Wagner chief's jet crashes near Tver, Ukrainians control Robotyne, Moscow City hit by drones. What happened on the front line on August 23?

Meanwhile, Fighterbomber himself offers the following interpretation. The helicopter purportedly “went missing a couple of weeks back” because “the crew lost bearing and crossed the ribbon [the state border between Russia and Ukraine — The Insider]”. The Mi-8AMTSh landed near the village of Poltava in the Kharkiv Region. When the crew realized where they’d landed, they attempted a takeoff but were gunned down in the helicopter on the ground. Two were killed, and the commander was wounded.

The channel’s author suggests “a radio trick” from the Ukrainian side or a navigation system failure and “asks to refrain from spreading other versions because there can’t be any”.

Fighterbomber also verified the authenticity of the helicopter image published by Ukrainska Pravda, adding, however, that the photo was cropped to avoid showing the cockpit with bullet holes, despite the damage that's visible anyway. According to the channel, all of the crew members’ relatives are in Russia.

Here is how Fighterbomber commented on the photo with the channel's logo:

“Judging by the missing pin on the deletion switch cap, the crew managed to launch the system of deleting passwords and codes of state identification and communication systems. They fought till the end.”

Helicopterpilot, a channel linked to the Russian Army Air Force, says that the crew stopped responding during a mission on August 9. The helicopter allegedly landed not far from Vovchansk in Ukraine. Then the channel's source reported a sighting of the helicopter near the village of Poltava. Like Fighterbomber, the author believes the crew members’ families never left Russia.

Pro-Russian military blogger Kirill Fedorov cites “a seasoned Mi-8 pilot”, who asserts that the pilot of the “wayward” helicopter spoke openly of having relatives in Ukraine, and the navigation failure version lacks any credibility.

To remind you, in July 2022, Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev exposed the Ukrainian secret services’ attempt to recruit Russian air force pilots for hijacking planes. The operation was thwarted and became a double play, in which Russian Federal Security Service officers misled the Ukrainian side. The intel obtained by Russian secret services enabled a massive strike on Ukraine's Kanatove airfield on June 23, 2022, which killed the unit commander and injured 17 servicemen.