Powder Point: Five years ago the battle for Height 110 in the DNR erupted
Five years ago, on the morning of December 1, 2019, there was a battle for a stronghold of the DNR People's Militia, during which two snipers of the SBU's Alpha unit were killed and at least two were wounded. At that time, a tactic was used, which Ukrainian militants dubbed "toad jumps" - when the enemy tried to seize key points with the help of special units in order to later squeeze out the forces of the Donbas republics from the adjacent territory. Using it, the AFU began to occupy settlements in the "gray zone" on the line of contact - and this process lasted until the start of the CFE in 2022. Izvestia correspondents talked to the participants of the battle for Height 110 in 2019 to reconstruct the details of the combat encounter.
The situation in December 2019 in the DNR
Monk was deputy commander of the 1st motorized rifle battalion of the 1st Slavyansk brigade of the People's Militia People's Militia (DNR NM) at the time of the events described. He told Izvestia that the stronghold at height 110 was located at a bend in the river, 3 km from the village of Novaya Laspa. The line of demarcation in this area ran along the Kalmius River, and there were no active military operations there.
Servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Nevertheless, the Ukrainian side regularly opened fire. Taking advantage of the terrain, scouts and saboteurs could cross the river.
- It was not even a position, but an observation point at the junction with our neighbors," Monakh recalls. - The situation was consistently tense. Ceasefire agreements were not observed. There were moments when Ukrainian DRGs came in and detonated mines.
The international situation could not be called calm either. A NATO summit was to be held in London in early December.
Ukrainian diplomats spoke in advance about the efforts made by their new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to bring about a ceasefire and hinted that Russia was violating these agreements.
In those days, militias were provoked to open fire, and the OSCE recorded these instances - helping to paint a favorable picture for Ukraine.
Fighting for the heights
At the time the battle began, Monakh was at the battalion's command post in the village of Razdolnoye in the Starobeshevsky district of the DNR. After a report that an attack had begun on Hill 110, he and a group of scouts moved to the site. The second group took a different route, from the southern side.
The observation post (OP) at the height was two dugouts and a kitchen, as well as the OP itself on the summit.
- There were firing points around it for a circular defense," Monk said. - As it turned out later, the dog gave its voice in the dark. We had dogs at every position. And the machine gunner shot off to where it was barking. After a while, the attack came from that direction.
Western-made helmets used by Ukrainian special forces
By the time the first group of scouts arrived to help, machine gunner Boxer was killed.
Later, modern night vision devices will be found in the equipment of the destroyed Ukrainian special forces. At the time, the Ukrainian fighters, who were receiving Generation 3+ NVRs from the West as "non-lethal aid," had a complete advantage in night combat. Dogs at their positions were one of the few ways to compensate for the lack of devices and somehow stop night attacks.
Probably, having been detected, the SS did not retreat, but launched a decisive assault. Monk says that the DNR NM fighters took up a circular defense. One of the Ukrainian alphas managed to find an unseen approach, approached the dugout and threw a grenade down the chimney.
- Before that, there had been similar cases of night fighting in the 9th regiment of the DNR, and we had foresight to cover the chimney and all the pipes with rebar, so the grenade didn't go in," Monakh recalled. - They threw the second grenade inside. And the machine gunner, Sasha Boxer or Young, I don't remember exactly now, threw that grenade. Sasha started firing the machine gun.
The Ukrainian special forces operated in three groups: an assault group, sniper cover and air support.
Monk recalls that since there was already close combat, it was impossible to use mortars - they would have hit their own. In addition, at that time, not only the firing of mortars, but also their presence near the front line was recorded by OSCE observers as the use of heavy weapons by the DNR NM, which was prohibited.
The first reconnaissance group, which was on its way to help at Height 110, arrived at the site when the battle had already ended. The second group encountered anti-personnel mines that Ukrainian saboteurs had planted in order to cut off the DNR from the approach of reserves.
While retreating, the SBU snipers, among whom were two lieutenant colonels of the special service, well-known shooters, also blew themselves up on the mines.
The body of one of the snipers and four sets of equipment that had been dropped from the wounded were found at the site of the explosion. The second dead sniper was later reported by the Ukrainian side. The captured weapons and equipment of the special forces were later demonstrated by the DNR NM press service, with the Ukrainian fighters carrying away their communication equipment and devices, and all the sets had empty sub-bags apparently used for electronics.
Monk emphasizes that in order to use the SBU's Alpha during the Minsk agreements, the order had to come from at least the commander of the ATO sector, which means that, at the very least, Ukraine's top military and political leadership was also aware of the provocation.
Among those who led the groups to the battle site and further explored the terrain was the assistant chief of the engineering service of the 1st Slavyansk Brigade with the call sign Circus. He, along with the brigade's deputy commander, scouts and sappers, moved to the battle site and was one of the first to approach the location of the Ukrainian snipers who had blown themselves up while trying to change positions or move away. In Circus' opinion, on their own mines, having mixed up their routes of movement in the heat of battle.
- Everyone was prepared for such attacks," Cirk said. - The only thing is that no one expected them at 110th Height - the front line had much more "tasty" positions for the enemy.
Ukrainian DRGs had been out earlier, so the strongholds on the front line were better prepared to repel attacks, including in terms of engineering. Circus explains that one of the factors in the Ukrainian failure was that at the time of the attack, a reconnaissance NP was stationed at the height. And although Alpha was able to enter the height itself, there it encountered the most difficult enemy for it, the most prepared for close combat.
Circus also specifies that among the mines used by the Ukrainian saboteurs were foreign devices unfamiliar to the DNR sappers at the time.
Further development of the situation
So far, the purpose of the Ukrainian attack is still unknown. Some of the versions are given by a historian with the call sign Golos, who was also serving in the 1st Slavyansk Brigade at the time.
- "At first we thought that the goal was to get another analog of the Derzkaya height (one of the perennial points of aggravation in the south of the DNR. - Izvestia) in the 1st Brigade's line of action," he says. - We are losing a stronghold at the junction of the two battalions, and they end up relying on the village of Granitnoye. There is nothing left for us but to destroy a residential settlement with artillery fire under video cameras right in front of the NATO summit.
Another option, he said, judging by the composition of the group and their weaponry, is an attempt to infiltrate to kidnap or kill someone from the DNR military leadership.
Since that battle, the tactic of "toad jumps," in which the AFU tried to seize key points in one or another defense sector in order to later squeeze out or force the units of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics to withdraw from a particular territory, has been widely used in the future. Gradually it was polished to perfection and even claimed that it would be the key to victory.
- The tactics of "toad jumps" have changed, - says the Voice. - If earlier, in a classic "toad's jump", the army men reinforced by Right Sector fighters (an organization banned in Russia) raced in, starting from that moment they began to involve special units of the SBU and the SDF. It was in this form that the tactic existed until the beginning of the SDF and was used in the entire strip of both corps of the People's Militia.
The largest "toad jump" was the seizure in late 2020 of the village of Staromarievka, which was located on the Daenerys bank of the Kalmius. It started according to the same scheme, but on a larger scale: SDF groups entered the village, set up pontoon crossings, with the support of heavy artillery and Bairaktar UAVs.
Heavy fighting for the village continued into early 2022, and the liberation of Staromarievka came only after a full-scale offensive during the SDF.
Each Ukrainian "toad jump" was accompanied not just by the use of heavy weapons, which should not have been present on the front line, but also by their use to shell towns and villages in order to further "de-populate" (Ukrainian term) them and turn them into a "gray zone".
The overwhelming majority of civilian casualties after 2015 are related precisely to the shelling of cities during Ukrainian advances. It is precisely such military operations by Ukraine that Vladimir Putin also noted when speaking about the reasons for the start of the SWO.
The developments of "toad jumps" can also be found in the tactics used by the AFU during the terrorist attack on the border areas of the Kursk region. There, the AFU's advance mobile groups seized important population centers, bypassing those where they met serious resistance. They believed that the defending Russian units, cut off from the rear, would pull back deep into the territory themselves. As a result, the Ukrainian units would be able to maintain a high tempo of offensive, but their hopes were not realized.
