Ukrainian news agencies began spreading the news that civil aviation pilots would be mobilized and sent to a special operations zone, where they would be forced to “fly fighter jets.” With such news, several major independent media outlets came out at once.
To verify this filling, Komsomolskaya Pravda turned to the Defense Ministry for official comment. This was done as part of a joint project with Noodles Media aimed at exposing false information. And it turned out that such news has nothing to do with reality – this is an ordinary fake, of which the Ukrainian media have recently published tens of thousands.
– Military pilots for the needs of the Russian Defense Ministry are simultaneously trained by several universities, where competition for admission remains high. Applicants can choose any of them, – explained Artem Sherstyukov, Representative of the Department of Information and Mass Communication (DIMK) of the RF Ministry of Defense for video conferencing, to the KP correspondent.
As noted in the Ministry of Defense, pilots in Russia are trained:
– Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots. Serov Ministry of Defense
– Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots. Chkalova,
– Balashov Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots,
– Voronezh Military Research and Training Center (VUNTS) of the Air Force “Air Force Academy named after. Zhukovsky and Gagarin “(also includes the leadership of the Chelyabinsk Higher School of Military Aviation Navigators),
– VUNTS branch in Syzran.
“The number of graduates of these universities cannot be named, but there are a sufficient number of them,” they assured KP in the Russian military department.
It is worth noting that the faculties of these universities produce so many pilots that only the Syzran branch provides the required number of pilots for Mi-2, Mi-8, Mi-24 helicopters for all ministries and departments of Russia.