KYIV: As was his habit before each flight, the veteran Ukrainian Army pilot ran hand in hand with the fuselage of his Mi-8 helicopter, caressing the metal skin of the heavy transporter, bringing luck to him and his crew.
They will need it. Their destination – a besieged steel mill in the brutal city Mariupol – There was a death trap. Some of the other employees didn’t make it back alive.
Still, the mission was critical, even desperate. Ukrainian soldiers were gunned down, their supplies were running out, their dead and wounded piled up. on his last-ditch stand azovstal was a growing symbol of the mill Ukrainedisobedience in the war against Russia, They could not be allowed to be destroyed.
The 51-year-old pilot – identified only by his first name, Oleksandr – flew just one mission to Mariupol, and he considered it the toughest flight of his 30-year career. He took the risk, he said, because he didn’t want the Azovstal fighters to be forgotten.
In the charred hell-scape of that plant, in an underground bunker-turned-medical station that provided shelter from death and destruction above, word began to reach the wounded that a miracle might happen. Those who reported that he was on the list for evacuation, a junior sergeant, had been mutilated by mortar rounds, crushed his left leg and forced his amputation above the knee.
,BuffaloHis name was de Guerre. He had gone through a lot, but another fatal challenge posed: escape from Azovstal.
A series of covert, against odds, terrain-hugging, high-speed helicopter missions to reach Azovstal defenders in March, April and May is celebrated as one of the most heroic feats of military derring-do in Ukraine. Used to be. – Month war. Some ended in devastation; Each became progressively riskier as Russian air defense batteries took hold.
The full story of the seven re-supply and rescue missions is yet to be told. But from exclusive interviews with two injured survivors; a military intelligence officer who flew the first mission; And pilot interviews provided by the Ukrainian military, The Associated Press have pieced together an account of one of the last flights from the perspective of both the rescuers and the rescued.
The President of Ukraine surrendered only after the over 2,500 defenders living in the Azovstal ruins surrendered. Volodymyr Zelensky Give wind of the first missions and their deadly cost.
The tenacity of Azovstal fighters thwarted Moscow’s objective of quickly capturing Mariupol and prevented Russian troops from redeploying elsewhere. Zelensky told Ukrainian broadcaster ICTV that the pilots braved “powerful” Russian air defenses to fly in food, water, medicine and weapons, beyond enemy lines, so that the plant’s defenders could fight and take out the wounded.
A military intelligence official said one helicopter was shot down and two others never returned, and are believed to be missing. He said he wore civilian clothes for his flight, thinking he might melt into the population if he survived the crash: “We knew it might be a one-way ticket.”
Zelensky said: “These are absolutely heroic people who knew what was difficult, who knew it was almost impossible. … We lost a lot of pilots.”
If the buffalo had its way, it wouldn’t have lived to be empty. His life ended early on 23 March after a 120 mm mortar round tearing his left leg, bleeding his right leg and shrapnel his back through a street fight in Mariupol, his suffering ended early. Would.
The 20-year-old, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition that he would not be identified by name, said he did not want it to appear as if he was seeking publicity when thousands of Azovstal protestors are imprisoned or dead. He was en route to a Russian tank, aiming to destroy it with his shoulder-launched, armor-piercing NLAW missile on the last day of the first month of the invasion, when his combat was cut short.
Thrown next to the wreckage of a burning car, he dragged himself to cover in a nearby building and “decided it would be better to crawl into the basement and die there quietly,” he said.
But his friends escorted him to the Ilyich Steel Mill, which later collapsed in mid-April as Russian forces tightened their hold on Mariupol and its strategic port on the Azov Sea. Three days passed before the medics were able to dissect in the basement bomb shelter. He considers himself lucky: The doctors still had the anaesthetic on hand when it came time to go under the knife.
When he came around, a nurse told him how sorry he was that he had lost his limb.
He cut off with a funny joke: “Will they return the money for 10 tattoo sessions?”
“I had a lot of tattoos on my leg,” he said. One remains, a human figure, but his legs are also now gone.
After surgery, he was transferred to the Azovstal plant. A citadel covering approximately 11 square kilometers (over 4 mi), with a maze of 24 kilometers (15-mi) underground tunnels and bunkers, the plant was practically impenetrable.
But the situation was dire.
“There was constant shelling,” said Corporal Vladislav Zahorodny, 22, who was shot through the pelvis during a street fight in Mariupol, severing a nerve.
Driven to Azovstal, he met Buffalo there. They already knew each other: both were from Chernihiv, a city in the north surrounded by Russian forces.
Zahorodny saw the missing leg. He asked Buffalo how he was doing.
“All right, we’ll club soon,” Buffalo replied.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Zahorodny was evacuated by helicopter from Azovstal on 31 March.
This was his first helicopter flight. En route, the Mi-8 caught fire, killing one of its engines. The other kept them by plane for the remainder of the morning 80 minutes to the city of Dniepro on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine.
He would mark his salvation with a mortar-round tattoo on the forearm of his right hand: “I must not forget this,” he said.
Next week came the turn of the buffalo. He was confused about going. On the one hand, he was relieved that his share of the dwindling food and water would now go to others who are still able to fight; On the other hand, “there was a painful feeling. They stayed there, and I left them.”
Nevertheless, he almost missed his flight.
Soldiers pulled him from his deep bunker onto a gurney and loaded him onto a truck that drove to a pre-arranged landing area. The soldiers wrapped him in a jacket.
The ammunition cargo of the helicopter was unloaded earlier. Then, the wounded were lifted up.
But not buffalo. Left in the back corner of the truck, he was somehow overlooked. He could not sound the alarm because his throat was injured by mortar explosions, and he was still so hoarse that he himself could not be heard at the whoop-hoop-hoop of the helicopter’s rotors.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, if not today,'” he recalled. “And suddenly someone shouted, ‘You forgot the soldier in the truck!'”
Because the cargo bay was full, the Buffalo was placed crosswise from the others, who were riding side by side. A crew member held his hand and told him not to worry, they would make it home.
“All my life,” he told the crew member, “I’ve dreamed of flying a helicopter. It doesn’t matter when we arrive – my dream has come true.”
In his cockpit, the wait for Alexander seemed endless, with minutes feeling like hours.
“Very scary,” he said. “You see the explosion all around and the next shell may reach your place.”
In the fog of war and with the full picture of covert missions still emerging, it is not possible to be entirely sure that Buffalo and the pilot, who spoke to reporters in a video interview recorded and shared by the military They were on the same flight. But their account details match.
Both gave the same date: the night of 4-5 April. Oleksandr recalled that he was fired upon by a ship as they swung over the waters outside Mariupol. An explosion wave made the helicopter bounce around “like a toy”, he said. But his escape maneuver got him out of trouble.
Buffalo also misses an explosion. Those evacuated were later told that the pilot had avoided the missile.
Oleksandr flew the helicopter at a speed of 220 kilometers (135 mi) per hour and flew to a height of 3 meters (9 ft) above the ground – except for power lines. A second helicopter on his mission never returned; On the return flight, her pilot radioed her that she was short of fuel. This was his last communication.
On his gurney, Buffalo watched the terrain zip through a porthole. “We flew under the trees, over the fields. Very low,” he said.
They made it safely to Dnipro. Upon landing, Alexander heard the wounded calling for the pilots. They expected that they would yell at him for throwing them around so violently during the flight.
“But when I opened the door, I heard people saying, ‘Thank you,'” he said.
“Everyone clapped,” recalled Buffalo, who is now rehabilitating with Zahorodny at the Kyiv clinic. “We told the pilots that they had accomplished the impossible.”
They will need it. Their destination – a besieged steel mill in the brutal city Mariupol – There was a death trap. Some of the other employees didn’t make it back alive.
Still, the mission was critical, even desperate. Ukrainian soldiers were gunned down, their supplies were running out, their dead and wounded piled up. on his last-ditch stand azovstal was a growing symbol of the mill Ukrainedisobedience in the war against Russia, They could not be allowed to be destroyed.
The 51-year-old pilot – identified only by his first name, Oleksandr – flew just one mission to Mariupol, and he considered it the toughest flight of his 30-year career. He took the risk, he said, because he didn’t want the Azovstal fighters to be forgotten.
In the charred hell-scape of that plant, in an underground bunker-turned-medical station that provided shelter from death and destruction above, word began to reach the wounded that a miracle might happen. Those who reported that he was on the list for evacuation, a junior sergeant, had been mutilated by mortar rounds, crushed his left leg and forced his amputation above the knee.
,BuffaloHis name was de Guerre. He had gone through a lot, but another fatal challenge posed: escape from Azovstal.
A series of covert, against odds, terrain-hugging, high-speed helicopter missions to reach Azovstal defenders in March, April and May is celebrated as one of the most heroic feats of military derring-do in Ukraine. Used to be. – Month war. Some ended in devastation; Each became progressively riskier as Russian air defense batteries took hold.
The full story of the seven re-supply and rescue missions is yet to be told. But from exclusive interviews with two injured survivors; a military intelligence officer who flew the first mission; And pilot interviews provided by the Ukrainian military, The Associated Press have pieced together an account of one of the last flights from the perspective of both the rescuers and the rescued.
The President of Ukraine surrendered only after the over 2,500 defenders living in the Azovstal ruins surrendered. Volodymyr Zelensky Give wind of the first missions and their deadly cost.
The tenacity of Azovstal fighters thwarted Moscow’s objective of quickly capturing Mariupol and prevented Russian troops from redeploying elsewhere. Zelensky told Ukrainian broadcaster ICTV that the pilots braved “powerful” Russian air defenses to fly in food, water, medicine and weapons, beyond enemy lines, so that the plant’s defenders could fight and take out the wounded.
A military intelligence official said one helicopter was shot down and two others never returned, and are believed to be missing. He said he wore civilian clothes for his flight, thinking he might melt into the population if he survived the crash: “We knew it might be a one-way ticket.”
Zelensky said: “These are absolutely heroic people who knew what was difficult, who knew it was almost impossible. … We lost a lot of pilots.”
If the buffalo had its way, it wouldn’t have lived to be empty. His life ended early on 23 March after a 120 mm mortar round tearing his left leg, bleeding his right leg and shrapnel his back through a street fight in Mariupol, his suffering ended early. Would.
The 20-year-old, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition that he would not be identified by name, said he did not want it to appear as if he was seeking publicity when thousands of Azovstal protestors are imprisoned or dead. He was en route to a Russian tank, aiming to destroy it with his shoulder-launched, armor-piercing NLAW missile on the last day of the first month of the invasion, when his combat was cut short.
Thrown next to the wreckage of a burning car, he dragged himself to cover in a nearby building and “decided it would be better to crawl into the basement and die there quietly,” he said.
But his friends escorted him to the Ilyich Steel Mill, which later collapsed in mid-April as Russian forces tightened their hold on Mariupol and its strategic port on the Azov Sea. Three days passed before the medics were able to dissect in the basement bomb shelter. He considers himself lucky: The doctors still had the anaesthetic on hand when it came time to go under the knife.
When he came around, a nurse told him how sorry he was that he had lost his limb.
He cut off with a funny joke: “Will they return the money for 10 tattoo sessions?”
“I had a lot of tattoos on my leg,” he said. One remains, a human figure, but his legs are also now gone.
After surgery, he was transferred to the Azovstal plant. A citadel covering approximately 11 square kilometers (over 4 mi), with a maze of 24 kilometers (15-mi) underground tunnels and bunkers, the plant was practically impenetrable.
But the situation was dire.
“There was constant shelling,” said Corporal Vladislav Zahorodny, 22, who was shot through the pelvis during a street fight in Mariupol, severing a nerve.
Driven to Azovstal, he met Buffalo there. They already knew each other: both were from Chernihiv, a city in the north surrounded by Russian forces.
Zahorodny saw the missing leg. He asked Buffalo how he was doing.
“All right, we’ll club soon,” Buffalo replied.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Zahorodny was evacuated by helicopter from Azovstal on 31 March.
This was his first helicopter flight. En route, the Mi-8 caught fire, killing one of its engines. The other kept them by plane for the remainder of the morning 80 minutes to the city of Dniepro on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine.
He would mark his salvation with a mortar-round tattoo on the forearm of his right hand: “I must not forget this,” he said.
Next week came the turn of the buffalo. He was confused about going. On the one hand, he was relieved that his share of the dwindling food and water would now go to others who are still able to fight; On the other hand, “there was a painful feeling. They stayed there, and I left them.”
Nevertheless, he almost missed his flight.
Soldiers pulled him from his deep bunker onto a gurney and loaded him onto a truck that drove to a pre-arranged landing area. The soldiers wrapped him in a jacket.
The ammunition cargo of the helicopter was unloaded earlier. Then, the wounded were lifted up.
But not buffalo. Left in the back corner of the truck, he was somehow overlooked. He could not sound the alarm because his throat was injured by mortar explosions, and he was still so hoarse that he himself could not be heard at the whoop-hoop-hoop of the helicopter’s rotors.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, if not today,'” he recalled. “And suddenly someone shouted, ‘You forgot the soldier in the truck!'”
Because the cargo bay was full, the Buffalo was placed crosswise from the others, who were riding side by side. A crew member held his hand and told him not to worry, they would make it home.
“All my life,” he told the crew member, “I’ve dreamed of flying a helicopter. It doesn’t matter when we arrive – my dream has come true.”
In his cockpit, the wait for Alexander seemed endless, with minutes feeling like hours.
“Very scary,” he said. “You see the explosion all around and the next shell may reach your place.”
In the fog of war and with the full picture of covert missions still emerging, it is not possible to be entirely sure that Buffalo and the pilot, who spoke to reporters in a video interview recorded and shared by the military They were on the same flight. But their account details match.
Both gave the same date: the night of 4-5 April. Oleksandr recalled that he was fired upon by a ship as they swung over the waters outside Mariupol. An explosion wave made the helicopter bounce around “like a toy”, he said. But his escape maneuver got him out of trouble.
Buffalo also misses an explosion. Those evacuated were later told that the pilot had avoided the missile.
Oleksandr flew the helicopter at a speed of 220 kilometers (135 mi) per hour and flew to a height of 3 meters (9 ft) above the ground – except for power lines. A second helicopter on his mission never returned; On the return flight, her pilot radioed her that she was short of fuel. This was his last communication.
On his gurney, Buffalo watched the terrain zip through a porthole. “We flew under the trees, over the fields. Very low,” he said.
They made it safely to Dnipro. Upon landing, Alexander heard the wounded calling for the pilots. They expected that they would yell at him for throwing them around so violently during the flight.
“But when I opened the door, I heard people saying, ‘Thank you,'” he said.
“Everyone clapped,” recalled Buffalo, who is now rehabilitating with Zahorodny at the Kyiv clinic. “We told the pilots that they had accomplished the impossible.”