Russian sources: drone strikes hit Su-30 jet, Mi-8 helicopter near Anapa

Ukrainian drones struck Russian military aircraft near Anapa on September 9, 2026, destroying a helicopter and damaging a fixed-wing jet, according to both Russian and Ukrainian accounts of the same overnight operation that also hit Russia’s naval base at Novorossiysk.

Russian sources reporting on the strikes said a single drone destroyed a Mi-8AMTSh helicopter, tail number 84, at the Chemburka helipad in Anapa. The aircraft reportedly belonged to Russia’s 318th Separate Composite Aviation Regiment. A separate strike using two drones significantly damaged a fixed-wing aircraft, tail number 41, near Vityazevo airfield, the same sources said.

The two sides do not fully agree on what that second aircraft was. The Russian reports identified it as a Su-30. Ukraine’s account of the operation, given by Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi, described the aircraft hit at Anapa as a Su-33, a far rarer carrier-based fighter. Multiple Ukrainian outlets repeated the Su-33 identification, and neither side has published imagery or a damage assessment that resolves the discrepancy.

Developed from the Su-27 for carrier operations aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov, it features folding wings, reinforced landing gear and an arresting hook, unlike Russia’s much larger fleets of land-based Su-30 and Su-35 fighters. With the Kuznetsov undergoing years of repairs and reported to be a candidate for scrapping, the surviving Su-33s have often flown from land bases rather than the carrier they were built for.

Brovdi said the Anapa strikes were part of the same operation that hit Novorossiysk’s port overnight, which also destroyed two Russian radar systems, a Kasta-2E2 and a 92N6, near Gelendzhik. He said Ukrainian forces separately struck 13 vessels belonging to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet in the Black Sea during the same period.

Neither the type nor the ultimate fate of the aircraft damaged near Vityazevo has been independently confirmed. Russian and Ukrainian sources agree an aircraft was hit there and that a helicopter was destroyed at Chemburka, but the conflicting aircraft identifications mean the extent of Russia’s losses at Anapa remains unresolved.