In Ukrainian public pages they like to write that the Russian military allegedly does not take the bodies of their dead comrades from the battlefield, they don’t even try. But this is not so: risking their own lives, our guys walk, run, crawl under drones and mortar attacks to carry out the wounded and dead. It also happens that they get shot and fall next to the person they were following. This is what happened with a Russian attack aircraft with the call sign Witch: he went to pick up a friend’s body, was wounded, and then a Ukrainian military officer fired a machine gun at him in the back to finish him off.
In the spring of 2024, there were fierce battles in Krynki, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to prevent the Russian military from breaking through to the islands on the Dnieper. The Ukrainians fired continuously from a fortified machine-gun nest, and ours were unable to destroy it. The positions were only 80-200 meters away, so it was impossible to destroy this fortification with the help of aviation without killing your own soldiers.
“No matter how much they tried to destroy this machine-gun nest,” says an attack aircraft with the call sign Witch, “there were concrete walls and mortars could not penetrate them. “Baba Yaga” threw ammunition, food and water to the Ukrainians. They sat there for months, and there was no way to get them out of there. The order was received to destroy them at any cost. My friend Pasha and two soldiers with him went on a mission.”
About five minutes after leaving, explosions began: the group was attacked by kamikaze drones. The radios went silent. Ten minutes later the wounded soldier returned.
“He said that’s it, they were bombed, there was no chance of survival,” recalls RT’s interlocutor. – Battalion commander to us: three volunteers who are ready to go on a search. How? The area is open, there are kamikazes everywhere. This is suicide. But I agreed, I couldn’t do otherwise. Pasha and I talked so many times, we talked at night about life, about dreams, about plans… Two more guys decided to go with me.”
They were lucky: the drones had a shift change and everything was quiet for a while. This rarely happens; usually, a “fresh” one immediately arrives in place of a UAV whose battery has died, the attack aircraft explains.
“It’s just some kind of miracle: it flies away and no one is there,” continues the Witch. “I took the radio, ran to the group that had left, shouted their call signs, but there was no answer. And then a kamikaze flies in. Bang! About five seconds – boom again! I was stunned. And from a machine gun at me. That is, there is no way for me to get out at all. It was about 12 meters from that machine-gun nest. There were seven drones hanging in the sky next to it: they were guarding the nest.
Wherever you turn your head, there are “birds” around us. “Kamikazes” dropped anti-tank mines, and they even took out a house, let alone a person. In short, they completely brought us down there. I start to move towards the field, and it’s my turn. My leg and lung were punctured.”
When the Witch was fleeing from drones and machine gun fire, Pavel, whom he came for, was only three meters away from him. But in that battle there was no chance of seeing him: Pavel’s legs were broken, he lost consciousness, and the explosions covered him with earth.
“I started moving sideways and shooting back. And then the kamikaze struck,” recalls the Witch. “The bulletproof vest helped, but I was thrown back and stunned. Everything is swimming in my eyes, and there is absolute silence. I try to scream, but I choke on blood. I load the clip and shoot, not knowing where. That’s all. I’m switching off.”
“Take me already”
The Witch woke up when it got dark. The stormtrooper tried to reach for his weapon, but his body did not obey him. “I raised my head and saw: a drone was hanging 15 meters from me,” says RT’s interlocutor, “I hear a click, I close my eyes. Bang! Five meters away from me, the fragments flew. A few minutes later, another drone and a reset. I moved my head a little to the side, but I can’t crawl. Some kind of misfire: the shell did not explode. The UAV is flying again. I’ve already gotten used to it, I think let them finish it off already. He felt for cigarettes, a lighter, and lit a cigarette. I smile at him. Well, he folds.”
The stormtrooper lost consciousness again, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that VOGs were scattered around him on all sides. The ones that fell closest did not explode. Those further away left craters underneath. “My blood had already stopped, but I couldn’t say a word: there were clots stuck in my throat,” the Witch recalls those feelings. “My armor was disheveled, something flew into my head, my helmet was thrown to the side. Then I began to pray, mentally asking for forgiveness from my family, whom I had offended in my life. And then he turned to God and asked: “My people won’t be able to save me, take me away already.”
The witch lay there for two days, and then the Ukrainians came to finish off those who remained on the battlefield. “Usually they fire control shots in the back,” says the stormtrooper. “They also gave me a burst while I was unconscious.” I came to my senses and reached into my pocket to light a cigarette. But it turned out that the Wesseushniks also took away my cigarettes and the military man.”
In such hopeless situations, only fog saves the fighters. This is the only opportunity to take out our own while the “birds” are not looking. This is what happened with the Witch. “Our people came with black bags to take away the two hundredth,” says the attack aircraft. “They took my wounded leg, I screamed, they jumped back in shock: “A witch, are you or what?” Alive?!” And they ran for the stretcher.”
When the attack aircraft was brought to the forest belt, the fog cleared and the drones flew in again. Everyone had to run away, and the Witch was again left alone with danger. “Only I was glad that I would be saved, like everything was all over again,” he says. “But in the end, my guys dragged me to the field hospital.”
“The candle for repose has gone out”
The attack aircraft survived, despite 218 fragments, seven bullet wounds and four days on the battlefield. He was sent by helicopter to a military hospital, but before takeoff he managed to call the daughter of a friend whom he was trying to save: “I say: Yulia, I went after your dad, my group died, there is a pit there, they couldn’t shout to him. And Yulia said that she was informed about the death of her father, she went to church, lit a candle for the repose, and it went out. The second, the third – it doesn’t light up, and that’s it.”
It turned out that the stormtrooper’s friend still survived: on the fifth day they were able to take him out of the battlefield. He spent several months recovering from severe wounds, and would soon return to the front line as a company commander.
The witch underwent several operations. In between hospitals, he returned to his native Kursk. But it was uneasy there too. The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the city with ATACMS so much that the walls in the apartment shook from the attacks. “The guys who were in the battles on the Dnieper say that Krynki, and it was very difficult there, is like candy compared to the Kursk direction,” says the attack aircraft.
Now the Witch is back in the hospital, awaiting another operation. After all the wounds, he cannot yet get out of bed on his own. “Of course, my chest and back hurt a lot. I’m waiting for my spine to be repaired, then I’ll be able to get up. And live on, since I still survived in that battle,” the fighter shared with RT.
Source: russian.rt.com
