A man walks past a residential building in Hostomel destroyed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on April 22. STRINGER / Reuters
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, members of Ukrainian special forces stationed to defend the strategic Hostomel airport outside Kyiv were stunned by what they saw when dawn broke: about 30 Russian helicopter attackers came over the horizon, accelerating to the airport.
An additional surprise was that the helicopters were moving on their own to Hostomel, without supporting ground forces or volleys of long-range missile fire to weaken Ukraine’s defenses. It was as if they did not expect any resistance.
However, the Ukrainians intended to resist. The defenders of Hostomel – a mixture of regular soldiers and reservists who were sent to support the special forces – opened fire with everything they had. The anti-aircraft weapons supplied by Western countries, which will prove so effective later in the war, have not yet been delivered, so Ukrainians fired at helicopters with machine guns, as well as anti-tank missiles and Soviet-era grenade launchers. Videos made that day show that at least three Russian KA-52 helicopters were hit.
How the Ukrainian resistance continues to disrupt Vladimir Putin’s plans to take power
Russia has attacked 61 Canadians with sanctions, including politicians, journalists and soldiers
Canada is negotiating the reopening of an embassy in Ukraine
The sudden attack briefly allowed Russian paratroopers, several hundred of them, to take Hostomel. Constant control of the cargo airport would allow Russia to start landing tanks and artillery right on the edge of Kyiv in the first hours of the invasion. It is reported that about 18 Ilyushin cargo planes were ready in Belarus to begin air transport of military equipment, which could lead to a rapid takeover of the Ukrainian capital.
But the Russian attack was as risky as it was brazen, reflecting the Kremlin’s apparent belief that the Ukrainian army would not wage a major battle and that much of the population would welcome Russian troops. Shortly after landing, the Russian paratroopers found themselves surrounded on all sides and suffered heavy losses as the Ukrainians were reinforced by their own paratroopers – as well as fighters from the Georgian Legion, a unit of battle-hardened foreign volunteers.
By nightfall, all Russian troops – one of the country’s most elite forces – had either died, surrendered or fled. More importantly, Hostomel’s runway was inoperable during the fighting, thwarting the Kremlin’s plans.
This account of the battles at Hostomel is based on the records and recollections of two members of the Ukrainian special forces who took part in the battle. Looking back, they are stunned by the strange first hours of the Russian invasion.
“I would say that this tactic will work in a Third World country against a Third World army, but shooting at these helicopters was not a critical issue for us,” one of the special forces fighters, 32-year-old Vladimir, told The Globe and Mail in an interview this week. “Their tactics didn’t work because they were told there would be no resistance – and their plans were designed that way.
Although Russian forces later captured Hostomel, air transport to Kyiv was no longer possible, and when the same troops crossed overland from Belarus, Ukrainians fought the invaders to a standstill on the outskirts of the capital. In late March, Russia halted its attack on Kyiv and redeployed the forces fighting there in eastern Ukraine, which is now the main front of the war.
A Ukrainian sapper searches for unexploded ordnance as he passes the An-225, the world’s largest cargo plane destroyed in a recent battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces, at Antonov Airport in Hostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on April 18th. Ephraim Lukacki / Associated Press
Russia’s withdrawal has allowed Vladimir and other men in his unit, usually operating in a small group of five or six fighters performing dangerous tasks on or behind the front line, to be the first to see the horrors left in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. , where the headquarters of the occupying forces was and where mass executions and other war crimes appear to have taken place.
The two members of the special forces who spoke about their experiences, Vladimir and Dmitry, met with The Globe in Kyiv this week while in the capital for rehabilitation and retraining after Dmitry suffered a concussion on April 12 during the fighting around Izyum, a city in the eastern part of the Kharkiv region, which fell under Russian control as fighting in the east intensified.
The Globe does not use the last names or details of the units of Vladimir, a native of Kharkiv Oblast, or Dmytro, 31, of Poltava Oblast, in eastern Ukraine, as they were not authorized to give interviews to the media.
They both believe Ukraine will have to adjust its tactics – and get even more military aid from its allies in the West – to stop a new Russian offensive in the east, in which Russian troops have taken over several cities this week. While drones and small units of special forces played a major role in Kyiv’s defense, the battle in the east took the form of an old-fashioned clash of armies, with Russia holding the lead because of its superior air force. as its arsenal of artillery and long-range missiles.
The fighters reiterated calls from the Ukrainian government to the West to deliver long-range artillery and anti-aircraft systems to the Ukrainian army as soon as possible. “We need weapons that can keep them at bay,” said Viktor Chumak, a former Ukrainian lawmaker who served as an artillery specialist in the Soviet army. “We don’t need more weapons, we need better ones.”
Canada recently promised $ 500 million in military aid to Ukraine, a package that should include long-range artillery. The deadlines for the delivery of the weapons have not been published.
Vladimir and Dmitri’s account of the Battle of Hostomel is confirmed by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a Georgian legion commander who is also involved. “We didn’t have weapons to shoot at helicopters, only 50-caliber machine guns, but it worked very well,” Mr Mamulashvili said. He claims his men shot down one of the three destroyed helicopters.
Russian tactics were also confusing for Georgians. “Putin has never had objective information about the real capabilities of his armed forces… he has never known the real capabilities of what they can do on the battlefield,” said Mr Mamulashvili, who has been fighting Russian troops since the 1990s. those years of the last century in his homeland. Georgia.
Both Vladimir and Dmitro have GoPro videos of battles stored on their phones, which they showed to The Globe as evidence of some of the battles they fought in the first two months of the war. They described their main task as operating secretly behind enemy lines to ambush tanks and disrupt supply lines.
Their assessment of the various challenges facing Ukraine on the Eastern Front is backed by Ukrainian and Western military analysts with The Globe. While the Kyiv region is densely forested and separated by rivers – almost ideal terrain for special forces operations – much of eastern Ukraine is wide, flat steppe, making Russia’s numerical advantage more important.
“Theoretically, they will have a better force density ratio, so that should help them,” said Konrad Muzika, a Polish military analyst for Russian forces. “But they’re also using troops now that are pretty battered, so I’m not sure to what extent that will work.
As to how unprepared Ukraine was for the initial Russian attack – President Vladimir Zelensky downplayed the possibility of an invasion just days before it happened – Special Forces fighters said they were on combat duty and less stationed in Hostomel. from 24 hours before the war began.
Although they had seen some triumphs, neither Vladimir nor Dmitry were in a festive mood after what they and their country had gone through in more than 58 days of war.
When their unit entered Bucha, when Russian forces withdrew from the region in late March, they found the city scarred by fighting. Vladimir, a tall and serious man with broad shoulders and short brown hair, said residents had initially confused the group of armed civilians. “But when we said, ‘We are Ukrainians, we are back,’ they started crying,” he said.
People pass through debris and destroyed Russian military vehicles on a street in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 6. Chris McGrath / Getty Images
The unit soon understood why the people of Bucha were crying. The bodies of civilians, many of whom appear to have died days or weeks ago, lay in the streets. An elderly woman, who said she had not eaten bread for a month, came to beg for food. “All these are scared [Russians] they shot at everyone so that no one would shoot at them, “said Dmitro, a muscular fighter with a clean black beard who said he had been in the army since he was 18. “They were literally afraid of everyone. All the bodies on the streets were in sight of the Russian positions.
More than 500 bodies, many of them shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs, were found in Bucha after Russia’s withdrawal. There are reports of Russian soldiers committing torture and organized rape in the area.
After visiting Bucha and the nearby town of Borodyanka, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Russian forces had committed war crimes.
There was no time for members of the special forces to process the horrors they saw in Bucha before they were stationed east, as the main Russian offensive shifted there.
The experience of the unit in …
Add Comment