The Southern Command of the Ukrainian Air Force said its forces shot down two Russian “Alligator” helicopters and Iranian-supplied “kamikaze” drones.
The command said Saturday that during the previous 24 hours, three Shahed-136 enemy drones were shot down over the Mykolaiv regionand three more were shot down by other units of the Defense Forces of South Ukraine.
Two Russian Kamov Ka-52 attack helicopters, known as “Alligators”, were also shot down. in the southern region of Kherson, the command said.
They added that they had destroyed three Russian ammunition depots in Beryslav and Kherson districts in other attacks, the Ukrinform news outlet reported.
Publishing its separate daily assessment of Russian losses, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that on Friday Moscow lost 12 drones in total, along with eight tanks and 21 armored personal vehicles.
Iranian drones have had a major impact on the war, attacking Ukrainian targets that include civilian infrastructure. Tehran had denied supplying the devices to Russia, although Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian admitted that his country provided them, but said this was before the war started.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko responded by saying that Tehran should realize that “the consequences of complicity in Russian crimes of aggression” would be “far greater than the benefits of Russian support.”
Meanwhile, Russia said on Saturday that its air defense systems had shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter, as well as intercepted 27 projectiles fired from US-supplied HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems.
Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the missiles were intercepted near the Vuhledar settlement in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Novaya Kakhovka in the Kherson region, state news agency Tass reported.
It comes as Vladimir Putin publicly approved the evacuation of civilians from parts of Russian-occupied Kherson amid an advance by forces from kyiv. At least 70,000 people are reported to have already been moved from the city of Kherson, which Moscow seized earlier in the war.
Russian troops are reportedly searching for city residents who refuse to evacuate before Russian forces potentially withdraw from the western bank of the Dnipro River.