The first Russian soldier to destroy one of the US-made F-16 fighter jets that Western nations are about to hand to Kiev, will receive a substantial reward, the private company Fores has announced.
The manufacturer of ceramic proppants has previously paid out bounties for Western equipment taken out by the Russian military.
The US, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and Netherlands have pledged to provide the Ukrainian military with at least 60 F-16s by the end of this year. In early July, the Dutch government announced that the transfer of the first jets out of a batch of 24 was imminent.
“There will be a reward for destroying the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets,” the Fores deputy CEO, Ilya Potanin, said in a video published by the Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday. The bounty for the first downed aircraft will amount to 15 million rubles ($170,000), the executive stated, adding that such plans were confirmed by his company CEO at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) earlier this summer.
Ukraine claims that it needs F-16s to defend against Russian long-range missiles and to challenge Moscow’s air superiority over the frontline.
Moscow has said F-16s will not change the outcome of the conflict, just as other Western weapons provided to Kiev have failed to do. The Russian military will destroy the planes as it has done with other Ukrainian hardware, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this year.
A decision by Washington and its allies to supply Ukraine with Western-made heavy armor in early 2023, including the US-made Abrams and German-made Leopard tanks, prompted Russian businesses and officials to place bounties on such equipment, captured or destroyed on the frontline.
According to Potanin, Fores has paid out similar bounties on seven occasions. The last time, the firm paid out rewards to Russian soldiers and officers from various units, including artillery and drone warfare, for destroying “some 17 Abrams and Leopards.” The servicemen received 500,000 rubles ($5641) for each such piece of equipment, according to the Fores deputy CEO.
The soldiers and officers that were also filmed by the Defense Ministry while getting their rewards said that the Western heavy equipment pieces were just “regular” targets for them. They also said the money they received would be spent on new equipment that would make them even more effective on the battlefield.
In March, Russian soldiers recorded a video, in which one of them mockingly thanked US President Joe Biden for supplying Kiev with Abrams tanks and giving the Russian troops an opportunity to earn some extra cash by destroying them. The man also asked Biden to send even more such heavy armor pieces to Ukraine, adding that there are currently not enough for each Russian servicemen to get their bonus.