yeah. well, this morning, president biden and defense secretary lloyd austin are offering their condolences to the families of three marine base killed in an osprey aircraft accident in australia. president biden writing, jill and i send our deepest condolences to the families of the marine base that lost their lives in this deadly crash. we are praying for those who also suffered injuries. the u.s. military says 23 u.s. marine base were flying in an mv-22b osprey when it crashed. rescue crews worked together to transport the injured from a remote island to a hospital in the northern part of the country. five marines were seriously injured. the cause of that accident is being investigated. on friday, three ukrainian pilots died in a plane crash about 90 miles west of kyiv during a combat mission there. one of those pilots was andrey pilshchykov who went by the call sign juice. that is what he was famous for. he told cnn that his friends
Three Ukrainian pilots, including a well-known pilot who went by the call sign “Juice,” have died in a plane crash, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday.
their identities were concealed at the time for security reasons. i talked to juice when they came to the u.s. to push for fighter jets and advanced air defense systems. here s part of that conversation. all i need is to defend our cities against this threat. unfortunately, russians are taking not only the military bases, the military objects, but also civilian infrastructure. we need to save much more lives, much more objects of our civilian and military infrastructure. that s why we need to have the ability to do this, quite a difficult mission from the ground and from the air. using good radars and good missiles. and ukrainian air force says the pilots died at least the initial report is that they may have died during a combat mission. officials said the loss of each soldier is a huge loss for the whole country, and i have to say a personal note, getting to meet
Defense Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov said that with each new combat mission, Ukrainian combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and naval drones become "more accurate, operators more experienced, combat coordination more effective."
attack. in fact, we ve heard from the secretary of ukraine s national security and defense counsel in the last few hours. he s commented on these attacks. he says they re more accurate and their operators with each combat mission are becoming more experienced. the focus for the ukrainian armed forces is to expand the scale and the range of their targeting of russian positions, both in the black sea and on land. they want to expand on the scale and level of severity of those russian forces. that is certainly what we ve seen on the attacks not only in the black sea but the russian ports. it s around occupied crimea and moscow in the last few days. nada bashir with us live from london. thank you so much. all right. to niger now where they re warning of retaliation if other