A Belarusian Yak-130 combat trainer invaded Ukraine, but then "backed off." All the details

On the afternoon of September 24, a Belarusian combat training aircraft entered Ukrainian airspace in Zhytomyr region, heading south. An air alert was declared in Kyiv and the region, but in less than 20 minutes the fighter jet "backed off."

The Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported an object in the sky over Ukraine at 14:28. "An air target (not high-speed) on the border of Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions, crossed the state border from the territory of Belarus, heading south," the report said.

The Belaruski Gayun monitoring channel reported that the target crossed the Belarusian-Ukrainian border at about 14:28 and as of 14:34 was on the border of Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.

"Preliminarily, it is a Yak-130 combat training aircraft of the Belarusian Air Force. Information is being clarified," the channel reported.

According to Ukrainian monitoring channels, the Yak-130 crossed the border near the village of Dyatlyk, Narovlya district, Gomel region, Belarus.

As of 2:46 p.m., the Ukrainian Air Force announced that the threat from the Belarusian Yak had been averted.

Monitoring channels reported that as of 14:42, the target was no longer visible.

"We got scared. We don't know what it is if we knew what it was, but we don't," Mykolaiv Vanek wrote.

What is known about the Yak-130 aircraft

The Yak-130 is a Russian combat trainer developed by the Yakovlev Design Bureau in cooperation with Alenia Aermacchi (Italy) and with the support of Motor Sich (Ukraine) to replace the L-39 Albatross trainers in the Russian Air Force.

This is the first completely new (not a modernized version of an existing model) aircraft built in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.

It made its first flight in 1996. The Yak-130 is designed to train flight school cadets: takeoff and landing, piloting, navigation, complex maneuvers, training in offensive and defensive maneuvers typical of 4th and 5th generation aircraft, etc.

Belarus received the first batch of Yak-130s in 2015 under a contract with the Irkut Research and Production Corporation.

As of 2021, Belarus had three such fighters, one of which crashed in May 2021.

As OBOZ.UA wrote, Ukrainians on social media reacted to the infiltration of a Belarusian plane into Ukraine with jokes and memes. Some even jokingly suggested that dictator Alexander Lukashenko could have been on board. At the same time, it is known that large-scale exercises involving army and tactical aviation are currently underway in Belarus.

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