This is the bizarre air drop moment an impatient Russian combat helicopter crew dumps people it had just rescued onto a road in front of startled drivers.

Footage of the botched op in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in western Siberia, shows the chopper as it comes in to hover barely four feet above the tarmac.

The 'copter is understood to have been taking part in evacuating locals from a possible Soyuz-2 rocket crash zone on 23rd May.

The rocket is believed to have been delivering a secret military payload and was apparently tracking a US communications satellite launched earlier.

But footage of the shambolic operation turned the crew into a social media laughing stock.

As the chopper, believed to be an Mil Mi-28, swoops in at low altitude it hovers just a few feet above the road.

Two passengers are seen jumping out to safety and running to the side of the tarmac,

Then without warning, it begins to climb as two more passengers are still trying to get out.

Seconds later the pair are seen tumbling flat on their faces onto the road as the person filming the footage roars with laughter.

The bruising rescue soon became a joke in Russian social media site VK as watchers compared it to the no-frills Arctic region airline Moroshka.

One 'My Tazovsky' who posted the clip said: "They probably didn't buy tickets for Moroshka, that's why the landing was rough."

The Russian Defence Ministry has refused to answer questions about the evacuation.

(MJ Leidig/newsX)