“This is not a documentary, but it portrays the events of the first days of this war with full seriousness—from the moment of the brilliant Russian airborne assault on the outskirts of Kiev, to the time when the war seemed poised to end with the signing of a draft peace agreement in Istanbul in March 2022.”

Do they mean the russian airborne assault which immediately broke the back of russian rotarywing capability because it failed on so many different levels at once?

To be clear I massively disagree with the Venezeula military operation, but as a military helicopter assault operation it was devastatingly successful. As deeply sad as it makes me as a turn of geopolitical events, I can’t help but feeling in a small way amused at how shocked people were about the speed and decisiveness with which the Venezeula helicopter assault operation happened, and how it made all of the broader more general forms of resistance irrelevant in that span of a couple of high intensity hours right around the immediate seat of power in Venezuela.

People seem to almost think “Well the only reason the Venezeula helicopter assault worked was because no one expected they would actually do it and it happened so fast!” to which my reply is that is specifically the point of helicopters, to tactically transgress somewhere unexpected with such speed that even if a theoretical defense was possible the enemy did not think it was likely enough in that place and context to actually have everything set up and ready to go to stop the helicopter assault.

People had a similar reaction of disbelief to the Ukrainian helicopter hot insertion near Pokrovosk with a blackhawk. The reaction was "this would never work in that spot again, there are too many drones! Look if those russian drones which caught the blackhawk on video had been ready they could have blown the blackhawk up easy!’ to which the obvious answer is again, yes it would not work in the same way in the same place again, that is NOT the point of helicopters. The point was nobody was ready for the helicopter until the helicopter was already gone.

Contrast this to the russian helicopter assault which failed strategically and tactically, resulted in high rates of aircraft loss and operationally consigned russian helicopters to backline duties for the russian war machine.

heliopsmag.com/…/reports-of-the-death-of-the-heli…

warontherocks.com/…/the-battle-of-hostomel-airpor…

The Russians commenced their attack on February 24th with pre-assault strikes across the city, the airbase, and the infiltration corridor. Two 3M14 Kalibr cruise missiles struck Hostomel airport around 6 or 7 a.m. but proved ineffective. One missed the barracks and instead cratered a nearby parade field; the second missed a nearby residential building. The Russian aerospace forces, however, were effective at suppressing some Ukrainian air defenses. Other elements targeted Ukrainian command and control, leaving the Ukrainian air force to contest the sky that morning.

The Russian Aerospace Forces created a corridor for the air assault by successfully jamming some Ukrainian radars and damaging or suppressing two major air defense sites responsible for screening the Dnipro River north of the city. With Ukrainian air defenses weakened, Russian helicopters crossed the Belarusian border and entered Ukrainian airspace at approximately 9:30 a.m. They conducted a low-level, “nap of the earth” infiltration along the Dnipro River to avoid any Ukrainian radars that might have remained operational. They remained undetected until they neared the dam at the Kyiv hydroelectric powerplant just north of Kyiv around 10:30 a.m. After being spotted, Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles downed two of the lead helicopters near the dam. A damaged Ka-52 crash-landed near the river’s shore while a destroyed Mi-24 crashed into the river. Trailing helicopters fired their flares and avoided further losses.

Around 11 a.m., the attack formation neared Hostomel airport. As they approached, the attack helicopters broke to the north — to engage targets on the airfield — and the transport helicopters broke to the south — planning to land and secure the airfield’s barracks and facilities. The Ukrainian Commander, Maj. Vitalii Rudenko, was unaware of approaching helicopters until he heard the chopping of the helicopters’ rotor blades. Minutes later, the sounds of the rotors were drowned out by the sounds of rockets and machine gun fire from the attack helicopters.

But the Russians faced stiffer resistance than they expected. Rudenko had deployed his small force to defend the airfield earlier in the morning. Roughly 20 Ukrainian National Guard soldiers defended the radar at the northern end of the airfield with the ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns while the rest — which included a couple of squads of National Guard reinforcements that had been sent to help defend the airfield earlier in the morning — defended the airfield from battle positions at the airfield’s south. The Ukrainian military had also moved large trucks and other vehicles onto the airfield to make it unserviceable for fixed-wing aircraft until after the vehicles had been moved.

Russia should be embarassed to even show imagery of helicopters in their propaganda, they shit the bed hard with rotarywing military power, one might say they shit the bed about as hard as you can in that realm.