Russian Mi-8 crashed on highway after running out of fuel

A Russian Aerospace Forces Mi-8 helicopter crashed onto a highway on Sakhalin Island on September 2, coming to rest on its side in a roadside ditch after what the pro-Russian military Telegram channel Fighterbomber described as a complete loss of power from fuel exhaustion in both engines.

Video and photographs of the incident show the helicopter first attempting to land directly on the highway, its main rotor blades passing low over a truck traveling on the road. A separate set of images shows the aircraft after the attempted landing, tipped onto its side in tall grass in a roadside ditch, tail number 72 visible on the fuselage, with a road sign bent and pinned beneath the wreckage.

According to Fighterbomber, the crew was roughly 5 kilometers (3 miles) short of their destination airfield when both engines shut down. The channel’s post, run by Ilya Tumanov, said the crew steered the aircraft off the highway during the descent specifically to avoid striking vehicles on the road, and that Russian authorities have opened an investigation into why the fuel ran out.

“There are many possibilities,” the post said regarding the cause of the fuel exhaustion, without elaborating further. Fighterbomber did not identify the helicopter’s specific unit, its full tail number, or whether any crew members were injured in the crash. No Russian Ministry of Defense statement addressing the incident was located.

Russian military and paramilitary Mi-8 helicopters have suffered a string of documented emergency landings and losses in 2026. On August 22, an EMERCOM Mi-8MTV-1, tail number RF-32830, suffered a double engine failure during an aerial patrol and made an emergency landing in the village of Kalezh in Krasnodar Krai’s Lazarevsky District, according to Aviation Safety Network and flight-tracking site RotorAlert. That aircraft sustained extensive damage, including a torn belly, broken landing gear and a leaking fuel tank, during the resulting autorotation landing. In May, Fighterbomber separately reported the loss of a Russian military Mi-8, writing “May the sky be your resting place, warriors!” in a post that indicated crew casualties without providing further detail.

The claimed fuel exhaustion comes as Russia faces a documented aviation fuel shortage tied to Ukrainian strikes on its oil refining infrastructure. Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency, known as DIU, said on August 29 that Russia has imported at least 70,000 tonnes of Jet A-1 aviation fuel from South Korea and Egypt since Ukrainian strikes reduced domestic kerosene production. According to DIU, the imports arrived aboard three tankers identified as the Hanna, the Capibara and the Astoria, all under international sanctions, delivering fuel to the ports of St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. The Astoria alone delivered nearly 11,000 tonnes of Jet A-1 from Ulsan, South Korea, to Vladivostok in early August, according to DIU. Russia has also imposed a temporary export ban on its own aviation fuel through the end of November, according to AeroTime’s reporting on the disruptions.

Whether the Sakhalin incident is directly connected to that broader supply shortfall remains unconfirmed. Sakhalin Island sits roughly 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) east of the refineries in western Russia most heavily targeted by Ukrainian strikes this year, though Vladivostok, one of the two ports receiving the imported Jet A-1 cited by Ukrainian intelligence, lies in the same Russian Far East region as Sakhalin.