mig

On screen, saving the USA from Soviet MiG jets was serious business.

Ivan, a 31-year-old Ukrainian fighter pilot, began defending the skies from the very first hours of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has now flown more than 200 perilous missions in his old Soviet-era Mig-29 warplane.

Before Estonia regained its independence in 1991, this had been a base for Soviet air defences, with MIG fighter planes poised to take on the West.

The air force said that Russia sent a salvo of nine missiles toward the Dnipro region, including an air-launched ballistic missile fired from a MIG-31 fighter and seven cruise missiles launched from strategic bombers.

The magazine dubbed him a “thrill seeker” in a 2020 profile, reporting that for fun, Mr Isaacman “bullets the MiG faster than the speed of sound and climbs mountains to unwind from non-stop, intense 80-plus-hour weeks”.