On the morning of Monday, October 21, 2024, the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported on the episode that happened with the pilot of the russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber Dmitriy Golenkov - the war criminal in the position of squadron chief of staff - he was found in an apple orchard with multiple head injuries, probably caused by hammer.
The liquidated pilot of strategic aviation of the russian Aerospace Force was responsible, in particular, for striking a shopping and entertainment center in Kremenchuk on June 27, 2022 and a residential building in Dnipro on January 14, 2023. Therefore, this event can be considered an important precedent.
Read more: Tu-22M3 Long-Range Strategic Bomber Crashed in russia (Video)
Against this background, it will be logical to find out how many pilots of strategic aviation there can be in the russian federation, and how easy the task of finding and punishing them looks.
According to The Military Balance 2024, at the beginning of this year the russians had the following fleet of strategic aviation:
• 13 Tu-160 bombers - 4 crew members each;
• 56 Tu-95MS bombers - 7 crew members each;
• 57 Tu-22M3 bombers - 4 crew members each;
• 24 MiG-31K aircraft carrying the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile - 2 crew members each.
In total, the figure is 720 members of the flight crew of the strategic aviation of the russian Aerospace Force, including crew members of specific types of aircraft:
- Tu-160 - 52;
- Tu-95MS – 392;
- Tu-22M3 – 228 and
- MiG-31K – 8 pilots.
It is also possible to make an amendment to the fact that the Ministry of Defense of Great Britain and the the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine stated approximate estimates, according to which only 40 bombers of the Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 types remained in the russian Aerospace Force. In this case, the approximate number of the strategic aviation of the aggressor country will be 540 people.
At the same time, the task of gathering the necessary data on these half a thousand war criminals in order to then bring them to justice seems difficult. This can be seen on the example of a study on the identification of the personnel of the russian air base Engels-2, which was made public by the Molfar OSINT agency in October 2023. At that time, the investigators managed to find only 73 employees of the Engels Air Base, and only 14 of them were pilots.
However, although it may look like a difficult task to identify all the criminals involved in the bombing of non-military objects on the territory of Ukraine, such a task is not impossible. Although some of these war criminals may hide their affiliation with the so-called military and space forces of the Russian Federation, traces of the use of modern means of communication and the activity of these persons in social networks may help Ukrainian investigators to find, and representatives of the Ukrainian special services to punish, all those who committed military crimes on the territory of Ukraine. This punishment is inevitable. The above-described example of the pilot of the Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber Dmitry Golenkov can testify to this.
Read more: How Many Tu-22M3 Strategic Bombers Left in russia and How Many Produced
