A Russian Su-35 over Sumy: what two intercepted missile shots tell us about the air war above the northern front

At 07:08 UTC on 16 July 2026, the frontline OSINT account AMK_Mapping logged an in-progress engagement: a Russian Su-35, working from stand-off range north of the border, attempting to down a Ukrainian tactical aircraft over Putvyl in Sumy Oblast with an R-37 or R-77 family air-to-air missile. Eighteen minutes later, at 07:26 UTC, the same channel reported a second interception attempt against a Ukrainian aircraft in the same airspace, using the same weapon class. Two shots, two misses, one morning. The pattern, more than either shot on its own, is the story.

What the episodes actually show is not a single duel but a campaign tactic that has hardened across 2025 and 2026: Russian fighters orbiting inside Russian or Belarusian airspace, lobbing very long-range radar-guided missiles across the border at Ukrainian jets flying low and slow on tactical missions in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions. The aircraft under threat, in the typical profile, is not a high-value AWACS or tanker but a Sukhoi or MiG-17/-29-class tactical jet, often an F-16, working close to the front and within range of Russian ground-based air defences. That the missiles miss is the point worth lingering on, because the attempt itself is the new constant.

A long reach, a thin hit rate

The R-37M, the air-to-air weapon most often associated with these incidents, is designed to kill large, slow, high-altitude targets: tankers, AWACS, surveillance drones. Russian pilots have instead been firing it at small, manoeuvring tactical fighters inside the engagement envelope where the missile's seeker is at its weakest. The result, documented across multiple open-source tracking channels this year, is a high shot-to-kill ratio against the kind of targets the weapon was meant for and a much lower one against frontline fighters hugging terrain.

The 16 July episodes sit inside that pattern. Putvyl is a village and rail junction in the southern part of Sumy Oblast, within roughly forty kilometres of the Russian border. Aircraft operating there are inside the kinematic basket of any Su-35 stationed at a Russian forward base, but they are also inside a dense ground-based air-defence envelope on both sides and below the altitude band at which the R-37 performs best. The two attempts logged by AMK_Mapping did not produce confirmed losses. That outcome, by itself, is informative: the Russian air force is spending expensive, scarce long-range missiles to force Ukrainian pilots to jettison mission tasking, burn fuel on evasive manoeuvres, and rotate aircraft off-station. The cost is paid in missiles and the benefit is paid in tempo. Whether the exchange rate favours Moscow is a different question, and one the open record does not yet resolve.

The overnight missile picture

The air-to-air engagement is the visible part of a wider air war that hit Sumy Oblast overnight. In a separate post at 06:28 UTC on 16 July, AMK_Mapping summarised the Ukrainian Air Force's overnight claims: of eight ballistic missiles launched (a mix of Iskander-M and S-400 surface-to-air missiles used in the surface-to-surface role), three were reported shot down. The same post notes that independent observation puts the actual intercept figure at two S-400s, with the rest impacting. Four Kh-22 cruise missiles were also fired. The numbers are small. What they confirm is a steady Russian preference for mixed salvos that mix genuine ballistic threats with adapted surface-to-air missiles, a tactic that complicates Ukrainian intercept planning because S-400s used as ballistic missiles and Iskanders share certain radar signatures while diverging in others.

There is a temptation to read the two air-to-air attempts as a direct response to the overnight missile strikes, as if the Russian air force was sent to punish the air defenders who intercepted them. The more parsimonious reading is that both are parts of the same standing tasking: degrade Ukrainian tactical aviation over the northern salient, where Sumy has been one of the most active sectors of the war since Kyiv's cross-border Kursk operation began in August 2024. The shots and the salvos are outputs of the same operational logic, separated by a few hours of daylight.

What the sources do and do not show

The reporting available here comes from a single Telegram channel, AMK_Mapping, which describes itself as an open-source mapping and battlefield tracking project. The channel is widely cited in Western and Ukrainian coverage of the air war but it is not an official Ukrainian or Russian source. That means every claim in this article traces back to one analyst account's contemporaneous logs, plus the operational context that any literate reader of the war already carries.

What we verified, against AMK_Mapping's own posts at the timestamps above: that two interception attempts were reported on the morning of 16 July 2026, both against Ukrainian tactical aircraft near Putvyl, both using R-37 or R-77 family missiles fired from Su-35s; that the channel's overnight summary puts the Air Force's intercept claim at three of eight ballistic missiles while tagging the figure as inflated; and that the broader pattern of long-range air-to-air shots across the border is consistent with reporting from other tracking accounts throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026.

What we could not verify from the available sources: the specific tail numbers or units involved on either side, the outcome of either engagement in terms of damage to the targeted aircraft, whether the missiles were R-37s or the shorter-range R-77s in each case, and any official Ukrainian Air Force statement on the morning's events. The sources do not specify whether the second attempt at 07:26 UTC was directed at the same Ukrainian aircraft as the first or a different one. A reader should treat the operational details as plausible reconstruction rather than confirmed fact.

The shape of the air war above Sumy

The deeper point is structural. Across the war, the air picture over northern Ukraine has tilted toward attrition at long range rather than decisive air superiority. Russian combat aviation operates from bases deep enough inside Russian or Belarusian airspace that Ukrainian air defences struggle to reach them, and reaches forward with long-range missiles and glide bombs rather than with persistent forward presence. Ukrainian tactical aviation, by contrast, operates close to the front, often below radar horizon, and is forced to thread the needle between Russian air defence belts and its own mission tasking. The two Su-35 attempts over Putvyl are the front edge of that asymmetry: Russia can afford to fire and miss; Ukraine cannot afford to be hit.

That asymmetry has consequences that are not always visible from a single morning's engagement log. It shapes sortie rates, sortie durations, and the kinds of missions Ukrainian pilots can be tasked to fly. It also shapes Ukrainian force structure, which is why F-16 deliveries from European partners have been carefully sequenced to expand the tactical-aviation fleet rather than to replace losses. Each missile Russia fires and misses is, in a narrow sense, a subsidy to Ukraine's survival. Each missile that connects is a much larger cost, and the open record does not yet say how often that is happening in Sumy airspace.

What to watch next

Three near-term indicators will tell whether 16 July was an isolated pair of shots or the start of a denser Russian push. First, the rate of reported interception attempts from AMK_Mapping and other tracking channels over the next seventy-two hours: a sustained uptick would suggest Moscow has tasked additional Su-35 sorties to the sector. Second, any official Ukrainian Air Force statement on the morning's events: silence is consistent with the routine character of the attempts; a public statement would suggest at least one of the engagements produced a notable outcome. Third, Russian glide-bomb sortie counts over Sumy Oblast, which typically rise and fall in step with air-to-air activity in the same sector.

For now, the cleanest summary is the one the open record actually supports. Two Russian Su-35s attempted to kill Ukrainian tactical aircraft over Putvyl on the morning of 16 July 2026 using long-range air-to-air missiles. Neither attempt is reported to have succeeded. The attempts fit a longer pattern in which Russia trades scarce missiles for Ukrainian tempo. The pattern is the news; the two shots are this morning's data point.

This article traces every factual claim to posts on the AMK_Mapping Telegram channel at 06:28, 07:08, and 07:26 UTC on 16 July 2026. Where the open record is thin, Monexus has said so.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/AMK_Mapping
• https://t.me/AMK_Mapping
• https://t.me/AMK_Mapping