Russians convict their own officer in Crimea for shooting down their own Mi-8

16 January, 2025 Russian Mi-8AMTSh helicopter. Illustrative photo. In occupied Crimea, Russians convicted their air defense officer who shot down a Russian army Mi-8 helicopter instead of a drone.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on this. As a result, three servicemen on board the helicopter were killed. Russian officer Igor Pashkov, who served as a senior assistant to the operational duty command post of one of the air defense units in temporarily occupied Crimea, was sentenced to a term in a penal colony.

He was found guilty of criminal negligence while repelling an attack by alleged Ukrainian army drones. It is reported that at 6:30 am on December 18, 2023, Pashkov was on combat duty in occupied Crimea. He received a report about detecting an unidentified low-speed, low-flying air target.

However, the officer made a mistake in the call sign, reporting to his superiors that the unidentified air target was in a different location and that a decision to destroy it was necessary. He also ignored additional information that the target was a Russian helicopter. As a result, two minutes after the first notification, a missile fired from a Tor-M2DT anti-aircraft missile system destroyed the target.

The Russian Army's Tor-M1 air defense system.

Photo from open sources

A few minutes later, it became clear that Russian air defense had shot down its Mi-8MTV-5-1 helicopter, which crashed into the Black Sea, killing three of its crew members, all of whom were captains. A Russian-controlled military court in Sevastopol sent Pashkov to a penal colony for three years and also ordered him to pay 5 million rubles to the Russian Defense Ministry and 3 million rubles to the widows of the victims. Pashkov admitted his guilt in full.

At the same time, the court refused to allow the Russian Defense Ministry to recover the cost of an Mi-8 helicopter, almost RUB 200 million, from him.

On appeal, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don commuted his sentence to two years and ten months.