Su-27 Flanker (1995): The Russia–Ukraine Full-scale Conflict Before 2022

• 28 October 2025• Games & History

Content warning: This post contains references to events that resonate with the current war in Ukraine. If this is distressing to you, please consider skipping it. Friendly Fire, or Not So Friendly After All Back in 1995, the flight simulator Su-27 Flanker, developed by Russian studio Eagle Dynamics and published by Strategic Simulations, caused controversy

Content warning: This post contains references to events that resonate with the current war in Ukraine. If this is distressing to you, please consider skipping it.
Friendly Fire, or Not So Friendly After All
Back in 1995, the flight simulator Su-27 Flanker, developed by Russian studio Eagle Dynamics and published by Strategic Simulations, caused controversy due to its setting — a simulated military conflict between Russia and Ukraine on the Black Sea coast, particularly in Crimea.
As in The Battle for the Black Sea (1992), players were once again tasked with conducting air operations over the Crimean Peninsula. But this time, the game allowed players to choose sides — Russia or Ukraine.
In a 2014 interview with the Russian portal Old-Games.Ru, Igor Tishin, CEO of Eagle Dynamics and lead developer of the game, explained the rationale behind choosing Crimea as the main theater of war:

Interviewer: Why did you choose Crimea as the most suitable and interesting setting for military action? Were there alternatives (Caucasus, Kamchatka, Kurils, Kola Peninsula)?

Tishin: There were alternatives, but… we were all still processing the collapse of the Soviet Union and dreaming of future reunification. (Old-Games.Ru, October 12, 2014. Interview with Igor Tishin)

Not Everyone Was Dreaming of Reunification
This nostalgic framing did not sit well with everyone involved. One of the game’s consultants — test pilot Anatoly Kvochur, Hero of the Russian Federation and Honored Test Pilot — later publicly criticized the choice of setting. In a 1996 interview for Strana Igr journal (“The Land of Games”), he stated:

Interviewer: Why did the developers choose a Russian aircraft and set the battles in Russia and Ukraine?

Kvochur: It’s hard for me to say why they made that decision. It just happened that the Su-27 became quite popular internationally — it’s painted in the Russian flag, it flies well, does impressive tricks.

But regarding the choice to depict battles between Russia and Ukraine — I had no idea this was in the game. I was only involved in evaluating the flight dynamics, graphics, and other technical aspects. It came as an unpleasant surprise to me. In my view, this was a serious mistake on the part of the developers.

Interviewer: Do you plan to work again with Strategic Simulations on future simulators or a sequel to Su-27 Flanker?

Kvochur: […] I would only consider working with them again if they correct what I believe is a grave mistake — depicting combat between Russia and Ukraine. (Oksana Kuzmenko, “Su-27: A Professional’s Perspective,” Strana Igr, No. 2, March 1996, pp. 6–7.)

A Setting That Became Prophetic
With the benefit of hindsight, the decision to place a fictional war between Russia and Ukraine in Crimea now seems disturbingly prescient. While Su-27 Flanker was, on the surface, “just a simulator,” its ideological framing — allowing players to practice air combat over a politically contested territory — reflected deeper post-Soviet anxieties, Russian desires for reunification, and conflicting narratives of sovereignty.
As with other games of the 1990s and early 2000s, Su-27 Flanker occupies an uneasy space between technical realism, military fantasy, and ideological projection — a space that, in hindsight, anticipated real-world conflict in troubling ways.
←
Previous:
Smuta (2024): “Let Us Pawn Our Wives and Children” — Streamers React (in Russian)
→
Next:
The Battle for the Black Sea (1992): The Russia–Ukraine Full-scale Conflict Before 2022