On the evening of March 4, most likely, the first public episode of the Russian army helicopter flight to Ukraine took place.
The interception of the conversation between the Russian pilots and the controller was published by the monitoring group of the Belarusian Hajun project, which regularly monitors and notifies about the movement of Russian equipment through the territory of Belarus.
Based on the conversations, it becomes clear that on the evening of April 4, a group of 6 Russian military helicopters was supposed to fly from the Zyabrovka military airfield in the Gomel region to the Shatalovo air base in the Smolensk region. Most likely, these were Mi-8AMTSh, as evidenced by the well-known number of the leader of the group of helicopters – RF-90665 (onboard – 51 “yellow”)
However, the helicopter with registration number RF-04812 moved away from the group and began to move towards the border with Ukraine. Apparently, at a minimum altitude, in order not to be helpful on radar.
The fact that the helicopter was “hijacked” is well evidenced by the openly aired phrase of the leader of the group: “812th, where are you now, tell me honestly? Timurchik, f*ck, please tell us in Russian. Did you stay there or not?”
In the event that there was a suspicion of an accident or catastrophe, the conversations on the air would be completely different. In any case, the leader of the group tried to visually find the “fugitive” for an hour, but to no avail.
It is worth recalling that Ukraine promises 500 thousand dollars and security guarantees for those who can overtake an enemy helicopter in good condition.