Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Ilya Ropshin
[REGNUM] Exactly ten years ago, on July 5, 2014, fire from Ukrainian Grad systems rained down on the positions of the DPR Vostok battalion at the height of Saur-Mogila (in the southeast of the DPR, less than ten kilometers from the border with Russia). Artillery shells hit, among other things, the memorial to Soviet soldiers who liberated Donbass from the Nazis in 1943. Eyewitnesses recall: the steles and sculptures survived, but the eternal flame went out, and the inscription to the left of the stairs leading to the top of Saur-Mogila was destroyed: “Protect, protect, protect the world!” After the artillery attack, the assault began - on July 6, neo-Nazis from the Azov battalion, now banned in Russia, launched the assault.
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The Ukrainian Armed Forces' attack on July 5-6 was not the enemy's first attempt to dislodge the militia from the heights dominating the surrounding steppe terrain (in clear weather, the Sea of Azov, 70 km away, is visible from Saurka). But it was from these days that the most difficult phase of the fighting began.
Then, on July 5, at the other end of the republic, under pressure from the enemy, the militias were forced to abandon Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka, Artemovsk and retreat to Donetsk. The loss of Saur-Mogila could have turned the tide of the war in favor of the Ukrainian army, nationalist battalions and other "ATO forces."
But the result was different - the heights remained in the hands of the militia.
The fact that the DPR forces managed to defend Saur-Mogila had not only strategic significance (which will be discussed below), but also moral and symbolic meaning. This should also be discussed in more detail.
RED FLAG ON AN ANCIENT BURIAL MOUND
The 278-meter height of the Donetsk Ridge is called "Grave", this is how the Zaporizhian Cossacks called the burial mounds, regardless of whether they were man-made or natural. Moreover, in ancient times, in the Bronze Age, a burial was actually made on the top of Saur-Mogila. Taras Shevchenko lamented the excavations of the "grave" : he confused this mound with another one - Lugovaya Mogila. However, excavations on Saur-Mogila began, but three years after the death of the "kobzar", in 1864.
The mound is mentioned in Cossack songs and legends:
De Savur-grave, a wide valley, a blue eagle flies by;
Glorious army, glorious Zaporizhzhya sets out on a campaign...
In 1926, the State Film Industry of the Soviet Union released the film "Savur-Mogila. From the Tales of Our Days" - part of the epic about the "red devils". And in 1936, the government of the Ukrainian SSR declared Savur-Mogila an ancient monument.
Five years later, Saur-Mogila, in addition to its historical and cultural significance, once again acquired tactical significance.
From 1941 to 1943, the Germans built defensive structures of the Mius Front in the vicinity of the height. An observation post of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht was located on the top of the mound. On July 17, 1943, the Red Army troops penetrated the front to a depth of 10 km and consolidated themselves at the foot of Saur-Mogila.
To remedy the situation, the Germans quickly transferred the SS Reich and Totenkopf tank divisions to the mound, and also actively used aviation - Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers. As a result, on August 2, the Red Army forces retreated to their original positions. However, on the night of August 30, a group of scouts from the 96th Rifle Division broke through to the top of the mound and took up defensive positions there, raising a red flag on the top. On August 31, the heights were finally taken.
At the end of the war, a monument to fallen Soviet soldiers was erected at Saur-Mogila. The monument bore an inscription stating that 23,238 soldiers and officers perished in the battles for the liberation of Donbass. On September 10, 1967, the grand opening of the memorial complex, topped by a 36-meter granite obelisk, took place. A sculpture of a Soviet soldier was erected at the foot of the obelisk. In 1975, the Eternal Flame was lit next to the sculpture. In 2009, Saur-Mogila, as a symbol of the liberation of Donbass, received the status of a cultural heritage site of Ukraine of national significance.
And five years later it once again became the site of bloody battles. And just like during the Great Patriotic War, it is quite understandable why.
"THE HEIGHT ALLOWED US TO OBSERVE ALL MOVEMENTS"
The enemy has also repeatedly stated that capturing the 300-meter height was of decisive importance for the 2014 campaign. From this peak, “it was possible to cover half of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the border between Russia and Ukraine,” former ATO spokesman Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky explained to a Ukrainian audience in 2015.
The “separatists” (as Kyiv called the defenders of Donbass), controlling Saur-Mogila, did not allow the Ukrainian security forces to complete their assigned task: to consolidate their position in the border zone in the area of Starobeshevo, Amvrosiivka and further, in order, as already mentioned above, to ensure that the DPR was cut off from the border with Russia.
He was echoed by the commander of the 3rd special forces regiment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Colonel Vitaly Pikulin : “The height allowed the separatists to observe all of our movements that were taking place around us on the bare… steppe terrain.”
This unfavorable situation for the enemy did not arise immediately.
"EASTERN" ARE ON THE RISE
The prelude to the capture of Saur-Mogila by the Novorossiya militia forces was the battle of June 5, 2014. Then the Vostok battalion under the command of Alexander Khodakovsky attempted to take the Marinovka checkpoint, which is south of Saur-Mogila. This attempt was unsuccessful.
Not only the determination of the Ukrainian military and border guards played a role, but also the use of aviation: the Kiev command sent Su-25 to help the border guards. As the State Border Service of Ukraine stated, 5 border guards were injured and several militiamen were killed.
At the same time, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported the destruction of a Ural vehicle, two KamAZ trucks and one armored personnel carrier belonging to the militia. The Ukrainians announced the withdrawal of a part of the Vostok to Russian territory. The militia's losses were not critical: two killed, 13 wounded. 80 fighters retreated to the Rostov Region, where, as reported, they were undergoing retraining, and the wounded were treated in a Taganrog hospital.
Three days later, on June 8, militia forces fortified themselves in the city of Snezhnoye, north of the heights.
On June 12, the Ukrainians, with the forces of one company of the 79th separate airmobile brigade and a reconnaissance group of the 3rd special forces regiment, attempted to take control of Saur-Mogila, but were ambushed, losing two servicemen killed and 27 wounded.
As a result, the paratroopers focused on completing the priority task - taking control of the border, bypassing the Saurka.
On July 3, the then Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Andriy Parubiy, announced the destruction of a “terrorist stronghold” at Saur-Mogila by an artillery strike.
But just three days later, on July 5, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had to launch the aforementioned massive artillery attack, and then throw the Azov troops into the attack.
A number of media outlets reported that 70-80% of the militants of the nationalist battalion had been destroyed. But the next day, July 7, the then deputy battalion commander Igor Mosiychuk said:
“This is complete nonsense, a morbid imagination.”
But the nationalist did not say that Saur-Mogila is still controlled by the “Easterners,” and by a fairly small group of them.
HOW THIRTY MILITIAMEN "WARMED UP" THE IZVARINSKY CAULDRON
"At first it was a reinforced company - 90 people. And then, because the area of this Saur-Mogila itself does not allow for such a number of people - it is difficult to dig in there, difficult to hold the defense - I reduced our presence there almost threefold, to about 30 people," recalled the commander of the Vostok battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Thirty people stood watch there for the following months, with the composition changing in rotation every two or three days, the battalion commander noted. A small number of fighters, having found themselves in the right place at the right time, created serious problems for the enemy.
Already in mid-July, Saur-Mogila began to play an important role in the formation of the cauldron, which would later be called Izvarinsky or Southern. It included the 72nd and 79th airmobile brigades and the 24th mechanized brigade, as well as the Shakhtyorsk battalion. By the way, let us recall that the infamous Tornado battalion was created on the basis of Shakhtyorsk, which in 2015 was “expelled from the Gestapo for cruelty”: by order of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, it was disbanded for crimes against the civilian population.
On July 23, in the area of Saur-Mogila, the militia shot down two Su-25s of the Ukrainian Air Force. As a result, four days later, on July 27, the Ukrainian Armed Forces began artillery preparation. And then the enemy launched missiles.
“Due to the inaccessibility of enemy targets for other fire weapons during the battles for Saur-Mogila, the DPR positions began to be hit with Tochka-U systems,” Viktor Muzhenko, then Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, later said.
After at least four Tochkas had worked on Savur-Mogila, Ukrainian security forces announced that most of the facilities had been hit, and on July 28, Muzhenko reported to Petro Poroshenko that the height had been captured. The DPR military leadership denied this report, and on August 1, both sides declared control over the height.
Why was battalion commander Protsyuk brought to trial?
Khodakovsky emphasizes that in reality, both in July and at the beginning of August, the militia confidently held their positions: “Well, once we took responsibility for this height, we didn’t hand it over to anyone – we left it under our control.”
And indeed, on August 4–5, another Ukrainian “offensive” on the supposedly captured mountain took place.
Units of the 51st separate mechanized and 25th airmobile brigades, the 3rd special forces regiment and a joint group of volunteer battalions attempted to storm Saur-Mogila, but retreated with losses.
The very next day, August 6, the commander of the combined battalion tactical group of the 51st separate mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Pavel Protsyuk, was removed from his post and brought to trial for failure to carry out an order to take the heights.
The Ukrainians were gathering forces: for example, an official video of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry from August 6, 2014, entitled “Paratroopers’ Raid on Savur-Mogila” can be found online. At the same time, the Ukrainian military themselves did not always understand the meaning of what was happening.
"And our commander is being brought to trial. But the entire battalion will stand by him! And without him, no one will go anywhere. And you can't drive people there at gunpoint. Everything is under fire there," one of the fighters of the 51st Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was indignant in an interview with the Ukrainian publication "Left Bank." He was perplexed: where do the "separatists" get so much ammunition - " they have been "showering" us for three days." And he was indignant: the one who said on live television that Savur-Mogila is under the control of Ukrainian forces just wants to cover his ass.
REPAIRMEN IN BATTLE
Meanwhile, the fighting continued. “In the most violent attack on the defenders of Saur-Mogila, almost three dozen units of equipment alone took part against thirty-two of my fighters – and they held out,” recalled the Vostok battalion commander Khodakovsky.
And then, when the equipment was unable to ensure the assault, the VSSU soldiers were even forced to give the defenders some time to rest.
As a result, the commander of "Vostok" sent a repair unit to Saur-Mogila to restore Ukrainian equipment. And then the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a new offensive. The repairmen had to join the battle, the battalion commander pointed out.
Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment in battles near Saur-Mogila. 2014
"They stayed and accepted the fight along with the others. And in the morning we had 32 people, and in the evening there were only 7 people left," Khodakovsky said.
On August 7, the Ukrainian military drove the militias from the heights. But, as it turned out, not for long.
TWENTY DAYS OF "VICTORY"
A week after the Ukrainian Armed Forces' "victory" at Saur-Mogila, on August 14, the 3rd battalion of the 30th Ukrainian mechanized brigade fled from its positions in the village of Stepanivka, which significantly complicated the lives of the Ukrainian military personnel stationed at Saur-Mogila. Stepanivka was liberated by the militia.
Four days later, the commander of the infamous Donbass volunteer battalion, Semyon Semenchenko, said that all the bravura reports in the Ukrainian media about the militants being “in agony” and “already fleeing” were lies. On the contrary, the situation had become more complicated, and fierce battles were taking place at the same Saur-Mogila.
On August 21, as a result of Grad shelling by the militia, the obelisk on Saur-Mogila was destroyed. Five days later, the DPR headquarters reported the return of control over the strategic height.
On August 28, Channel One showed a report from the scene, and even the most staunch supporters of Ukraine were forced to admit: the Ukrainian Armed Forces had lost control over the strategic heights. The Izvarinsky cauldron had already been formed by that time.
As a result, the attempt of the Ukrainian blitzkrieg to take control of the former border of the Russian Federation and Ukraine from Marinovka to Izvarino failed, and the conflict was clearly becoming protracted.
"THEY STAYED ON TOP"
"Seven of my soldiers who died during the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attempts to capture the mound are buried at the top of Saur-Mogila. The epic defense of this height was so dramatic that I, without a moment's hesitation, gave the order to bury the fallen where they laid down their lives," Khodakovsky recalled.
A tradition has emerged in the unit: on the anniversary of the creation of Vostok, which is celebrated on May 6, to gather at Saur-Mogila, where comrades are buried.
The commander emphasized more than once: the graves of those killed on the heights of the mound became part of the memorial complex, and therefore they deserved to be buried where their ancestors died, defending Donbass in 1943.
True, Khodakovsky noted, "some discussions" arose when the project for restoring the Soviet memorial was being developed, but in the end the veteran militiamen were accommodated. The main argument was: the fighters did not surrender "height 277.9" to the enemy, so are we really "evacuating" their remains ourselves?
The Saur-Mogila memorial complex was restored, expanded and opened on September 8, 2022.
"We visited the memorial complex "Saur-Mogila" and at the very top we bowed to the graves of my soldiers who died in battles on this mound - graves that became part of the memorial through joint efforts. Now everyone who comes can see the emblem of "Vostok", read the names and call signs of its soldiers who connected the torn time with their feat," Khodakovsky wrote.
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