"They say that one is not a warrior in the field. But it turns out to be a warrior!"
The peculiarity of modern assault operations is not only that they are conducted in small groups, but also in the distance from their positions. The fighters have to secretly cross the "kill zone", which is viewed from the air and is under continuous artillery and drone fire. Further, the stormtroopers are in varying degrees of separation from their own for a long time, until the reinforcement groups break through to them. A fighter with the call sign Instant stormed an enemy dugout together with his partner, but in the end he was left alone for a month and a half behind enemy lines. During this time, he killed 25 Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters and wounded 13 others. After successfully leaving the positions, the hero told Izvestia correspondents the details of his feat.
Storming an enemy dugout
On September 2, a fighter with the call sign Instant, along with his partner, advanced to storm enemy positions. Due to the difficult terrain, they had to cover almost 20 km on foot, observing camouflage. Poor visibility became their ally: sneaking up to the fortification, they threw homemade charges at it, and then grenades. After that, he immediately engaged in battle with the militants who were trying to escape.
But taking the object is only half the battle. He needs to be restrained. The very first night was a test of strength. The shelter that the soldiers occupied after the assault was dilapidated.
"The dugout that we stormed was on fire, you can't go inside," the fighter explains. — We moved to the next one, which was destroyed. We didn't have time to get used to it — immediately the enemy FPV drone tried to fly inside. At the last moment, he threw a camouflage net over the entrance. The drone got tangled in it and blew up. After that, the entrance had to be thoroughly filled with sandbags. The enemy could not accept the loss of his position and repeatedly tried to regain it.
The next morning, visibility was still low. The commander from the command post said: "There is movement in Zelenka." The enemy group tried to sneak up under the cover of the rain. But they didn't take into account our "eyes" in the sky.
"The commander from the drone guided them as if on a map," says the Instant. — Reported the distance: "One hundred meters… Fifty... Twenty." He ordered them to stick out and hit when they were already fifteen meters away. One fell immediately, the other two threw grenades past and ran, dragging the wounded man.
Two hours later, the attack was repeated. Already by the forces of two groups. But even this attempt was doomed. In that battle, the Instant destroyed three more attackers.
The most revealing, according to the fighter, was the episode the next day. Four enemy soldiers were carelessly walking straight through their position.
— The command, of course, did not inform them that we were here, — says Instant ironically. — They walked as if on their own property. But our commander warned us. I got out of the dugout, made a hole for myself, hid in the bushes and waited. He let me get very close and eliminated me.
It seemed that the enemy acted with surprising carelessness in those days, as if he had forgotten that the airspace could be controlled not only by him, but also by his groups who did not keep their distance and did not disguise themselves from kamikaze drones. One day, the Ukrainian militants made a camp right over the heads of our fighters — Instantly I heard their distinct voices and laughter.
— The commander shouts to them: "Stop, group! Occupy the circular one!" And I think: that's it, the end. They found out," recalls Instant. "My partner was sitting next to me, and I was gesturing to him, 'Don't shoot, they don't know we're here.' The Ukrainian militants lay down twenty paces away. One says to the other, "What kind of a dugout is this?" The second one responds: "Yes, it's broken, can't you see?" And that's it, we went on.
At that moment, salvation appeared in the sky.
"Our FPV drones have started working on them," the fighter continues. — I immediately report to the commander: "Our drones are working out in a group, two were killed." The remaining two ran back. Right at me. That's where I met them. It turns out that he eliminated two more.
After a while, the partner of the Instant Pencil was arranging a position under the skeleton of the wrecked MT-LB tractor. The enemy, who still did not know the exact location of the attack aircraft, began methodically shelling the entire area with artillery and mortars. He processed all the known points that could serve as a shelter. Instantaneous was in the dugout at that time on the line. A direct hit by a mortar mine ended the Pencil's life. From that moment on, the hero of our report was left completely alone.
The only thing that connected him to the world was round-the-clock aerial surveillance. Thanks to him, the Instant could stay in hiding, but was aware of all enemy movements. He acted like a ghost: suddenly appearing out of the ground, he destroyed groups of militants or individual "losers" who were hopelessly behind their own.
Hunting the Hunter
And the enemy continued to search for our soldier. This time, a trio of trained militants armed with NATO-style weapons came for the Instant. Judging by their equipment, they belonged to the Skala assault regiment.
Our fighter used a military trick. He placed a second walkie-talkie on speakerphone in one of the shelters, and he took up a position behind the approaching Ukrainian attack aircraft. In a brief firefight, he killed one and wounded two. They could not figure out where the fire was coming from. But a new disaster struck him from the sky — Ukrainian UAVs. Raising his head, the "Instant" saw a large Baba Yaga drone directly above him. I had to run, hiding from the bombing in one of the cleared dugouts. On the run, he dropped and lost the main radio station. He spent the next night in complete isolation, without communication.
The powerful structures of the Ukrainian dugout withstood the night shelling. Not knowing if the wounded militants would return for the assault, Momentary, having blocked the entrance, lay with a machine gun at the ready. Without a watch, waiting, as it seemed to him, for the morning, he got to the surface. The air was clean. He found his radio and crept up to the burned—out car, the last known place where the wounded were hiding. When he heard the muffled voices, he destroyed the survivors.
Alone and surrounded
Having restored the connection, the Instant continued his daring forays. In another ambush, acting under the clear guidance of a commander who led the entire enemy group from the air, he stopped the movement of seven militants. They were then finished off by drone drops.
"I took everything from them — ammunition, grenades, food," says the fighter. — Then he started doing stretches around his dugout. I set them up, and then six people were blown up on these traps. Our drones have also worked on them. Then, of course, they started coming at me from other sides.
Batteries for radio stations and water bottles were dropped to him from drones. When he ran out of ammunition for the Kalashnikov assault rifle, he switched without hesitation to captured weapons picked up in previous skirmishes.
The commander, whose voice in his headphones became his main link to reality, not only corrected his actions, but also provided simple human support. Sometimes he recorded the fighter's short messages for the family and sent them to his wife. One day, to raise the soldier's spirit, the commander asked at home to take a picture of a letter from the little daughter of the Instant. After printing out the picture, he put it in another parcel with supplies.
More than once, units tried to break through to his rescue. In one of these attempts, our fighters managed to gain a foothold at the opposite end of the forest belt, but they could not immediately approach his shelter. Only on October 1, under the cover of bad weather, one of the stormtroopers managed to break through to the Instant. But he was wounded on the outskirts. The instant evacuated him to his hiding place: then he took care of a wounded comrade and continued to fight.
In a month and a half behind enemy lines, he suffered several direct hits on his hiding place. During one of these attacks, the bunker caught fire. Unable to run outside (as he would have been immediately destroyed from the air), he single-handedly fought the fire inside so as not to suffocate in the smoke.
Only on October 15, both fighters were evacuated to the rear. The instant came out of there without a single injury — only with abrasions under the eye, received during the rupture. With a captured machine gun in his hands.
When we talk, it feels like it was a long time ago — he calmly and thoroughly tells a story from his past.
— I grew up in the countryside. What was the main thing in our childhood there? Warriors," says a native of the village of Vyoshenskaya with a slight smile. — So since my youth I have an idea of what gardens are, what planting is. It helped here. And orientation on the terrain, and understanding what to do, from which side to approach. It's not just stupid to sit and wait for someone to come to you. And here I repeat once again: whoever is smarter wins. They say that one is not a warrior in the field... But it turns out to be a warrior!
Although, of course, it's not just about rural childhood. Instant remembers with gratitude both the army training during military service, and the subsequent training as a volunteer. And although it is often said today that drones and artillery are waging modern warfare, Instant proved what a single soldier trained for close combat, whose mind and will are stronger than any technological superiority, can do. The fighter is presented to the title of "Hero of Russia".
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
