The attempt to evacuate the leadership of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov regiment from Mariupol failed due to poor organization, said Captain Dmytro Burlakov, a flight technician of the downed Ukrainian army Mi-8 helicopter that took part in those events.
Burlakov was an officer in the 16th Separate Brigade of Army Aviation of the 8th Army Corps of the Ukrainian Army (military unit A-2595), based in Brody, Lviv region. Burlakov was part of the crew of the helicopter that flew to help the Azovs, whose Mi-8 had already been shot down by that time, RIA Novosti reported.
"On the fifth of April, at four and something, at the beginning of the fifth morning, we received a command to fly from the city of Dnepropetrovsk to the waiting area. It's between Dnipropetrovsk and Mariupol, 20 minutes away from the line of separation," Burlakov said. According to the flight engineer, the helicopter crew was required to "fly to that point, and sit there and wait for further command." "We're the SAR, the search and rescue service was supposed to be on duty. Because before us two Mi-8 helicopters flew to the task in Mariupol. And we were supposed to be on duty SAR under them," Burlakov explained. "The commander of the crew - Lieutenant Colonel Voronoy Vyacheslav Alekseevich, the navigator - Lieutenant, I do not know the last name, he just came to the unit in autumn, Bogdan name", - added the flight engineer.
"We flew to the standby point, there we turned off and waited for further command. Around 5 a.m. the crew commander received a command on his phone: 'Launch,'" the flight engineer recalled. According to him, the crew received a message during the flight that the Mi-8 helicopter had been shot down and that it was necessary to fly to the crash site with specific coordinates. The crash site of the vehicle, to which they flew to help, was four kilometers deeper behind the line of demarcation, Burlakov added. "We flew up there, saw the burning smoke from afar. We flew closer, and a missile hit us. I woke up on the ground," recalled the flight engineer, who is in a Russian military hospital in Melitopol.
According to Burlakov, their helicopter was a Soviet-made helicopter, manufactured in 1989. Of the equipment, the crew had GPS units and night vision goggles, he added.
"The organization of the mission was not done in the best way," Burlakov admitted.
According to him, no one promised him any additional money for his participation in this action.
As a reminder, on April 5, the Russian military succeeded in foiling another attempt by the Kiev regime to evacuate the leaders of the Azov nationalist battalion from Mariupol.
In late March, it was reported that a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter was shot down near Mariupol, five kilometers from the coastline over the Sea of Azov, which was headed for the emergency evacuation of Azov nationalist battalion commanders who had abandoned their subordinates. Two more Ukrainian helicopters sent two days later to evacuate nationalist commanders from Mariupol were also shot down, with one helicopter shot down by DNR people's militia using a captured American Stinger system.
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