The Russian Mi-8 helicopter is shot down in Syria

In the Syrian province of Idlib, the Russian Mi-8 helicopter is shot down. As TASS reports , the Ministry of Defense press service reported this. According to the department, the helicopter was shot down as a result of shelling from the ground. Three crew members and two officers of the Russian reconciliation center were killed on board.

"On August 1, in the province of Idlib, as a result of the shelling from the ground, the Khmeimim returning to the airbase after the delivery of humanitarian aid in the city of Aleppo Russian military transport helicopter Mi-8 was shot down. There were three crew members and two officers of the Russian reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria on board the helicopter," the report said.

Later, the press secretary of Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov said that everyone who was in a helicopter died. “You already, unfortunately, know the tragic news that came from Syria. A helicopter that was shot down from the ground broke up,” Peskov quotes RBC. “Everyone who was in a helicopter, as far as we know, died heroically, because they tried to take the car in order to minimize the victims on the ground.”

Peskov added that in the Kremlin they “deeply condemn” the loved ones of the dead troops. At the same time, the official specified that there is no exact information about the number of victims of the helicopter crash yet.

Later, the head of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Lieutenant General Sergei Rudski , said that the Mi-8 was shot down over the district, which is controlled by the Jabhat Fatam Ashham and the Todium Drinks of the Moderate Opposition. At the same time, he used the previous name "Jabhat Fatam Ash Sham" - "Jabhat al -Nusra" - and the phrase "moderate opposition" accompanied the epithet "The so -called".

Gazeta.ru, citing a source in the Ministry of Defense, reported the names of the dead pilots. This is a 33-year-old helicopter commander Captain Roman Pavlov, 29-year-old navigator Senior Lieutenant Oleg Shelamov and 41-year-old on-board apparatus Captain Alexei Shorokhov.

Meanwhile, the names of the officers of the reconciliation center are still not published.

Earlier, on Twitter, Syria Today published photos of documents presumably belonging to the crew of the downed helicopter. One certificate belongs to a woman, the second to a man. A photograph of the Orthodox icon was also published.

Photo: @INTLSPectator

At the end of June, it became known that the next Russian military - Private -Contractor Nikita Shevchenko died in Syria. The Shevchenko was stated in Muhafaz Khaleb (Aleppo) a column with food and water for the local civilian population, and at the entrance to a settlement, a home -made bomb embraced by the opponents of the dictator Bashar al -Assad exploded next to his car.

The soldier was seriously injured. Russian military doctors working in Syria tried to save him, but to no avail. Shevchenko is posthumously presented to the award. Thus, since the beginning of the open intervention of Moscow in the war in Syria, 15 dead Russian military is already known about.

Mi-8 became the third Russian helicopter lost in Syria. Prior to this, the Mi-8AMTSH helicopter on November 24, 2015 and the shock Mi-28N, which crashed in the area of ​​the Syrian city of Homs on the night of April 12, were lost. In addition, on July 8, in the area of ​​Palmyra, the Islamic State shot down a Mi-25 Assada helicopter , on board the Russian instructors of Ryathagat Khabibullin and Evgeny Dolgin. It was claimed that the pilots took a circuit of a helicopter with an ammunition when they received a request from Assad from Assad’s troops to hit Mujahideen IS. Russian pilots attacked the Islamists, were shot down by fire from the ground and died.