Ukrainian Drones Prowled 100 Miles Inside Russia—And Caught Russian Helicopters On The Ground
Scratch a Mil Mi-17 and a Mil Mi-28
On Sunday, a pair of Russian helicopters—a Mil Mi-17 transport and a Mil Mi-28 gunship—landed at an improvised base in Voronezh Oblast, in western Russia as far as 110 miles from the border with Ukraine.
The Russian crews apparently assumed they and their helicopters were fairly safe so deep inside Russia. They were wrong.
The USF’s 429th Regiment, working in conjunction with Ukrainian special forces and the Ukrainian army’s 43rd Artillery Brigade, flew a surveillance drone all the way to Vorenzh to surveil the forward arming and refueling point. Fixed-wing one-way attack drones soon followed.
“After clarifying the target coordinates, the operators delivered consecutive UAV strikes,” the USF stated. “As a result of the hits, both targets were struck.” Drone video feeds seem to confirm the nearly simultaneous hits.
Both rotorcraft may be write-offs. And there are surely casualties, too. In one attack drone’s video feed, a Russian maintainer is visible working on the Mi-17 moments before the drone strikes the helicopter. Other Russians can be seen running away from the incoming drones.
