We were given the task of retaking one freaking village. The storming group had eleven men. When we started to advance, I felt the shelling increase every minute. When we reached the point 500 meters from the position we were supposed to take, it was like the hell. The barrage was so heavy that we decided to cover ourselves in the enemy’s old dugout, but in thirty minutes we received the order to move forward, despite the enemy’s fire. It was like I’d joined the penalty regiment, but we started to move.
There were lot of corpses of our soldiers out there. As we were moving forward, the enemy’s fire increased again. I thought I was going nuts. Then one guy screamed, “I’m wounded!” and almost immediately died. Then another one and another one. We decided to evacuate our dead and wounded. Fortunately no one else was wounded, but one guy died when we tried to carry him out from the battlefield.
Ruslan, Ukrainian Army Soldier, 44 years old
