Russian Military Mi-28 Helicopter Destroyed in Fatal Crash

A Russian Mi-28 combat helicopter crashed in the Western Kaluga region on Thursday, killing the crew, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"The helicopter crashed in an uninhabited area. There is no damage on the ground. The crew died," the department said, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. The aircraft crashed due to a technical malfunction, it added.

"A commission of the Russian Aerospace Forces is working at the site of the crash," the defense ministry added.

Regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said the helicopter crashed in Kaluga's Zhizdrinsky district. "A task force and rescuers are working on the crash site," he said on his Telegram channel.

The Zhizdrinsky district is located on the border of Russia's Kaluga and Bryansk regions. Aleksandr Barybin, the head of the district, told news agency Tass that the helicopter crashed in a forest area near the village of Klenki.

Publicly available figures indicate that Russia has lost a number of helicopters since President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine more than two years ago.

The Dutch open-source outlet Oryx said that, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, Russia has lost at least 138 helicopters, of which 106 were destroyed, 30 were damaged, and two were captured.

Meanwhile, figures published by Ukraine's General Staff on Thursday showed the total number of Russian helicopters destroyed since the war began stands at 326. Independent sources give numbers that are more conservative than Kyiv's, and Russia doesn't publish figures on its military losses.

Newsweek couldn't independently verify Kyiv's figures, and has contacted Russia's Defense Ministry for comment by email.

Moscow has also lost a number of its aircraft in cases of friendly fire. More than a fifth of Russia's known manned aircraft and helicopter losses in the war was self-inflicted, according to data compiled and analyzed by Newsweek in late August 2023.

One such reported case in June resulted in a Ka-29 helicopter being mistakenly shot down over Anapa, a town in Russia's Krasnodar Krai on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

"In Anapa, our own air defense shot down our own helicopter," Egor Guzenko, a Russian soldier who runs a Telegram channel under the call sign "Thirteenth," wrote on Telegram on June 21.

Guzenko said the Kamov Ka-29 helicopter was struck by one of Russia's Pantsir missile systems, adding that it could have happened "due to a malfunction." Newsweek couldn't independently verify his claims.

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