Ukraine Touts 'Unique' Drone Strike on Helicopter: Video

Ukraine hit and damaged a Russian helicopter flying over Russia's border Kursk region using a first-person view (FPV) drone as Kyiv's surprise attacks across the border rage on.

On Tuesday, fighters with Ukraine's SBU security service used the drone to damage the Mi-28 helicopter, marking "another truly unique hit on an enemy target," a Ukrainian security source told Newsweek.

Ukraine has consistently targeted Russia's high-value assets, like its helicopters, using drones and missiles to take out military equipment used to attack Ukraine. However, this appears to be the first confirmed instance of Ukraine using an FPV drone to damage a helicopter while in flight. It is also the latest development in the fast-paced drone race defining the more than two years of war in Ukraine.

Kyiv has damaged and destroyed Russian aircraft inside internationally recognized Russian territory using drones but is not permitted to use Western-supplied long-range missiles over the border.

Russia's Defense Ministry did not respond to Newsweek's emailed request for comment.

The SBU drone struck the helicopter's rear rotor, the security source said, sharing footage appearing to show the moment of impact, as recorded by the approaching drone, over Kursk. It is not clear whether the drone permanently disabled the helicopter.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military's strategic communications office separately shared the footage, describing what it said was "probably the first case in world history when a drone hit a helicopter" without offering specifics of the operation.

"We still have many unexpected surprises for the Russians," the security source said.

On Tuesday, Russia's Defense Ministry said hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, nearly a dozen tanks and more than 20 armored vehicles had crossed into Kursk, which is just over the border from Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the cross-border assaults a "large-scale provocation" during a meeting with senior Russian officials on Wednesday.

Kyiv has largely remained quiet about the incursion. Ukraine's General Staff of the Armed Forces said on Wednesday that Russia had increased its aerial bombing of Sumy but did not refer to Ukrainian activity in Kursk. It is not yet clear what the objectives of the cross-border assaults are.

However, Andrii Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said the Kremlin was "lying about the controllability of the situation in the Kursk region."

"Russia does not control the border," Kovalenko said on Tuesday, after teasing that "there will be a lot of news from the Kursk region."

Moscow said it had repelled the attacks, which it attributed to Ukraine's 22nd Mechanized Brigade, adding that it had transferred reserve troops to the area. The chief of Russia's Armed Forces General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday that Russian forces "have stopped the enemy's advance deep into Russian territory" in Kursk, according to state media reports.

Assessments from Russia's influential military bloggers, each of which has a significant following, largely contradict Moscow's statements and an insistence from Kursk's acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, that the situation is "under control."

A prominent Russian blogger said on Wednesday that Ukraine had "managed to take control of several more settlements" after it had become "clear that it was impossible to dislodge the foe forces from the territory they had occupied."

Several bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces had reached up to 15 kilometers, or just over 9 miles, into the Kursk region. The Russian border town of Sudzha was "under the heaviest fire" on Wednesday afternoon, according to one account.

Open-source intelligence accounts, along with Russian and Ukrainian military-focused sources, suggested earlier on Wednesday that Russia lost a Ka-52 helicopter and an Mi-28 helicopter in the Kursk attacks.

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