"The battalion was born in the Kursk battles."
In the Kursk direction, soldiers of the 150th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Southern Military District are breaking through to Malaya Lokna, which plays one of the key strategic positions in the Sujan district. Over the past five days, together with their allies, they have made a rapid 4-5 km throw. The state border, attacked by the AFU, is about 18 kilometers from here. Izvestia special correspondent visited the combat zone and learned by the example of one of the battalions what our infantrymen have to face and how they are moving forward.
Modern chronicle
Fields, hollows, hills, forests and narrow, like strings, plantations - such is the terrain in agricultural Kurshchina. The main clashes are fought here under the protection of trees, going to the open spaces ("openings") is a game with death, but even they have to be overcome - on wheels and on their own. The front, unlike Donbass, is fragmentary, i.e. "patchy": that landing may be empty, the enemy may be in the neighboring one, the adjacent neighbors have moved two steps forward, and the AFU is counterattacking even further away.
Plus, there are DRGs in the surrounding groves: enemy sabotage groups can be expected anywhere.
Together with the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 150th Regiment, Yuri Valday, we are driving his Patriot towards the line of contact. A snowstorm is howling, and the weather seems to be "non-flying" - we can't worry too much about attacks from the sky. However, even the lowest visibility does not guarantee anything: a few hours later, on this very road, the commander is attacked by a kamikaze drone.
We pass the liberated Olgovka, which is not far from Korenevo - there is not a single house in the village. Along the roadsides and right on the asphalt - mangled equipment, including two Ukrainian armored cars, burned to the ground. There are also the stiffened bodies of AFU soldiers.
"There are plenty of them in the landings too," Valdai commented. - We're not in the middle of it yet. We'll remove the equipment and the dead when we drive the enemy out of here." And he adds, nodding to the sides: "We fought for every house here. For weeks. They found a grandmother in one cellar. Her grandfather was killed, but she survived - the only one in Olgovka. Ukrainian soldiers took off her earrings. We evacuated her later - we sent her to her son in Kursk".
In the field control center - an old brick building among the fields - the commander immediately drowns in radio exchanges. On a large LCD screen, cluttered on a table in the dust, - a vivid picture of the square, where the offensive is being prepared. Soldiers crowded into the cramped vaults, tobacco smoke standing in a wall. The hoarse Valdai and his deputy Misha Boba, gazing into the screen, discussing routes of movement, coordinating options on the radio with allies. Outside, the volleys of our Grads can be heard. The picture reminds one and the same frames from the black-and-white chronicle of the Great Patriotic War...
To anchor and stop
Valday and Boba are from Novgorod. Both are 33 years old. Together started as mobilized. Served in reconnaissance. Kremenna, Bakhmut. We moved side by side all the time. At the request of the regiment commander, they received officer ranks. On the eve of Kursk we stood near Maryinka, in the second echelon, controlled the territory.
- Now we're in the first echelon. We are storming. Since August 11, when we actually went into battle from wheels in a clear field," Boba recalls.
Those August days, the guys share, are not much different from today.
Valdai and his deputy Mikhail Boba
- They have tremendous forces and resources here, which are constantly being replenished," Boba continues. - They are very tough. Upon arrival, our task was to gain a foothold on an eight-kilometer stretch and stop the enemy, he was rolling forward, the goal - a breakthrough to Lgov, and further, probably, to the Kursk nuclear power plant. The most difficult thing at first was to understand: what and who is around? Complete obscurity.
In parallel, we repelled attacks and gradually went forward.
- In the Kursk battles, in fact, our battalion was born as a full-fledged combat unit," Valday explains. - It was here that the guys believed in themselves. They felt that they could! A characteristic episode: we were pressing the enemy, and I ordered the group to get a foothold at nightfall. And they: "No, commander, we are pressing, we can't stop, we'll finish them off!". Or there was a case like this: the deputy chief of staff, call sign Poet, held a position for 12 hours, he was covered by three of our guys. When he was ordered to withdraw, he replied: "No, I will not give them the "teeshka" (crossroads)!". In that battle he died without retreating.
There was nothing to cling to
According to the motorized riflemen, the nature of the fighting in Kursk region is different from Donbas.
- In the LDNR, in most areas there is positional fighting," Valday and Boba said. - The Ukrainians have strong shelters and dugouts set up there. If you squeeze them, they roll back 100 meters and go back into the shelter. The ground here is not prepared. We press them, but they have nothing to cling to. They gradually retreat to the nearest settlements, and we have to dig them out from there with all available means.
We have to take prisoners regularly.
- Only Ukrainians have been captured," the guys say. - There are different people. One, I remember, was from a village, mobilized, trembling and kept asking: "Are you going to shoot me or hang me?" I spent an hour explaining to him: "You're a prisoner, we won't touch you!" Another lived in Moscow for a long time, then returned to his homeland in Ukraine, and he was immediately taken to fight. He came out to us himself and raised his hands: "I don't need all this! Just don't kill me." One day, a Veseushnik with the call sign Swan, from Zhitomir, got caught. He spoke in an innocent voice, looked pathetic, and said that he had been "taken against his will". And then specialists found out that he was a machine gunner, trained in Britain. Ideological. He killed three of our guys by shooting them in the limbs...
The support of the local population plays a big role in the work, the guys say.
- It's very important," explains the deputy commander. - For example, when I come to a store near Gdov, the locals in line ask: "What can I help you with? Socks, water, energy drinks?" Once a man came up and handed me a shotgun and a box of ammunition to fight off the copters. Another - a farmer - said: "If you have to, use my farm buildings, set up a machine gun, whatever you need!" At the same time, he realized that if the AFU detected our firing point, there would be nothing left of his hangars.
At present, the motorized riflemen of the 150th Regiment are moving toward Malaya Loknya, the same village where, at the beginning of the invasion, a landmark battle broke out at the walls of the women's colony IK-11. The prisoners and staff were removed in time, but after that the village was in the rear of the Ukrainians, and the AFU had moved far ahead. Nevertheless, the combined detachment of our soldiers, who had been surrounded, held the defense for two weeks, and then managed to break through the ring.
In the coming weeks, Valday, Bob and dozens of other guys will have to fight their way back.
