Pro-Ukraine group claims it helped hack Russian drone air defense system, shooting down Su-57 in friendly fire incident — Moscow confirms fifth-generation fighter jet crashed in ‘technical malfunction’

A Pro-Ukraine group claims it helped facilitate a cyberattack on a Russian BARS drone defense system near Moscow, resulting in the shooting down of an advanced Russian fighter jet. The Su-57 stealth fighter crashed spectacularly “during a routine training mission in the Moscow region on Thursday,” say reports published by Russian state media. The pilot ejected safely, and the jet smashed into an uninhabited area. However, what the Russians are characterizing as an accident due to “a technical malfunction,” some Ukrainian open-source intelligence (OSINT) agencies are claiming as successful sabotage.

Russian accident or Ukrainian scalp?

Above you can see that InformNapalm, a well‑known Ukrainian volunteer intelligence collective, claims that the Su-57 was “shot down” by the Russian ‘BARS Moscow’ air defense system. That would indeed be a kind of technical malfunction, as the Russians admit, but InformNapalm says that Ukrainian cyber specialists turned Moscow’s anti-drone shield against the Russian jet. Specifically, in this instance, the Russian anti-drone system shot down the confirmed crashed Su-57 stealth fighter.

The explosive-if-true claim from Ukrainian OSINT comes with a background story. InformNapalm says that it shared “secret documents from the Russian manufacturer of components for this aircraft’s systems” last year. These were acquired and leaked by HUMINT and CYBINT operations backed by Ukrainian intelligence services. Additionally, the Ukrainians mounted a combined cognitive and cyber influence operation that affected the operation of the BARS Moscow air defense unit. The purported result was that the drone defense unit set up around Moscow in June shot down the Su-57.

InformNapalm attempts to add veracity to its claims by sharing some less sensitive but still relevant evidence of espionage. The video embedded in the Tweet (above) is purported to be footage from a training range where Russia’s BARS Moscow crews were in training to counter Ukraine’s long-range drones. There’s also an intelligence brief excerpt mentioning Russian hardware, software, combat algorithms, and system vulnerabilities.

Russia is thought to only have a handful of these advanced Su-57 aircraft, which can launch Kh-59 and Kh-69 missiles, so efforts put into sabotaging them are high among Ukrainian military priorities. Ukraine has previously targeted and claimed successful strikes against Su-57s sitting on the ground at Akhtubinsk airfield (2024), and Shagol airfield (May this year).