Dramatic footage reportedly shows the moment a Russian colonel crashes in his helicopter after being hit with a Ukrainian missile.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sergey Gundorov, 51, was struck near Volnovakha in the Donbas.
The military helicopter flew on after being hit with a portable surface-to-air missile.
His stricken Mi-35 touched the ground before cartwheeling over a narrow strip of woodland and crashing in a fireball in a field.
Flames and black smoke are seen emanating from the explosion.
A second Russian helicopter is seen firing decoy flares and apparently escapes unscathed.
Gundorov is the 55th known Russian colonel to be killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war in Ukraine.
A Russian account on the death of the high-ranked pilot, first class, said: “Bright eternal memory to the Hero who left on his last flight.
“Pilots don't die, they fly into the sky…The best men are leaving us.”
He died after completing a “combat mission”, it was claimed.
Gundorov had previously won three Orders of Courage.
He died on June 16, but his loss is only now acknowledged.
Among condolences to the colonel, a married father of two, was a message from his teenage younger son Ilya saying simply: “Love you Dad.”
Family pictures show him with his sons and wife Anzhela.
His death follows the loss of two colonels announced on the same day last week — highly decorated Colonel Sergei Krasnikov, 56, who had volunteered to re-join the forces to go to war, and Colonel Sergei Postnov - in his 40s.
Putin has also lost at least 11 generals.
At the start of June, Putin was dealt a fresh blow as a colonel close to Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov was seriously wounded in a gun battle.
Lieutenant Colonel Mezhid Utsmigov was hit during a brutal battle - just after Kadyrov used Putin’s absence at the Kremlin to gain promises from Moscow that the war would proceed at a “faster pace”.
Colonel Utsmigov is deputy commander of a special forces regiment named after Kadyrov’s father and is close to Putin.
Kadyrov is a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin and has used his power to deploy troops to support the warmonger in his war in Ukraine.
Colonel Utsmigov and his forces were retreating from Ukrainian shelling in the Luhansk Region when he was hit in the leg and concussed, according to Ukrainian sources.
The soldier's defeat came soon after Kadyrov was boasting about winning a “faster pace” for the war following meetings in Moscow with Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov.
“We’ll make Russia ’s real patriots happy and may our enemies die,” he promised.
He continued: "The measures adopted will allow for increasing the efficacy of the offensive manoeuvres, which facilitates conducting the special operation at a faster pace."
Overall Russian losses are believed to be in excess of 30,000, with some estimates of nearer to 50,000.
