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Donetsk militia downs Ukraine’s Mi-24 chopper

Helicopter was shot down by the militiamen on the outskirts of the town of Snezhny in the Donetsk region

© ITAR-TASS/Mikhail Pochuev

DONETSK, July 12 /ITAR-TASS/. Militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) downed a Mil-24 (Mi-24) helicopter of the Ukrainian Air Force, the Novorossiya news agency of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk said on Saturday.

On the outskirts of the town of Snezhny in the Donetsk region the militiamen managed to shoot down a Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter from a shoulder-carried air defence system and to destroy the enemy’s several combat units, it said.

Earlier on Saturday, the DPR press service said that its fighters had downed a jet, supposedly a Sukhoi-25 (Su-25), during a morning fight in the area of the city of Gorlovka (eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region).

“Ukraine’s aviation launched an assault on the outskirts of the city,” the DPR spokesman told reporters adding that “a return vertical fire destroyed the jet, supposedly a Su-25.”

On Friday, an aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force was brought down over the town of Dzerzhinsk and if fell north of Gorlovka, Novorossiya said.

Earlier, militiamen destroyed a military plane, presumably an attack aircraft, in the area of the town of Perevalsk in the Lugansk region, another battleground of the civil conflict in Ukraine’s east.

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Ukraine crisis Ukraine Donetsk Eastern Ukraine

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