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HomeNEWSWORLD NEWSWatch moment Russian helicopter 'accidentally fires rockets at bystanders'+VIDEO

Watch moment Russian helicopter ‘accidentally fires rockets at bystanders’+VIDEO

Orient Net, September 20, 2017— Video has emerged of a Russian attack helicopter seeming to fire on a group of bystanders during the major military exercises Russia has been holding over the past week.

 

 

 

Two videos of the episode show a man standing by some cars and military vehicles in a wooded area and looking up at two KA-52 Alligator helicopters as they approach. As the helicopters near, rockets fly from one of them toward the man, exploding and throwing debris over the camera.

The Russian website 66.ru, which first published one of the videos, reported two people were injured in the blast, though Kremlin officials have not confirmed injuries.

The episode reportedly took place at the same firing range where on Monday, President Vladimir Putin watched artillery and aircraft conduct drills as part of the huge Zapad 2017 exercises, which have drawn intense attention in recent weeks and worried countries in Eastern Europe.

 

 

 

Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed that the videos showing the episode were authentic but said it did not occur on the day Putin was present for the large-scale demonstrations and suggested it was unconnected to Zapad.

A ministry spokesperson told the Russian news agency Interfax that the helicopter’s targeting system mistakenly locked onto one of the parked vehicles while the aircraft were taking part in a different army exercise and practicing hitting ground targets.

A Ministry of Defense press release last Sunday, the night before Putin arrived, said that Zapad exercises with Ka-52 helicopters carried out rocket strikes on ground targets at the Luzhsky range.

The second video appears to show the rockets striking an military truck, dug in under camouflage netting. Civilian cars are parked around it.

The heavily armed Ka-52 helicopters took part in the grandiose demonstration watched by Putin on Monday, which included dozens of aircraft, artillery and tanks pretending to repel a NATO-like enemy. The Zapad exercises, conducted with Belarus, have discomforted the neighboring Baltic states and Poland, which, after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, see them as a threat.

But NATO has accused Russia of deliberately underreporting the numbers of troops taking part; Moscow says no more than 13,000 are involved, while NATO officials have said it could be as high as 100,000.

Zapad is a joint strategic military exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Belarus (the Union State) that formally began on 14 September 2017 and is scheduled to last until 20 September 2017.

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