Su-35 mistakenly shoots down Russian Mi-8 near Voronezh

Near Voronezh, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet mistakenly shot down its own Mi-8 helicopter, mistaking it for a Ukrainian drone. The crash happened on Thursday, and according to Russian media, all three crew members were killed.

News of the lost helicopter was reported on Telegram by a Russian military blogger who goes by the alias Fighterbomber. He wrote that the army had “lost another Mi-8 with its crew” the day before, but declined to reveal the cause, calling it “a classic one” and adding that, in his view, humanity won’t be able to defeat it even with artificial intelligence, robots, neural networks and friend-or-foe identification systems.

The downing of the helicopter was confirmed by the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+. According to information cited by the Unian news agency, the Mi-8 helicopter was shot down by a Russian Su-35 aircraft that mistook it for a Ukrainian drone – reportedly because Ukrainian drones really were flying behind it at the time.

Russian media began reporting on the military helicopter crash near Voronezh as early as Thursday. According to the Lenta website, all three crew members were killed.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz