Four Russian Helicopters Landed Near The Front Line. HIMARS Was Ready.
HIMARS strikes Russian helicopters.
Sometime on or just before Monday, a quartet of Russian helicopters—two Mil Mi-8 transport and two Kamov Ka-52 gunships—landed somewhere in Belgorod Oblast in western Ukraine.
Ukrainian special forces and the main intelligence directorate in Kyiv were watching with at least one drone. A Ukrainian army High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System wheeled launcher was waiting. 'The target was engaged,' the special operations command reported.
Four 660-pound M30 rockets, each packing 180,000 tungsten fragments, rained down from as far away as 57 miles. All four helicopters exploded.
The precision strike came as Ukrainian brigades, having retreated from neighboring Kursk Oblast, conduct small-scale raids into Belgorod. Ukrainian forces have made modest gains by 'taking advantage of the enemy's communication and coordination problems,' according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies.
Hoping to intensify and prolong the Russians' confusion, Ukrainian air force jets bombed a Russian command post in Glotovo, in Belgorod, reportedly 'destroying its communication hub,' CDS claimed.
The attack on those four helicopters is part of the wider Belgorod campaign. But it's also revenge. A year ago on March 13, 2024, Russian artillery caught a trio of Ukrainian army Mil Mi-8 or Mil Mi-17 assault helicopters on the ground in Novopavlivka, 35 miles west of what was then the front line outside the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.
A cluster munition exploded overhead of the 12th Brigade helicopters, damaging at least two of them and apparently killing two aviators: Yaroslav Kava and Andriy Bakun. One Mil managed to fly away before explosives-laden drones streaked in to finish off the two that didn't escape.
That strike extended a startling streak for Russian forces in Ukraine. In a period of a week or so, the Russians knocked out their first Ukrainian HIMARS, their first launchers for a Ukrainian Patriot air-defense battery and then that pair of helicopters.
It was a shocking signal that the Russians' kill-chain—the networked drones and artillery that allow them to spot targets deep behind the front line and hit them before they move—was getting better, fast.
But the Ukrainians have a fast kill-chain, too—and it was dramatically on display in Belgorod on Monday. In 37 months of hard fighting, the Russians have lost around 120 helicopters: fewer than four per month. Monday's raid amounted to a month's worth of rotorcraft destruction.
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