A 61-Year-Old Ukrainian Bomber Pilot Came Out Of Retirement To Fight The Russians—And Died Liberating Snake Island

Mykhailo Matyushenko flew for the Soviet air force in Afghanistan in the 1980s. When Ukraine split from the Soviet Union in 1991, Matyushenko—a native of Kharkiv—joined the new Ukrainian air force.

Thirty-one years later on June 26, the 61-year-old Matyushenko and his co-pilot—flying a Sukhoi Su-24 supersonic bomber—disappeared near Snake Island in the western Black Sea during the final stages of the monthslong battle that ended with Ukrainian forces ejecting Russian troops from the strategic island.

Romanian fishermen later discovered Matyushenko’s body. Now Ukrainians finally can mourn his loss. “He was always there where there was the greatest need, because he had good training, education and coolness,” Starkon City wrote in its obituary.

Matyushenko’s story is an inspiration to millions of Ukrainians. It’s also a window into the wartime struggles of the 7th Bomber Regiment, the Ukrainian air force’s sole Su-24 unit.

The regiment, operating from Starokostiantyniv air base in western Ukraine, has lost in combat at least as many bombers as it had before the war—and has survived by restoring old, once-unflyable airframes and recruiting aging former pilots such as Matyushenko.

Matyushenko was retired from the military when, in 2014, Russian forces invaded Ukraine—first seizing the Crimean Peninsula then rolling into eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Matyushenko joined the war effort as a civilian flight instructor attached to the 40th Aviation Brigade, a Mikoyan MiG-29 unit in Vasylkiv, near Kyiv.

As a former test pilot, Matyushenko had qualified on as many as 10 different plane types including the Aero L-39 trainer, the MiG-29 and the Sukhoi Su-24M bomber.

Matyushenko by all accounts was a highly skilled pilot. During one desperate, defensive sortie, he reportedly flew a subsonic L-39 so aggressively that Russian pilots mistook the trainer for a supersonic MiG—and broke off their attack.

While Matyushenko was training MiG pilots for the 40th Aviation Brigade, the 7th Bomber Regiment was flying sorties across every front of the war—and getting dismantled.

The regiment went to war with between a dozen and 16 active Su-24Ms plus a handful of Su-24MR reconnaissance jets. It so far has lost 12 bombers and one recon jet—and at least 16 pilots and co-pilots—that outside analysts can confirm.

The losses could have erased the 7th Bomber Regiment from existence. But the Ukrainian air force inherited around 200 Su-24s from the Soviet air force—and placed scores of derelict Su-24 airframes in open storage at bases across Ukraine, in particular the aircraft boneyard in Bila Tserkva, near Kyiv.

As of February, there were as many as 50 retired Su-24s that, with varying degrees of repair, could return to active status with the 7th Bomber Regiment.

That’s … a lot of bombers. Potentially more bombers than the regiment has crews for. Matyushenko recognized the problem. “Knowing about the brigade’s losses in Starokostiantyniv, [Matyushenko ]decided not to just sit around like that, but to fly here,” another 7th Bomber Regiment aviator told Starkon City.

Shortly after joining the Su-24 unit this spring, Matyushenko took part in the escalating fight over Snake Island, a treeless, 570-acre rock that lies astride the main shipping lane between the Bosphorous Strait and Odesa.

Whoever controls the island, which legally is part of Ukraine, can impede—or protect—cargo ships carrying Ukrainian grain to the global market. Russian forces led by the missile cruiser Moskva, then the most powerful air-defense ship in the Black Sea Fleet, bombarded and seized the island on the first full day of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine on Feb. 24.

On April 13, a Ukrainian navy battery armed with locally made Neptune anti-ship missiles holed and sank Moskva. The cruiser’s sinking compelled Black Sea Fleet commanders to pull their three frigates farther from the Ukrainian coast lest they also catch a Neptune or two.

That was a virtual invitation to the Ukrainian navy’s missile-armed Bayraktar TB-2 drones to assault Snake Island. In a heady 10 days, the drones destroyed the air-defenses on the island. The drones also sank as many as four Russian Raptor gunboats sailing around the island.

When the Russians sent in reinforcements—a Raptor escorting a landing craft hauling a spare air-defense launcher—the drones blew up the landing craft and destroyed the launcher. Another TB-2 strike destroyed a Russian Mil Mi-8 helicopter while it was offloading troops.

The fight escalated on May 7. As a TB-2 watched, a pair of Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-27 fighters streaked low over the island, dropping unguided bombs. Whatever Russian forces were left on the island after the drones did their work, the Su-27s apparently damaged.

Even after losing Moskva and several smaller vessels, the Black Sea Fleet still managed to ship a fresh Tor air-defense system to Snake Island. But sustaining the island garrison was growing riskier for the Russians.

On June 17, a Ukrainian Harpoon anti-ship missile—likely an ex-Danish example—sank the auxiliary Spasatel Vasily Bekh, apparently while the vessel was making a run to Snake Island. The Ukrainian army meanwhile positioned its sole 2322 long-range howitzer on the Black Sea coast and began bombarding the island.

The writing was on the wall for the Russians on the island. But the battle wasn’t over. It’s unclear exactly what Matyushenko’s target was when he took off in his Su-24M on June 26. It also is unclear whether he struck the target before his bomber plunged into the Black Sea, apparently shot down by Russian air-defenses.

Four days later, the Kremlin ordered the surviving troops on Snake Island to evacuate. The Russians tried to spin their defeat on Snake Island as a sign of their magnanimity. “On June 30, in a goodwill move, Russia’s armed forces completed their tasks on Snake Island and withdrew the garrison stationed there,” Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov stated.

Matyushenko and his co-pilot may have been the final Ukrainian casualties of the Snake Island campaign—and part of the price of Ukraine’s victory in the western Black Sea.

Losing Matyushenko was a blow to the 7th Bomber Regiment. The unit clearly is struggling to fill the cockpits of the formerly-derelict Su-24s it’s been restoring to active flight status. If a 61-year-old veteran of the Soviet Afghanistan war felt compelled to join the regiment, it’s safe to assume there aren’t many younger former Su-24 drivers left.