Drone Downs Helicopter 200km Deep in Russia

November 22, 2025November 22, 2025

Special Operations Forces sometimes treat us to videos they post with practically no comments. They leave them for connoisseurs or those who have time and inspiration to pay attention to what’s presented in the video, draw some conclusions, and form their own version of what they saw. This happened now too. A video appeared on the Network showing how a Ukrainian drone downs helicopter Mi-8 flying quite high.

Everyone can watch it independently, pay attention to the subtitles, read the Special Operations Forces’ comment, and perhaps independently supplement the plot with missing details. Here’s the video itself:

And here’s what Special Operations Forces wrote in their Telegram channel:

Changing the rules of the game: now we hunt! For the first time, a Russian helicopter Mi-8 was shot down in the air by a Special Operations Forces ‘deep strike’ drone!
Every mission requires creativity, starting from the technical characteristics of the means, ending with planning and pilot training.
This mission left the enemy with very many questions, the answers to which only the Mi-8 crew members know, but won’t tell.

Well, we offer several versions and conclusions of this story.

The Technical Details Matter

Let’s start with the fact that this helicopter’s cruising speed is plus-minus 225 km/h. As is not difficult to notice, the drone catches up with the helicopter and carries out an attack. This means the device can fly at higher speed. This inspires optimism because most strike drones of the Orcs fly at approximately such or lower speed. But in this case, this is not the main thing. The main thing is what’s written in the subtitles about the place where this happened. It states: Kuteynikovo, Rostov region of the chicken coop. Everyone can find this settlement on the map, and it will turn out to be slightly north of the well-known town of Millerovo.

Simple manipulations with the map show a distance of approximately 200 kilometers from a place on territory the Armed Forces of Ukraine control. From there, operators could launch a drone. Of course, a special forces group might have launched it. They entered enemy territory and from there launched the device for interception. But as is known, the drone use concept precisely aims to hit targets without direct human participation.

Two Possible Scenarios

In that case, one must imagine that a group of fighters who have drones and a command and control station with them didn’t just go deep into enemy territory. They pursued a quite definite goal. It seems very unlikely that the Special Operations Forces command knew exactly that at a certain time and in a certain place a helicopter would fly by. They sent a group to intercept it.

But if there was information about what or who they were transporting on the helicopter, this radically changes the situation. Perhaps the value of what was inside the helicopter significantly exceeded the cost of the device itself. In that case — anything is possible.

If the drone was launched from territory controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, then such an operation generally changes the rules of the game. If we already have the ability to cover such a distance and attack a helicopter, then at minimum — the enemy got a 200 km no-fly zone for slow-moving and low-flying aircraft. Moreover, this layout already threatens aircraft based at such a distance from the front line. After all, during takeoff or landing, a drone can quite easily break an airplane.

What Made This Target Worth It?

In any case, conducting a drone over such a large distance, bringing it to the attack line, and finally — hitting the helicopter — is huge and complex work. Both in the first and second variants, operators can only deploy such things when the helicopter itself carries something valuable. Precisely in such a case does planning of an interception operation begin. Because simply taking down a helicopter at such a huge distance is unlikely to be a worthwhile expenditure of forces and means.

The fact that a drone downs helicopter 200 kilometers deep in enemy territory suggests this wasn’t a random target. Someone or something on that Mi-8 was important enough to justify the complex operation. Now we need to carefully monitor Russian obituaries. Something interesting definitely should surface there.