Ukraine and Russia report different model types. The cause is also unclear.
According to a Facebook post by Ukrainian Naval Forces spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk, the helicopter Ukraine reported was not a Mi-24, but a Ka-27 helicopter. It is not clear whether these are separate incidents or whether just one of the helicopter models was misidentified. It would not be the first time that Russia is said to have shot down its own helicopter. The Russian Defense Ministry said a search and rescue mission was underway at the crash site. The Ukrainian military reported Russian helicopter losses in the Ukrainian war that were five times higher than in Russia's operation in Chechnya. The number of helicopters destroyed did not yet appear in the statistics and the numbers could not be independently confirmed. If the information and statistics from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense are correct, only around 25 helicopters would have been destroyed since June 2023. Many of them probably in October 2023 by the US ATACMS missiles received at that time.