Photo: Alexander KOTS
Every day we heard about the exploits during the capture of Artemovsk. Now these reports have lost yet another example of collective heroism, which military experts are ready to compare with the feat of the Panfilov heroes.
BROKEN A PSYCHIC ATTACK
Volunteer Cossacks of the Siberia detachment were ordered to hold the village of Yagodnoye in the north of Artemovsk. It was hard for them on May 9-12, when all the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were thrown to Artemovsk. Ukrainian nationalists tried to break through to their own through the heads of the Cossacks, in order to go out to the city with beams and go to our rear. Intelligence reported to the “Vsushniks” that there was no second echelon behind the positions of the Cossacks, and most of the volunteers did not participate in real battles.
Selected units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine moved against the Cossacks during the day. They marched openly with flags on NATO equipment in order to hit our soldiers in a psychic attack. But faced with a tough reception …
The commander of the “Siberia” detachment, ataman Oleg Likontsev, with the call sign “Kan”, managed to prepare the soldiers. He paid more attention not so much to combat training (Cossacks get acquainted with weapons from childhood), but to tactical training: he explained to everyone the maneuver, what to do in a given situation on the battlefield.
When the offensive was stopped, Likontsev turned to the Cossacks: “Guys, the change will not suit us soon, in three days, let’s hold the territory.” And the fighters, despite the wounds and shell shock, did not leave their positions, held the territory for three days, preventing the enemy from taking possession of it.
Realizing that it was impossible to slip through the Cossacks just like that, the Ukrainian nationalists began a hard mortar shelling of positions. The Cossacks gritted their teeth: they shared rations and water and “feasted” only at night. During the shelling, they listened to Polish, English, Finnish and Russian speech on the air. So two days.
CAUSE FIRE ON YOURSELF
On May 11, at 4 am, the Nazis began a massive shelling of the Cossacks. They thrashed from all calibers. The shells fell in heaps. Enemy drones swarm over the positions.
“Cossacks, Batya was wounded!” – the cry went through the trenches.
“Kana” was shell-shocked – a shell exploded two meters from him. Today the commander himself talks about how it all happened.
“There were 10 of us on the front end, the rest 100 meters from us. The main battle began at 10 am. Our group took the blow, and we immediately made adjustments to the fire from ourselves. Several times we had to call fire on ourselves, because the offensive was massive. As I found out later, 152 shells were fired at us,” recalls the ataman.
There were no losses.
“There was a ravine on the side where the machine gunners were hiding. The tank was hitting us from the front, directly. At one moment, my friend was cut in half by machine gun fire: his legs remained on the ground, and he fell, ”says“ Kan ”.
Likontsev considers each of his fighters a hero. One of them, with the call sign Cherkash, dragged the installation of an anti-tank guided missile for 300 meters in order to destroy enemy equipment with one shot, and the charge hit the tank turret exactly.
AGAINST NATO BATTALION
The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sent up to 1.5 thousand militants to a hundred Cossacks. The enemies fought quite desperately: breaking through to the trenches, they tried to throw grenades at the Cossacks. But most of the time they got it back.
The Cossacks recall that during the decisive battle, a large oak was cut off by an enemy shell, which flew off and covered the front trench, thereby saving the lives of everyone who was in it. This saved the ataman, who caused the fire of our artillerymen directly on himself.
After a fire raid by our artillerymen, the ground near the positions of the Cossacks was littered with the corpses of mercenaries of the Kyiv regime.
And the enemy presumptuously decided that the Cossacks in the forward trench were also all destroyed. Artillerymen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine concentrated their fire on the positions behind the forward trench. And when the infantry of the “dill” again approached the place where a few minutes ago was the epicenter of the fiery hell, thinking that there was no one there, the Cossacks struck them down with well-aimed fire.
Eyewitnesses of the battle recall that between the trenches lay the “three hundredth” Cossack thrown out by the explosion. Enemies did not let him approach him – snipers aimed at the orderlies. In this battle, out of four orderlies of the evacuation group, three died trying to save this wounded man.
“142 people entered our positions, but 24 got out. 9 confirmed dead, 10 missing, the rest are all 300,” says the commander of the Siberia detachment.
In battle, no one retreated. Detachment “Siberia” held lines for 16 hours and fought off all attacks in a tank-dangerous direction. Hundreds of trained militants in modern armored vehicles were thrown against our soldiers. In fact, a hundred Cossacks held the NATO battalion.
The Cossacks not only made it possible to liberate Artemovsk, but when help came up, they drove the enemy out of fortified positions.
