Fly low against Putin’s troops in Bakhmut

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Three Mi-8 attack helicopters take off from a secret base in Ukraine and head towards their destination near the city of Bakhmut. As the helicopters close in on the target, they suddenly straighten up, fire their missiles and fly back to base. The target is “on an enemy line of fortifications, which consists of ground troops, armored vehicles and an ammunition depot,” Petro, one of the pilots, told AFP news agency after the approximately 30-minute mission.

Petro was deployed near Sieverodonetsk, a town northeast of Bakhmut that was captured by the Russian army last spring. In Bakhmut, the Ukrainian troops are now almost surrounded, but they hold their ground and suffer heavy casualties on both sides.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion just over a year ago, Ukrainian pilots have been carrying out dangerous missions in their old Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters every day. At the age of 23, pilot Petro has already flown about 50 combat missions.

“Then we fire the missiles, 15 on each side”

“Before the flight, we select the flight path using special apps,” he says. “For example, if we see heights of 180 meters, that is too high, so we look for places that are lower.”

The goal is to fly low “so as not to be visible on Russian radars and so they don’t know we’re coming,” says Petro, whose hoodie covers all of his face except his eyes. “When we’re 20,000 feet away from the target, we aim 20 degrees, then we fire the missiles, 15 on each side.”

The helicopter then returns at low altitude with a pilot and a copilot on board. The route is different from the outward flight – “so as not to be trapped” and attacked by Russian air defenses, as Petro says.

Obsolete weapon system for helicopters

In the front line, infantry units, informed in advance of the timing of the attack, launch a drone. With this they check whether the target of the attack has been achieved. If the target was not hit, corrections are made for another shot.

The helicopters’ outdated weapon system is not equipped with a guidance or aiming system. Therefore it is only accurate to within 100 to 200 meters. “At the beginning of the war, we had no drones. The operations were more complicated and less effective,” says Petro. However, from the summer they would have received drones and other equipment. “Today we are more effective.”

Petro’s most difficult mission to date took place on March 6 last year in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv. “We were with four helicopters and the target was a long convoy of military vehicles” that would have been heading for the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, now occupied by Russia.

“We saw the target about two kilometers away. We were told it wasn’t moving, but it really was moving,” Petro recalls. The Ukrainians were fired on. “Two of our helicopters were destroyed, the third was damaged and I was lucky enough to be on the fourth. I wasn’t hit.”

“You’re Always in Position”

For the 23-year-old: “The hardest part is the preparation, the decision-making, how to behave during the flight, which direction to fly to the destination, because you don’t know the landscape before the flight, you can’t be sure of anything are,” he explains.

But he is not afraid of an attack. “As soon as you start the engine, the fear disappears, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. We’re confident in ourselves and our decisions.”

There are many videos of Ukrainian helicopter operations in online media, the pilots are often celebrated as heroes. But Petro thinks of the soldiers who “suffer much more than we do, even though they greet and support us from the ground”.

‘You are always in position. Even if we take a lot of risks, we don’t need a lot of time to complete a mission,” says Petro. “When I see the guys on the ground supporting us, I know exactly why I’m here.” (AFP )

Source: Blick