Volodymyr Hera

“The Pskov paratroopers misled the brigade. The entire brigade tactical group moved towards Heorhiivka–Khriashchuvate area, and this was a trap set up by the Russian troops – an attack on that checkpoint, followed by an organized retreat. In our experience, we hadn’t faced anything like this before, and we (the brigade tactical group) followed them. And they began to encircle the brigade forces. One of my soldiers saw through a telescope (a little something brought by volunteers; sure, military optical devices would have been much better, but we tried to get the most of whatever civilian devices we had) mortars and four tanks moving from one side. I immediately ordered to start shelling. We were 9 kilometers away from them, and our mortars could only shoot up to 7,900 meters, but even though we couldn’t reach them, the fear factor worked – they got scared of being shelled. And they wouldn’t get any closer. We waited for the heavy artillery to arrive, and once it did, would shell them with everything we had.

This happened in the morning, and by noon, the 8th Regiment of Special Forces was already driving around, collecting the so-called trophy weapons and vehicles. There were also those soldiers there – a sergeant and five other lads (if I’m not mistaken). The SSU took them right away; we didn’t even have time to get any valuable information from them. But we had all the technical documentation for their equipment, personal belongings, and papers. These were Pskov paratroopers.”