12 years ago, on this day, our Mi-24 helicopter, performing a training flight, was shot down by mobile MANPADS towards Agdam. All three crew members were killed: Major Sergey Sahkian, Senior Lieutenant Sarkis Nazarian and Lieutenant Azat Sahkian. The plane fell in the neutral zone between the positions of the Artsakh Defense Army and the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, and the crash zone was under constant surveillance and shelling from the enemy.
Ten days later, special forces of the Israel Defense Forces carried out a complex and dangerous operation, during which they managed to recover the body of one of the pilots, the remains of other crew members, as well as individual elements of the helicopter that were of operational importance.
Two years later, on April 2, 2016, during an attack on Artsakh, in a southerly direction by our recruits with a manual anti-tank grenade launcher(! ) a modernized South African Mi-24G (tail number 305) was shot down. The helicopter fell on the position of the Defense Forces, from where a shot was fired, so the enemy was unable to evacuate neither the bodies of the crew, nor documents, nor important parts of the vehicle. Later, after negotiations through the mediation of the Red Cross, the bodies of the crew members were handed over to Allen.