Aug. 28, morning. Outskirts of the village of Novokaterynivka
Along with the three other soldiers from the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, Andriy Mykytenko crawled through a vegetable garden, and then across a sunflower field, until they reached a line of trees. Then they quietly proceeded south.
They were heading away from a cursed village where they would have faced just two options if they had remained — captivity or death.
In a couple of hours, five soldiers from the 51st brigade, who had also got out of Novokaterynivka, joined Mykytenko’s group. Then a dozen of men from the 42nd Territorial Defense Battalion, who were also escaping from Novokaterynivka after a crushing defeat, joined the group as well.
Days before that, all three units had been sent by Ukrainian commanders to break the encirclement and reinforce Ukrainian forces trapped in the city of Ilovaisk.
But they had fallen into the trap themselves.
About 300 soldiers from 92nd battalion and 100 armored vehicles arrived by train on Aug. 25 at Chaplyne, a small train station in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast more than 100 kilometers west of the city of Donetsk, and started to move towards the war-torn Donbas.
They would move a short way and then halt, with only the commanders knowing their planned route. The soldiers were all volunteers who knew that their mission was to rescue Ukrainian troops in Ilovaisk. But the closer they came to the city, the more often they were coming under fire.
“On Aug. 27, we were shelled from the left, from the right and from the center,” Mykytenko remembers. “On the crossroads near the village of Pobeda (on the TO509 road, leading from Komsomolske towards Ilovasisk), my vehicle was hit and burned out. I was thrown out of the car and suffered concussion.”
Andriy Mykytenko stands in his house in the village of Nove Pekelne, Kharkiv Oblast on April 27.
Unlucky rescue operation
Mykytenko, a drafted soldier who had nom-de-guerre “Deputy” as he was once was a deputy on the local council in his home village, was saved by his commander, who pulled him from the burning ZIL truck and got him into another military truck, a GAZ 66.
“We drove, shooting back all the time, as there were traps by all the trees and electric poles. After a few kilometers we eventually reached Novokaterynivka,” he said.
Another part of the 92nd brigade column headed to Novozariyivka, 10 kilometers to the south of Novokaterynivka, where it came under fire by a barrage of Grad rockets on Aug. 28.
The Memory Book, a citizen volunteer project that collects information about the Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle, records the deaths of nine soldiers of the 92nd brigade in the Grad rocket attack near Novozariyivka. Another soldier is recorded as being killed in Novokaterynivka.
Mykytenko said that according to information circulated within the brigade, 12 soldiers were killed in attempts to break the encirclement of Ilovaisk, and two others went missing.
Carnage in Novokaterynivka
Mykytenko said that early on Aug. 28 he saw two infantry fighting vehicles of the 42nd battalion, which were shelled by Russian troops when entering Novokaterynivka.
“Those vehicles were all that remained of that military column,” he said.
Some 100 soldiers of the 42nd Territorial Defense Battalion were sent in several helicopters from Kramatorsk early on Aug. 27 with the same mission — to help those fighting in Ilovaisk.
They landed near the village of Berezove, with one helicopter crashing on landing, injuring several soldiers. Later they came under a massive artillery barrage near Novokaterynivka, with seven soldiers being killed, according to the Memory Book.
Andriy Mykytenko shows a screenshot of Russian TV channel show with a picture of his flaming truck on April 27 in Nove Pekelne, Kharkiv Oblast.
Mykytenko said the Russians hoisted a Ukrainian flag on a tank standing on the crossroads by Novokaterynivka. But when several Ukrainian soldiers approached it, the Russians shot them, Mykytenko said.
The way out of the village was so risky that the soldiers in Mykytenko’s group had to leave two of the wounded there, along with the medics who were treating them and refused to leave them.
“We put them all in a basement. Later the Russians found and captured them, but they were released soon after that,” Mykytenko said.
Long way home
Leaving Novokaterynivka, the soldiers had no map, but relied on a piece of paper on which a local pro-Ukrainian resident had sketched a rough plan of the local roads.
When they reached the outskirts of Komsomolske and saw a Ukrainian flag flying, the group decided to keep their distance, fearing it could be a Russian trap just like the one in Novokaterynivka.
Andriy Mykytenko plays with his dog at his home village of Nove Pekelne, Kharkiv Oblast on April 27.
“So we crossed the Kalmius River and headed to Starobesheve. We had an information that Starobesheve was still ours,” Mykytenko said. A group of men from the 42nd brigade separated from them and went in another direction.
They reached Starobesheve only at night and decided to wait in the woods until dawn, fearing the soldiers may start shooting into the night without checking who it was.
It was the right decision: A reconnaissance group from the 92nd brigade found them in the woods and warned them that Starobesheve had already been occupied by the Russian troops.
So early on Aug. 29, they all headed back to Komsomolske, were a rescue group of the Donbas volunteer battalion gave them a lift to Volnovakha. Then they headed from Volnovakha in an old, cramped bus across Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv Oblast until they reached Kluhyno-Bashkyrivka, the home base of 92nd brigade, where Mykytenko served until 2015.
On the way, they stopped on the highway between Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts at Mykytenko’s home village of Nove Pekelne. Mykytenko’s mother, father, brother and wife met them on a road and gave the soldiers some food, fresh socks, and underwear.
“My parents said we were all black (with dirt),” he said.
Unofficial award received by Andriy Mykytenko as a participant in fights for Ilovaisk. (Photo from Mykytenko’s personal archive)
The 92nd Mechanized Brigade is based in the village of Kluhyno-Bashkyrivka in Kharkiv Oblast recruits mainly from Kharkiv, Poltava and Sumy oblasts. Some 300 of its soldiers were sent to break through the Russian encirclement of Ilovaisk. They failed, and suffered dozens of losses – mostly on Aug. 28.
The 42nd Motorized Infantry Battalion is a formation of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. It was originally formed in Kirovohrad. In August 2014 the battalion was sent by Ukrainian commanders to break through to encircled Ukrainian forces at Ilovaisk.
