Pilot at Lviv Air Show Denies Guilt
Ava Hudson
Updated on April 07, 2026
"At the decisive moment, the plane became uncontrollable," Volodymyr Toponar said in comments to the UNIAN news agency, carried on Ukrainian STB television.
"It was completely unexpected," he said. "I fought the plane up to the last second to spare as many people as possible, and only thanks to Yegorov did we save our own lives."
Toponar and Yury Yegorov, his co-pilot, ejected and survived the crash. They remain hospitalized in stable condition.
It was the first public comment from either of the pilots since the July 27 tragedy. Doctors pronounced the pilots fit enough to answer investigators' questions Wednesday.
The decision whether to prosecute the pilots will be made only after they have fully recovered, a spokesperson from the prosecutor's office said Friday. Doctors said they expect Toponar to be released in a month while Yegorov needs two months to recover, Interfax reported.
Toponar's comments came after the chief investigator earlier in the week accused the pilots of ignoring their flight plan and attempting tricky, untested maneuvers that caused the plane to nick the ground, slice through a parked plane and cartwheel into the crowd at the air show in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Eighty-five people were killed and 156 others injured. Several are still hospitalized in serious condition.
"The pilots failed to follow the flight plan and performed four difficult maneuvers that they had not done before," Yevhen Marchuk, the chief investigator of the accident, said at a news conference.
Marchuk also blamed air force leaders for failing to order a change of course some 90 seconds after the plane veered from the flight path.
Toponar said he was following orders in flying over the crowds.
"The flight shouldn't have been performed over people, but the order was to fly where people were," Toponar told STB television.
Meanwhile, a military court in Lviv has ordered the flight's ground-control leader, Yury Yatsuk, jailed on charges of criminal negligence.
Judge Oleksandr Yaremenko said that Yatsuk should not even have led the exercise. "He was not experienced enough to lead Su-27s flying at low altitude in maneuvers requiring the highest level of piloting," the judge was quoted by Interfax as saying.
After the crash, President Leonid Kuchma sacked air force commander Volodymyr Strelnikov and other top air force commanders. Defense Minister Volodymyr Shkidchenko tendered his resignation, but Kuchma refused to accept it.
