by Aleksandr Dimitrovsky
[REGNUM] In the household of the battalion commander of the armored group of the Donetsk international brigade “Pyatnashka” (now the 2nd detachment of the special forces regiment of the DPR Ministry of Defense) there is almost no equipment donated or transferred from somewhere - almost all of it is captured. Stolen from the battlefield under the enemy's nose, repaired and put into service.
“This is the Flea, the last thing we squeezed out, ” Maxim Surovikin introduces us to a short infantry fighting vehicle in the remnants of Ukrainian camouflage. “ We have it for agricultural work, in addition to combat missions, there is a pneumatic, it sits down and rises, you can screw a barrel to it, and it brings us water. “Zets” were only installed so that our own people wouldn’t hit us, and the number was changed.”
Nearby there is also a former Ukrainian BMP-1, nicknamed “Kat”, named by the soldiers for some unknown reason in honor of the radio operator from “17 Moments of Spring”, opposite it is “Ukropka”. There are also T-72 and T-80 tanks - all Soviet-made goods. This is the specificity of the Avdeevsky direction, where the brigade is fighting: the enemy knows what will happen and saves.
“They use minimal equipment; we burn it right away. Or we squeeze it out. You won’t see here either “Leopards” or “Strykers” - nothing that is in the Zaporozhye direction. They know that we have already sharpened our teeth on “Leopards” for a long time, I even asked the commander to let me go to Bakhmut or Zaporozhye, to which they told me: “There’s nothing for you to do there.” I’m very upset, we’re sitting and waiting,” Surovikin says with feigned sadness. In fact, he already has enough work. The main task of the armored group is to support infantry during assaults and “roll-ups”. Plus work on targets identified by intelligence.
And when there is no such work, there is combat training and endless repairs. And we started talking at the Pyatnashki repair center. Maxim Aleksandrovich met us in work clothes and was no different from any mechanic, only then he changed into overalls with medals. A “creative atmosphere” reigned in the hangar - disassembled turrets of armored vehicles, suspended engines, boxes with various ammunition, the smell of a mixture of sweat, fuel oil, diesel, smoke, seasoned with a strong word... There was a solid boom nearby: this air defense was covering an object that they were periodically trying to hit from that side.
Battalion commander Surovikin, sweating in a tight tank overall, casually fingered the awards on his chest. Here is the St. George Cross, the most important one. This is for the defense of Shakhtersk, then for the battles at Saur-Mogila. The second row is already late, from the Ministry of Defense. And those are the most valuable, pride and memory of what happened at the very beginning. Then Maxim came to the war straight from the Odessa Anti-Maidan. In 2014, he was a member of the Odessa people's squad of the anti-Maidan movement. Their camp was located right next to the House of Trade Unions, which was simply a miracle to pass through.
With broken ribs, Surovikin escaped through the back door, which was immediately blocked. Those who remained in the building burned to death. And he went to rebellious Donetsk, to the “Oplot” of Alexander Zakharchenko, where he was given a machine gun and sent to defend the airport. Maxim remembers his first fight well. But the first battle in a tank is difficult. Too much has happened since then. But now he has a specific attitude towards death: “It doesn’t hurt in a tank.”
“If they hit you, then they only collect gunpowder. This is a plus to some extent, we reassure ourselves with this. Psychologically, of course, it’s difficult, but the main thing is to overcome yourself and get through the first battle. Why do they say “for one beaten, they give two unbeaten”? Because you’re already fired up, motivated, that’s it. And so the return flies at us all the time, counter-battery fighting. Let’s go and look at the tank,” invites the battalion commander, who chose the call sign “Psycho.” And then he talks about recruits for whom the argument “it doesn’t hurt” works in the other direction: there was a man who, at the sound of the engine running, fell to his knees and shouted that he wouldn’t go into the tank.
It's the same on the battlefield. Captured equipment, which is quickly put on the move and stolen by Pyatnashka tankers, as a rule, remains with ammunition. If a caterpillar falls off, the Ukrainian military simply abandons the car and runs. It's scary to realize that you are an immovable target. “Not everyone is taken out psychologically to work in a stationary car. And I only have one deputy tech, Bulldog, who burned eight pieces of equipment from his standing tank,” Surovikin casually remarks, and then you begin to understand where he got such a call sign. The word “crazy” is also about reckless courage, pronounced with admiration. So volunteers still join the armor, “because we are men with balls,” the battalion commander grins.
The battalion commander himself is constantly on the front line, he says, “I’m a gunner.” He travels as a gunner operator, but if two or three units of equipment are needed to complete a task, he works as a spotter and gives coordinates. Generally speaking, all the tankers here are infantry. It’s just that, during numerous heavy battles, the brigade realized that it is easier to have your own armored vehicles than to beg someone for support, when every second in battle is worth its weight in gold and can cost the lives of many soldiers. Most often, armored vehicles are used for assault, supporting infantry during “roll-ups”, when, according to Maxim, the entire attack with the capture of a position with good organization takes 15 minutes. But special tasks are also performed.
“We are extinguishing American mortars. The equipment, as I said, is not being transported, but the mortars are being carried, silent, they do not allow our infantry to live, they terrorize. Just recently they caught infantry on rotation from a tank and gouged them out at night. Reconnaissance saw this moment, we stood in ambush for half the night and hit the target as much as possible. We are grateful for this,” the tanker answers boringly when asked about his most memorable episode.
"FORK RAKE"
We go around the entire hangar. Through the noise of the engines, the commander is trying to find out something from the mechanics about the progress of repairing the engine, which is hanging helplessly on chains. And the repairmen, like surgeons on the patient’s heart, are diligently trying to resurrect it, using all their skills, donor spare parts and the help of some mother. Of all the armored vehicles in the hangar, only the BTR-82 was donated by the command. The iron industry became a full-fledged combat unit relatively recently, so it has only just begun to receive support in spare parts, ammunition, and batteries.
“We took this car ,” Surovikin points to the BMP-1 with his hand, “ when reconnaissance reported on the radio that a damaged vehicle had been found at zero between our positions and the Ukrainian ones. We brought special keys, we already know what to go with, we started it and left. They didn’t fire until they started it, and then we took it out from under the fire.”
While we are gawking at yet another captured vehicle and asking about the finds left over from the previous owners, the armored group commander turns the conversation to the specifics of combat. Typically, a unit sends three vehicles, with reconnaissance supporting them. Maxim, in the place of the tank commander, oversees the work of all armored vehicles, waiting for intelligence information about the enemy’s actions and the presence of copters in the air. Here you need to spend hours repairing and checking all the important components of the machines, driving around training grounds for a long time, learning to perform delicate maneuvers, but on the field everything is simple and fast.
And now the commander orders the soldiers “everyone to the armor!”, and a deafening roar echoes through the hangar from the roaring engines. After this, the armored group advances in a slender column to the training ground. “In our free time from combat and repairs, we test recruits and teach them cameramanship, shooting, and driving skills, ” says Maxim. “ That’s why we try to go out and work often. And our veterans could use some more practice.” In a simple camouflage T-shirt in the middle of a field, among growling cars in the approaching dusk, he clearly feels lighter and freer than in a jumpsuit with awards in front of the lens.
Today his guys are practicing “fork-rakes”. Formation figures in which tanks cover infantry fighting vehicles, depending on the number of tanks: if fewer are “forks”, more are “rakes”. The personnel, explains Surovikin, must understand what distance to keep between the equipment if one hundred twenty or 152 falls. During the surge, everyone needs to feel each other. And today’s training is further strengthened by a special condition: the commander said “we work the old fashioned way, without a walkie-talkie.” And the equipment drives in complete radio silence, you also need to be able to do this, since radio communications are jammed and in battle you need to provide for everything. “We train turns on various types of soil, asphalt, concrete, if the “goose” comes off, we practice putting it on quickly, since this helps directly in combat,”— the battalion commander waves his hands. His next day in the war is over, night falls on the waste heaps. Deafened by the engines, we return from the training ground in deep darkness.
For us, what we saw and heard is a lot of impressions and a plot for stories that can be retold to others. For Surovikin, who has been fighting for the ninth year, and his fighters, this is commonplace. Everyday, already familiar work. There was such an episode, or another one. And how long will it be until the case is finished? Such people are not even aware of any heroism in their actions. Praise from the command is enough for them, and “we always get results.” But it is precisely such people who are the measure of heroism, making it easy to draw the line between the ostentatious and the real. And if the battalion commander decided to catch the Leopard, you believe that he will definitely catch it.