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![]() A Russian Mil-Mi-8 similar to the aircraft involved in the incident. | |
Occurrence | |
---|---|
Date | April 27, 2007 |
Summary | Pilot error |
Site | Near Shatoy, Chechnya, Russia |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Mil Mi-8 |
Operator | Russian Ground Forces |
Occupants | 20 |
Passengers | 17 |
Crew | 3 |
Fatalities | 20 |
Survivors | 0 |
The 2007 Shatoy Mi-8 crash occurred on April 27, 2007, when a Russian military Mil Mi-8 helicopter carrying special forces troops and officers crashed in mountainous terrain in southern Chechnya, killing all 20 people on board.
The incident is the largest officially acknowledged loss of life for federal troops in Chechnya in 2007 and the worst Russian military aircraft disaster since August 2002, when an enormous Mil Mi-26 transport helicopter packed with troops crashed into a minefield after being hit by a missile, killing 127 soldiers.
The crashed helicopter was one of three Mi-8 transports and two Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters of the Russian Air Force which lifted off from a helipad to the east of the city of Gudermes. It was carrying 15 GRU Spetsnaz Rostov Oblast Brigade recon commandos and two high-ranking Russian military officers from the main Russian military base at Khankala in Chechnya.
Russian officials initially claimed the helicopter was downed by small arms fire from Chechen separatists. Chechen authorities cited mechanical fault as a cause of the crash.[ citation needed ] A special commission tasked with investigating the crash eventually determined that the most likely cause was human error.
The two officers on board as passengers—a Lieutenant Colonel and a Major—were to serve as liaison officers to ethnic Chechen troops who had, according to federal sources, spotted a group of up to 15 Chechen separatists near the southern village of Shatoy. These allied Chechens had reportedly asked for federal assistance and air support. According to the separatist account, the pro-Russian troops were ambushed by separatist fighters who inflicted heavy losses on them.
On April 28, 2007, Russian officials asserted that at least three rebels were killed during a ground operation near the crash site,[ citation needed ] while Russian media reported five soldiers, including two Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) servicemen, died in the fighting. At the same the separatists, reportedly led by Dokka Umarov and Ramzan Saluyev, claimed to have killed 30-50 soldiers on the ground and 20-30 airborne soldiers, compared to their own claimed losses of two fighters killed [1] and several wounded.
The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
On 19 August 2002, a group of Chechen fighters armed with a man-portable air-defense system brought down a Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter in a minefield, which resulted in the death of 127 Russian soldiers in the greatest loss of life in the history of helicopter aviation. It is also the most deadly aviation disaster ever suffered by the Russian Armed Forces, as well as its worst loss of life in a single day since the 1999 start of the Second Chechen War.
Ruslan (Khamzat) Germanovich Gelayev was a prominent commander in the Chechen resistance movement against Russia, in which he played a significant, yet controversial, military and political role in the 1990s and early 2000s. Gelayev was commonly viewed as an abrek and a well-respected, ruthless fighter. His operations spread well beyond the borders of Chechnya and even outside the Russian Federation and into Georgia. He was killed while leading a raid into the Russian Republic of Dagestan in 2004.
Doku Khamatovich Umarov, also known as Dokka Umarov as well as by his Arabized name of Dokka Abu Umar, was a Chechen mujahid in North Caucasus. Umarov was a major military figure in both wars in Chechnya during the 1990s and 2000s, before becoming the leader of the greater insurgency in the North Caucasus. He was active mostly in south-western Chechnya, near and across the borders with Ingushetia and Georgia.
The Kizlyar–Pervomayskoye hostage crisis, also known in Russia as the terrorist act in Kizlyar, occurred in January 1996 during the First Chechen War. What began as a raid by Chechen separatist forces led by Salman Raduyev against a federal military airbase near Kizlyar, Dagestan, became a hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians, most of whom were quickly released. It culminated in a battle between the Chechens and Russian special forces in the village of Pervomayskoye, which was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Although the Chechens escaped from the siege with some of their hostages, at least 26 hostages and more than 200 combatants on both sides died. One third of the homes in Pervomayskoye were destroyed.
The Shatoy ambush was a significant event during the First Chechen War. It occurred near the town of Shatoy, located in the southern mountains of Chechnya. Chechen insurgents under the leadership of their Arab-born commander, Ibn al-Khattab, would launch an attack on a large Russian Armed Forces army convoy resulting in a three hour long battle.
The 2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush took place on March 29, 2000, when a mechanized column of Russian Interior Ministry troops was ambushed in the southern Vedensky District of Chechnya. As the result of the attack on the convoy and on Russian relief forces, scores of Russian special police and paramilitary troops were killed or captured. 37 OMON officers in the column and six in a relief column were killed and 11 more were taken hostage, 9 of whom were executed soon after Russian command refused to swap them for the arrested military officer Yuri Budanov.
The Battle for Height 776, part of the larger Battle of Ulus-Kert, was an engagement in the Second Chechen War that took place during fighting for control of the Argun River gorge in the highland Shatoysky District of central Chechnya, between the villages of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen.
The Battle of Komsomolskoye took place in March 2000 between Russian federal forces and Chechen separatists in the Chechen village of Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar), Chechnya. It was the largest Russian victory during the Second Chechen War. Several hundred Chechen rebel fighters and more than 50 Russian servicemen were killed in the course of more than two weeks of siege warfare. An unknown number of civilians were killed in the fighting as well. The fighting resulted in the destruction of most of the forces of Chechen rebel field commander Ruslan Gelayev. Scores of Chechens were taken prisoner by the Russians, and only a few survived. A number of civilians died from torture, and the village was looted and destroyed. The battle was the bloodiest of the entire Second Chechen War, and was marked by fierce urban combat.