Ka-52 Employment in Russo-Ukraine War
Description
Our dataset includes timestamps of the Ka-52 fire missions’ publication in the channel, their locations with respective terrains, types of ammunition used, and targets if provided. Since it is beyond our reach to differentiate, sort out, and verify the posts of multiple channels in combination, our data relies upon a single and relatively reliable Telegram channel. We evaluated the Russian Ka-52 employment during the War in Ukraine between February 2022 and January 2025 according to this dataset with strategic and operational considerations. We opted for only one channel, “<operationZ>,” although other Telegram channels post similar content regularly. Eliminating the redundancy while mining from various channels was a fundamental challenge we do not know of a better way to solve. Even in this channel’s feed, we encountered the same content more than once. Nevertheless, <operationZ> returned the most posts for given keywords, making it the best among eligibles and prompting us to select it. We filtered out posts containing keywords (‘Ка-52’, ‘Изделие-305’, ‘ЛМУР’, ‘Аллигатор’), from the start of the war to the latest message taken. We wrote programs to mine all the data locally using the official Telegram API. Then, we thoroughly examined the content of each post to categorize and tag them. While some were unrelated, plentiful included lengthy videos. Posts we collected from the channel can be roughly grouped into three categories: a) periodic updates b) unrelated news c) combat footage The first category includes updates from various sources on tactical and operational unfoldings at the front. Occasionally, these posts provided information on either Ka-52 employment in combat or targeted Ukrainian equipment. The second category comprises unrelated and nonspecific overviews of Ka-52s and pilots. The last one revealed detailed accounts and/or combat footage of Ka-52 fire missions, providing specifics on location, terrain, target, and ammunition, warranting our main effort.