So yeah, I’m stuck in the cold war mentality. Clearly. Because I got chills up my spine when I saw these fighter jets flying overhead, outside our Kiev home.

What happened was…

I’m doing some work on my computer, sitting in my well-broken in chair, and I hear a jet echoing through the open balcony windows. It was a fairly familiar sound … you know, something along the lines of a commercial Airbus or Boeing that flies people all over the world, every day of the year. What’s strange about it is that there really isn’t all that much air traffic (plenty of ground traffic) in Ukraine, and so it’s quite infrequent (as opposed to the USA, where it occurs every few minutes) that we even see any kind of aircraft in the skies above.

That reminds me though, I captured this sweet pic of a helicopter flying around our dacha:

helicopter

Back to my bomber story… This time, however, I heard the big jet approach quite quickly. It was close, and low. I’m not sure how close, but it was very close. It was unusually loud, and (presumably) immediately overhead. I couldn’t see it, but there was a GIGANTIC and FOCUSED shadow on the apartment building across the street — so I know it was low and close. “Whatever,” I uttered to myself — and I went back to my laptop. Even if I ran outside, it wouldn’t be fast enough to catch a glimpse of it. Foreshadowing my own story, I think it could have been this beast. An An-124 Transport.

The next think I know, I see 4 fighter jets flying in formation. These were significantly higher (I think), but in retrospect, perhaps they were at the same altitude, and serving as an escort. But then, another set of 4 fighters. They were close enough, and clear enough, that I recognized the MiG fighters from my Cold War experiences. This definitely was unusual.

And then again… 2 more fighters. This time, I whipped out my camera and snapped a pic of one of them:

Su-27

After some detective work, I realized that, thankfully, these birds had the markings of Ukrainian Air Force jets. I think you’ll agree. Furthermore, they aren’t MiGs, they are Su-27′s. Well, at least the latter 2 jets were Su-27′s — I think some of the others may have been true MiGs. That my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

The Russians don’t seem to be extending their Georgian campaign into Ukraine… YET!!!! So, no reason to panic, Mom!