How a Russian helicopter was shot down in Syria. The death of a Russian helicopter in Syria: main versions and questions

In the story of the helicopter shot down in Syria last week, even after several days, there are still more questions than answers. Why does the Ministry of Defense call the clearly identifiable Mi-35 the export Mi-25? What weapons were used to shoot down the winged vehicle and what does the United States have to do with it? The site tried to understand the situation.

Mi-25 or Mi-35?

“On July 8, 2016, Russian military pilot-instructors Ryafagat Khabibulin and Evgeniy Dolgin flew over a Syrian Mi-25 helicopter (an export version of the Mi-24 helicopter) with ammunition in the province of Homs (Syria),” these words begin the message distributed by the Russian military department about pilot deaths.

There were no doubts about the correctness of the Ministry of Defense data in the first days after the tragedy. According to the military bulletin The Military Balance, as of 2016, the Syrian government army owns 24 Mi-25D helicopters (index D means tandem cabin arrangement). After the official withdrawal Russian troops from the state in March 2015, instructors remained there to help Bashar al-Assad’s army fight terrorists and opposition forces in Syria.

The first questions arose on Sunday, July 10, when a video of the death of a Russian helicopter was published. It shows that it was not the Mi-25 that was shot down, but its much more modern modification, the Mi-35. Visually, it is distinguished by its fixed landing gear and shorter wings. This video is currently the main source of information about what happened and that’s all analytical materials The media is mainly based on it.

Why did they try to hide the fact of the death of a modern combat vehicle? Perhaps due to the high export potential of the Mi-35, customer interest in which may decrease somewhat after this accident. It is no secret that the participation of Russian aviation in the fight against terrorists in Syria has led to a series of contracts for supplies abroad. military equipment and weapons. Now, when the Ministry of Defense wants to spend twice as much on weapons as financiers are willing to allocate, even a minimal loss of the image of a supplier of “invincible” weapons will be extremely unprofitable for Russia.

Arguments for: The agency itself argues for the version as follows:

“In the video you can see that immediately before the crash the helicopter fires NURS (unguided rockets), and after each shot a plume of smoke remains in the air, extending below the fuselage of the helicopter. However, at the moment the tail rotor of the helicopter is hit, we see that such a trail extends from the projectile The same plume of smoke coming from the object is slightly higher than the fuselage of the affected helicopter. The video also captures the trailing (following) helicopter, which is moving slightly higher than the leading (going first), downed helicopter. The combination of these factors allows us to at least seriously investigate the version that the Mi helicopter -35M was accidentally shot down as a result of a slave helicopter launching an uncontrolled aircraft rocket(NAR, aka NURS). During the battle, the leading helicopter could accidentally fall into the line of fire of the trailing helicopter, which was following just above the leading one. This also explains the fact why ISIS (a terrorist organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation - ed.) did not publish a video recording of the actual launch of an ATGM/MANPADS missile."

Arguments against: The video does not show a single missile fired by the wingman helicopter, although it was moving a short distance from the downed Mi-35. “Friendly fire in aviation is very rare. There have been cases when wingman fighter-bombers have killed their leader, but this is unlikely. The wingmen pull back and go to the right or left, gaining lateral interval. Another thing is that you can get under friendly artillery fire , because an artillery shell does not fly straight, but along a curved curve, gains altitude, and then falls. So it could have hit. They shot at someone, and the helicopter was crawling at a low altitude and could easily get into the flight zone rockets or even barrel artillery", military expert Alexander Akhlyustin commented on the version. Another interlocutor of the site, reserve colonel Viktor Murakhovsky, shares a similar opinion. "I think this is excluded. A pair of helicopters operated in a ledge, with a significant displacement relative to each other. The video also does not show the approach of any object similar to an unguided missile or ATGM. We must understand that an unguided missile, an ATGM, and anti-aircraft missile have relatively low speeds, up to 700-800 meters per second, that is, if filmed at a frequency of at least 24 frames per second, such an object would be captured on video several times, but it is not,” the expert explained.

A Russian Mi-8 helicopter was shot down in Syria, returning from Aleppo to the Khmeimim airbase. A vehicle carrying five soldiers crashed in Idlib province. Since November 2015, the Russian Aerospace Forces, under various circumstances, have lost four helicopters and a Su-24 front-line bomber in Syria.

Turkish zugzwang

The first loss occurred on November 24, 2015. A pair of front-line Su-24M bombers carried out a combat mission in the province of Latakia (area of ​​the settlement of Kepir) - they bombed militant positions.

When re-approaching the target, the pair was attacked by Turkish F-16 fighters. According to Ankara, Russian planes violated Turkish airspace, according to Moscow - all this time they were over Syrian territory. One way or another, the plane RF-90932, tail number “83 white,” was shot down by an air-to-air missile.

The pilots ejected over an area controlled by militants opposed to Damascus. The crew commander, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov, was shot by them while still in the air, and navigator Konstantin Murakhtin managed to land and escape.

A search and rescue team was sent from the Khmeimim base. Her Mi-8AMTSh helicopter was damaged by fire from the ground and made an emergency landing. Marine Alexander Pozynich died on board. The car was subsequently destroyed by militants using a rocket. anti-tank complex.

Night fall

On the night of April 12, 2016, it crashed in Homs province attack helicopter Mi-28N returning from a combat mission. Crew members - Andrei Okladnikov and Viktor Pankov, who served at the air base in Budennovsk before being sent to Syria - died.

The helicopter was not fired upon from the ground, the Defense Ministry said. An industry source suggested that the car crashed due to a collision with the ground while being piloted in difficult conditions.

Subsequently, it was reported that the crew, flying with night vision goggles, could have lost control and the vehicle collided with some kind of obstacle. Sources in the investigation commission confirmed this conclusion at the end of April 2016, citing the human factor as the reason.

“Mi-28N pilots performing a flight dark night over a directionless area with difficult terrain, they lost their correct spatial position, as a result of which the helicopter collided with the ground,” noted a source in the commission.

The helicopter that wasn't there?

On July 8, 2016, a helicopter was shot down near Palmyra. On board were the commander of the 55th separate regiment army aviation Colonel Ryafagat Khabibullin and pilot-operator Lieutenant Evgeniy Dolgin, both died.

The official position of the Russian Ministry of Defense today is still that a Syrian Mi-25 helicopter (the export version of the Mi-24D helicopter) with a Russian crew was shot down. According to Znamenka, this happened when the car was turning back after being hit. An anonymous source in the military department, also noting that the vehicle, having used up ammunition, went on a reverse course, linked the death of the helicopter to the use of the American TOW anti-tank system by militants.

However, the published video does not confirm this version. The couple is clearly visible in the footage attack helicopters Mi-35M (such machines are used by the Russian air group in Syria). They were on a combat course, and the damaged vehicle launched unguided missiles immediately before the defeat.

The hit to the tail rotor, also recorded on video, does not correspond to the picture of the use of TOW missiles. In particular, this is evidenced by the absence of a trace of the approaching missile, the limited nature of the destruction, as well as the localization of the hit. One of the realistic versions is the use of anti-aircraft artillery by militants.

Returning from Aleppo

At the end of July, the Russian military announced a large-scale humanitarian operation in the Aleppo area. The successes of the Syrian army and allied forces (including Iranian and Hazara volunteers) led to the encirclement of a large militant group in the northeastern part of Aleppo. On July 28, it was reported that three corridors were being opened from the city for civilians to exit and a separate corridor for militants who decided to lay down their arms.

On August 1, 2016, in the Syrian province of Idlib, a Mi-8AMTSh helicopter was shot down, returning to the Khmeimim airbase after delivering humanitarian aid to the city of Aleppo. Judging by numerous photographs of the wreckage published online, we're talking about about the RF-95585 vehicle (tail number “212 yellow”), photographed at the 562nd Army Aviation Base in Tolmachevo (near Novosibirsk) before the start of the Syrian campaign.

Since September 30 last year, when Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft began carrying out airstrikes on major points militant control, accumulation of equipment, ammunition depots, oil business infrastructure facilities prohibited in Russia terrorist organization"Islamic State", many of these objects have been destroyed.

“That is why most of the fighters and bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces returned to their places of permanent deployment on Russian territory,” our interlocutor said. — But helicopters in Syria will not be without work for a long time.

It is helicopters that today bear the main burden of providing fire support to the Syrian government army during local clashes. It is helicopters that “hunt” individual mobile groups of militants.

During the “free hunt”, on July 8, a flight of five helicopters flew from the Khmeimim airbase in the direction of Homs province and a Mi-35M helicopter, controlled by a crew consisting of Colonel Khabibullin and Lieutenant Dolgin, was shot down.

Al Jazeera TV channel reported on the disaster on July 8. But representatives of the Khmeimim airbase denied the information, saying that all Combat vehicles returned to the base point, no losses. A day later, the military department was forced to admit the death of Colonel Ryafagat Khabibullin and Lieutenant Evgeniy Dolgin, but continued to insist that it was a Syrian Mi-25 helicopter, flown by Russian pilot instructors.

On Sunday, a video of the helicopter crash appeared on the Internet. Experts identified that the militants shot down a new Russian Mi-35M helicopter. The version that the helicopter was shot down by an American BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile system raises doubts. The fact is that the charge of the ATGM warhead, which weighs about six kilograms, is visually visible powerful flash. The recording, apparently, recorded the destruction of the tail section of the helicopter by a portable anti-aircraft missile system(MANPADS).

The same video explains why the infrared traps did not work: the Mi-35M was shot down at the moment of the attack. And as the military pilots explained to me, the shooting of infrared traps occurs after the attack, during a combat turn to return to their home base. And at this time the helicopter is practically defenseless against ground systems firing.

Ryafagat Khabibullin

The death of Colonel Khabibullin came as a shock to all Russian military pilots. The fact is that 51-year-old Ryafagat Khabibullin was a legendary officer, one of the most media-famous active pilots. Military unit, stationed in the village of Korenovsk Krasnodar region, which he commanded, was visited by both President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. There are dozens of video reports on the Internet in which unit commander Ryafagat Khabibullin talks about the service and the combat training of young pilots.

Military pilots who knew the officer told me that back in 1995, Ryafagat Khabibullin was nominated for the title of Hero of Russia. But they limited themselves to the Order of Courage.

On April 30, 1995, in the Nozhai-Yurt region of Chechnya, a Mi-24, which was piloted by the crew of Captain Khabibullin, was fired upon from the ground and knocked out. Two crew members were killed, Ryafagat was seriously injured, but he made it to the territory of Dagestan and was able to land... As soon as the downed helicopter touched the ground, the officer lost consciousness from loss of blood... The officer was awarded the Order in the hospital, where he remained for almost a year. They wanted to commission him, but he won the right to fly and continued to serve in the 55th helicopter regiment, stationed in Korenovsk, where he rose to the position of unit commander.

Information about 24-year-old Lieutenant Evgeniy Dolgin is much more scarce. It is known that he, like his commander, graduated from Syzran military school. Evgeniy’s father, Viktor Dolgin, is also a military pilot who passed Chechen campaign. Evgeny Dolgin arrived in Syria only in June.

On December 1, 2015, the 393rd Sevastopol Army Aviation Base, which had been commanded by Colonel Khabibulin since 2010, was returned to its previous name - the 55th separate regiment Army Aviation of the 4th Army Aerospace Forces and Air Defense. Even then, it became clear to the unit’s officers that this renaming was connected with the transfer to Syria. And in fact, they couldn’t transfer the Krasnodar airbase to the Khmeimim airbase.

On July 8, Colonel Khabibullin personally led a flight of five helicopters on a “free hunt” for Islamic terrorists. And did not return from a combat mission

Helicopters and pilots were transferred from Korenovsk to Khmeimim in March 2016. Colonel Ryafagat Khabibullin also went to Syria with his subordinates. And as our sources in Syria say, the officer flew combat missions almost every day.

“There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that the regiment commander personally flew out on a combat mission,” a representative of the Ministry of Defense told Novaya.

Take, for example, the demining of Palmyra by a detachment of specialists from the International Mine Action Center of the Russian Armed Forces, transferred to Syria from Nakhabino, near Moscow.

— The operation was personally led by the chief engineering troops“Lieutenant General Yuri Stavitsky of the Russian Armed Forces,” our interlocutor at the Ministry of Defense told Novaya.

Mi-35 helicopter of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria. Photo: RIA Novosti

On July 8, Colonel Khabibullin personally led a flight of five helicopters on a “free hunt” for Islamic terrorists. And he did not return from the combat mission.

On Tuesday, the coffin with the body of Ryafagat Khabibullin was delivered to Krasnodar region, to Korenovsk, where his fellow soldiers said goodbye to the officer.

The officer will be buried in his native village of Vyazovy Gai, where the officer’s mother lives.

In Syria on the morning of August 1, a Russian Aerospace Forces helicopter was shot down. The Mi-8 was returning to Khmeimim airfield after successfully completing a humanitarian mission: it was for the civilians of Aleppo. In Idlib province, a car was hit by fire from the ground and fell in an area occupied by terrorists. IN Russian Ministry of Defense have already confirmed that those who were on board, .

Armed men quickly surround the burning wreckage in black clouds of smoke - this is a Russian Mi-8 helicopter. The frame was burned to the ground, and some parts were almost intact, such as the tail rotor blades. Shouts of "Allahu Akbar", Arabic speech and machine gun fire can be heard.

A Russian helicopter delivered humanitarian aid to Aleppo province. He was already returning back to the Khmeimim airbase when a homemade missile overtook him in the south of Idlib province. anti-aircraft complex, which in Lately are quite often used in Syria by various terrorist groups.

“The helicopter was shot down from the ground over an area under the control of the armed formations of the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra and those affiliated with it,” explained the chief of the main operational management General Staff RF Armed Forces Sergei Rudskoy.

The Mi-8 is one of the most common helicopters in the world; the machine is simple and reliable. The first model took off back in 1961, but the G8 is still in service with almost all countries on the globe.

The Mi-8AMTSh, also known as the “Terminator”, and this is the modification used in Syria, this time carried out a purely civilian mission. There were five people on board: three crew members and two officers from the Russian center for reconciliation of warring parties.

“Those who were in the helicopter, according to information received from the Ministry of Defense, died. They died heroically because they tried to take the car away in order to minimize casualties on the ground. The Kremlin deeply sympathizes with all the loved ones of our fallen servicemen,” the press secretary emphasized chapters Russian state Dmitry Peskov.

Aleppo is now under siege by Syrian government troops, and inside the encirclement, in addition to militants banned in Russia, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, there are 200 thousand civilians. Together with official Damascus, the Russian military announced the start of a humanitarian operation: special corridors have been organized from the city through which anyone can leave besieged Aleppo. And the checkpoints, even though the mission has just begun, are already full of refugees. For many, evacuating the city is the only chance to survive.

“I knew the way and was able to escape here. They immediately gave me shelter and greeted me. The state takes care of us. I hope that the rest of my children will also be able to escape. They were caught by militants. They used me and my children as a human shield,” says the Syrian woman .

It was announced that those who want to lay down their arms can also leave the city. Eighty-two gang members have already surrendered. On a large scale humanitarian operation the militants responded with terror.

“The terrorist units of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the formations of the so-called “moderate opposition” that have joined them continue continuous attacks on units of the Syrian armed forces, both in the north of Aleppo and in the south, with the aim of encircling the city. suicide terrorists,” stated Sergei Rudskoy.

In a week, two hundred and fifty local residents were killed and nine hundred wounded. Militants are deliberately killing civilians. On August 1, they once again fired from jet systems volley fire handicraft areas of Al-Khalidiya, Leramon, Al-Asad, Nayrab Airport and shopping mall"Castello".