To be honest, when I saw this news, my heart really couldn't calm down for a long time.
White Swan -160, from 2010 to 2013, it was my computer wallpaper. The stern white fuselage, elegant variable-sweep wings, and roaring twin-engine exhaust represent the last industrial romance of the Soviet Union, like a raptor soaring in the sky, embodying the power and aesthetics of the imperial twilight.
So what happened?
An American aircraft, with a dismantling fee of less than three million dollars, and Ukraine really took cutting machines and excavators to dismantle these dream machines one by one. It’s not because they can’t fight back, it’s a voluntary surrender; it’s not being defeated by the opponent, but being “persuaded” step by step by dollars and promises.
What truly breaks the heart is not the loss of the planes, but the possibility they symbolize, that Ukraine, which once had a triad nuclear deterrent, a top-tier military-industrial system, and could have been self-reliant, repeatedly discounts its future into an international promise and a little bit of pitiful dollars.
Southern Design Bureau, Motor Sich, Antonov… world-class missile, aviation engine, and transport aircraft industrial systems, the imperial legacy that the Soviet Union didn’t have time to fully dismantle, Ukraine is cleaning up by itself thoroughly.
The foundation left by the Soviet Union, if only one-tenth had been retained, Ukraine could walk tall today, but the reality is, why aren't you wearing a suit today?