{"id":125367,"date":"2022-04-30T07:30:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-30T11:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=125367"},"modified":"2022-04-29T23:44:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T03:44:13","slug":"ghost-of-kyiv-reportedly-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=125367","title":{"rendered":"Ghost of Kyiv reportedly dead"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ghost of Kyiv<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We talked about the “Ghost of Kyiv”<\/a> before. News sources are reporting that the man hailed as a hero during the early days of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (and allegedly shot down six enemy aircraft in the first day of the war) has been brought down. Killed in action, he’s now being identified as Major Stepan Tarabalka.<\/p>\n

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Major Stepan Tarabalka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the NY Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The mysterious Ukrainian fighter pilot hailed as the \u201cGhost of Kyiv\u201d after reportedly shooting down dozens of Russian aircraft has been killed in battle, an outlet said Friday.<\/p>\n

The death of the much-celebrated enigmatic pilot was reported by The Times of London, which for the first time also publicly identified Major Stepan Tarabalka, a 29-year-old father of one, as the war hero.<\/p>\n

Tarabalka was credited with taking out as many as 40 Russian aircraft until he was himself shot down March 13 while battling an \u201coverwhelming\u201d number of enemy forces, the UK paper said.<\/p>\n

Tarabalka was posthumously awarded Ukraine\u2019s top medal for bravery in combat, the Order of the Golden Star, with the title Hero of Ukraine, according to his family.<\/p>\n

His helmet and goggles \u2014 all that was seen of him when Ukrainian officials promoted his heroism \u2014 are now set to be auctioned in London, sources told the UK Times while confirming Tarabalka\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

Tarabalka became a mysterious legend when the Ukrainian government credited the then-anonymous pilot with shooting down six Russian jets on the first day of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople call him the Ghost of Kyiv. And rightly so,\u201d the official tweet said, saying he had \u201calready become a nightmare for invading Russian aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s General Staff later tweeted another picture of the ace fighter pilot in the cockpit of his MiG-29 jet with his face covered, captioned, \u201cHello, occupier, I\u2019m coming for your soul!\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people questioned whether the \u201cGhost\u201d was real, as his identity remained a mystery \u2014 seemingly even to his grieving family when told of their loved one\u2019s death last month.<\/p>\n

His parents, Nahtalia and Evon Tarabalka, were interviewed by NPR soon after his death \u2014 and they gave no mention of his secret status nor any hint they knew what missions he had been on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know he was flying on a mission. And he completed the mission, his task. Then he didn\u2019t return. That\u2019s all the information we have,\u201d his dad told the outlet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The family relayed that Major Tarabalka has been posthumously honored with the Gold Star of the Hero of Ukraine, the country’s highest honor.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how many of these kills get confirmed. That they’re so quick to auction off his helmet has me questioning. If confirmed, his 40 kills would make Tarabalka the highest scoring fighter pilot since World War II, the highest scoring jet fighter ace, as well as the first ace in a day since the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and the first fighter ace of the 21st Century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talked about the “Ghost of Kyiv” before. News sources are reporting that the man hailed … Ghost of Kyiv reportedly dead<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,384,640],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}