainers, and more volunteers to help them set up a command-and-control system which works. In order for them to do so, we would need to be prepare for Russia’s response. They would call them mercenaries. They might even call them actors. Moonfish and Juice would call them heroes, just like the RAF pilots did for the Americans who joined them during the Battle of Britain in 1940.
Victory in the air means victory for Ukraine. If we really want to prevent atrocities like Sumy its not going to be by asking Russia to play fair. We need to play unfair and send them everything we can. Moonfish didn’t blink as he shot down three cruise missiles and a drone that day, and we can’t blink when Putin rattles his nuclear saber. We all need to be Ghosts of Kyiv.
Works Cited:
1. Durden, Tyler (30 August 2024). ZeroHedge. Friendly Fire Fiasco: Ukrainian Army Shoots Down Its Own F16 Jet, Pilot Killed | Retrieved 16 April 2025.
2. Ivanytska, Oksana (31 August 2024). HRO Public. 'Lord, anything but Mes'. In memory of Moonfish, fallen F-16 pilot Retrieved 16 April 2025.
