Footage appears to show a helicopter being shot down in Russia, amid claims that multiple military aircraft have been downed in Bryansk, in what would mark a humilitating blow for Moscow.
Five houses were damaged and a civilian was hospitalised as a result of the helicopter crash, said the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders northeastern Ukraine, after social media footage showed an aircraft bursting into flame and plummeting to the ground on Saturday.
Shortly afterwards, state-backed Russian news agency Tass reported that an Su-34 fighter-bomber had also crashed in Bryansk, citing a source in the emergency services.
While the fate of those onboard was unknown, Tass reported that two crew members had died in the earlier crash near Klintsy – some 30 miles from Ukraine’s border – and identified the helicopter as an Mi-8.
Doubling Russia’s potential losses once more, Kommersant – a leading Russian newspaper owned by Vladimir Putin ally Alisher Usmanov – later reported that a second Mi-8 helicopter and an Su-35 fighter jet had also been “shot down almost simultaneously” in Bryansk alongside the first two aircraft.
The aircraft were all part of the same air raid group tasked with bombing targets in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, and the pilots of all four vehicles were killed, the newspaper claimed.
While Russian regional authorities confirmed only the first helicopter crash, with the fate of the other aircraft impossible to verify, similar claims also circulated on pro-Russian Telegram channels, alongside footage purporting to show the fall of the Su-34 fighter-bomber.
Russia has hundreds of Mi-8 helicopters in its arsenal, which are used for a wide range of military and civilian purposes.
However, the popular pro-Russian Telegram channel Military Informant was among several bloggers and analysts claiming the helicopters may have been Russia’s newly deployed Mi-8 MTPR-1 models, which are fitted with technology intended to jam Ukraine’s air defence and missile systems.
Moscow is reported to have only around 20 of the helicopters, and their potential involvement sparked speculation among pro-Russian and western analysts that they may have been intended to provide cover for the two fighter jets during their reported sortie into Ukraine.
While the fate of the aircraft remains unclear, it was speculated that they could have been mistakenly shot down by Russian air defences or by Ukraine.
Such losses would amount to the “worst day for the Russian military aviation since the first week of the war, when Moscow assumed that it had destroyed Ukrainian air defences,” suggested Wall Street Journal correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov.
As is typical, Ukraine did not officially respond to the reports, but presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted: “An air group of two SU fighter jets (34 and 35) and two support helicopters flew over the Bryansk region to launch a “missile-bomb attack” (officially) on the civilian population of Chernihiv region in Ukraine.
“ The air group was destroyed by ‘unidentified persons.’ Justice, as it is, and instant karma ... ‘Killers on wings’ were destroyed BEFORE the next crime would be committed...”
On the frontline of the war, Britain’s Ministry of Defence claimed that Russia’s forces had withdrawn “in bad order” from their positions on the southern flank of Bakhmut over the past four days.
