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The Ghost of Kyiv was a fighter pilot. In the early weeks of the Russian invasion, there was only one warrior in the aerial defense of the capital city.
The Ghost was jealous of the sky over Kyiv. He shot down 40 Russian warplanes before succumbing to enemy fire three weeks into the war.
The Times reported that The Ghost of Kyiv died in the cockpit of his MiG on March 14.
There is only one problem. The legend of the Ghost of Kyiv is not true. The Ukrainian air force admitted that it had once embraced the tale, but that it had been discredited by The Times.
The air force said that the information about the death of the Ghost of Kyiv is incorrect.
The air force said that the character of Ghost of Kyiv was created by Ukrainians.
The Ghost is an idea. Not a pilot named Tarabalka, who shot down twice as many planes as he could, can confirm that Moscow has lost more than two months of fighting.
Tarabalka was a real person at the time of his death. He did not shoot down any Russian planes. There is no evidence left after the air force's denials.
It isn't hard to prove warplane kills over Ukraine. The daytime shoot-down can be seen from the ground and recorded. Ukraine has tens of millions of cameras with easy access to social media.
It's not for no reason that open-source-intelligence analysts, such as the bloggers at Oryx, often find overlap in visual evidence to confirm the outcome of any observed aerial engagement. Evidence usually surfaces after a few weeks.
Rough counts are usually affirmed by periodic assessments by foreign powers. The loss of 16 Ukrainian fighters and attack planes, combined with non-catastrophic damage and wear and tear, could reduce Kyiv's 125-jet front-line fleet to around half as many flyable airframe.
An unnamed Pentagon official nodded to this likely rate of attrition when they told reporters that a recent influx of spare parts, aided by U.S. officials, allowed the Ukrainian air force to repair 20 grounded fighters.
There is no reason why unofficial tracking of Russia's aerial losses wouldn't be accurate.
The Russian air force has lost at least 24 fighters and attack planes. That is a minimum count. It is probably within 100 percent of the total.
There is no way that a Ukrainian pilot shot down 40 Russian planes. Hundreds of Kyiv's pilots have flown combat missions since Russia attacked.
The Ghost of Kyiv myth did not pass the smell test. Ukrainian sources began pointing to old official photos of pilots in cockpits as well as footage from video games and claimed they were proof of the Ghost's existence.
Air-to-air battles are very rare in the war over Ukraine. Ground-based air-defenses pose the greatest danger to aircraft on either side of a conflict. It has been 80 years since a single pilot racked up more than a few air-to-air kills.
Russia is losing a lot of planes, but not 40 in three weeks. Not to one pilot, shooting down enemy fliers at a rate of two a day. The numbers don't make sense.
The pilots of Kyiv have demonstrated incredible bravery by fighting their foe in their cockpits day after day. You don't have to create ghost pilots to celebrate.
The Ghost of Kyiv is no longer alive. He didn't exist in the first place.
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