KYIV, Ukraine –
Warning: This story contains disturbing details
As was his custom before each flight, the experienced Ukrainian military pilot ran hand in hand with the fuselage of his MI-8 helicopter, caring for the heavy transporter’s metal skin to bring good luck to him and his crew.
They need Their destination – the besieged steel mill in the brutal city of Mariupol – was a death trap. Some other parties could not bring it to life.
Still, the mission was important, even desperate. Ukrainian troops were stranded, their supplies were dwindling, and their dead and wounded were piled up. Their last pit stand at the Azovustal Mill was a growing symbol of Ukraine’s disobedience in the war against Russia. They could not be destroyed.
The 51-year-old pilot – known only by his first name, Alexander – flew only one mission to Mariupol, and he considered it the hardest flight of his 30-year career. He took the risk, he said, because he did not want the Azovstal fighters to feel forgotten.
At the scene of the burning hell of that plant, above the underground bunker-bunker-medical station providing shelter from death and destruction, the words that miracles could happen began to reach the wounded. One of the junior sergeants, who was dismembered by a mortar round, was said to have had his left leg amputated and forcibly amputated above his knee.
“Buffalo” was his name de guerre. He had overcome many things, but another deadly challenge arose: escape from Azovstal.
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A series of covert, anti-the-aids, terrain-hugging, high-speed helicopter missions to reach the Azovastal Defenders in March, April and May is celebrated as one of the four most heroic acts of the military daring-duko in Ukraine. -Month war. Some ended in destruction; With the seizure of Russian air defense batteries, each became increasingly dangerous.
The full story of the seven replenishment and rescue operations has not yet been told. But from exclusive interviews with two wounded survivors; A military intelligence officer who flew on the first mission; And in a pilot interview provided by the Ukrainian military, the Associated Press puts together an account of one of the last flights in the perspective of both rescuers and survivors.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained the missions and their deadly costs only after more than 2,500 guards at the Azovastal wreckage began to surrender.
The determination of Azovostal fighters frustrated Moscow’s intent to capture Mariupol immediately and prevented Russian troops from being deployed there. Zelensky told Ukrainian broadcaster ICTV that the pilots dared the “powerful” Russian air defenses to fly across enemy lines, flying over food, water, medicine and weapons to fight plant defenders and blow out the wounded.
Military intelligence officials say one helicopter was shot down and the other two never returned, and are still missing. He said he wore civilian clothes for his flight, thinking he could melt into the population if he survived the crash: “We knew it could be a one-way ticket.”
Jelensky said: “These are totally brave people who knew what was difficult, who knew it was almost impossible.… We lost a lot of pilots.
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If the buffalo had made its way, he would not have survived to evacuate. His life was soon to end, after a 120mm mortar round ripped through his left leg, blood spurted on his right leg, and he was stabbed in the back during a treat fight in Mariupol on March 23.
The 20-year-old, speaking to the Associated Press, said on condition of anonymity that he did not want thousands of Azovastal defenders to appear in captivity or seek publicity while dead. On the last day of the first month of the attack, when his battle was shortened, he was on the trail of a Russian tank, aiming to destroy it with an armor-piercing NLAW missile launched over his shoulder.
Thrown by the wreckage of a burning car, he pulled himself into a nearby building and “crawled into the basement and decided to die there quietly,” he said.
But his comrades took him to the Ilyich Steel Mill, which later collapsed in mid-April as Russian forces tightened their grip on its strategic port of Mariupol and the Sea of Azov. Three days passed before doctors were able to detonate the bomb in the basement shelter. He considers himself lucky: the doctors gave him an anesthetic even when it was his turn to go under the knife.
When he came around, a nurse told him how sad he was to lose his limb.
He cut the embarrassment with a joke: “Will they get their money back for 10 tattoo sessions?”
“I had a lot of tattoos on my legs,” he said. One remains, a human figure, but its legs are now gone.
After surgery, he was transferred to the Azovstal plant. With a fortress spanning about 11 square kilometers, a 24-kilometer underground tunnel and a maze of bunkers, the plant was practically impenetrable.
But the situation was critical.
“There was constant gunfire,” said 22-year-old Corporal Vladislav Jahorodny, who was shot in the pelvis during a street fight in Mariupol.
Moved to Ajobastal, he met the buffalo there. They already knew each other: both were from Chernihiv, a city besieged and attacked by Russian forces in the north.
Zahorodnii saw the missing leg. He asked the buffalo how he was.
“All is well, we’ll get to the club soon,” replied the buffalo.
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Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31 after three failed attempts.
This was his first helicopter flight. The Mi-8 caught fire as it exited, killing one of its engines. Another put them in the air for the remaining 80 minutes of the morning in the town of Dinipro on the river Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine.
He would mark his release with a mortar-round tattoo on his right hand: “I will not forget this,” he said.
Next week it was the buffalo’s turn. He was hesitant to leave. On the one hand, he was confident that his share of declining food and water would now go to others who could fight; In another, “there was a painful feeling. They stayed there, and I left them.”
However, his flight was almost missed.
The soldiers brought him from his deep bunker to Gurney and loaded him into a truck parked in a pre-arranged landing area. The soldiers wrapped him in a jacket.
Helicopter ammunition cargo was previously unloaded. After that, the injured were taken to the ship.
But not the buffalo. Left in the back corner of the truck, he was somehow ignored. He could not sound the alarm because the mortar shell hit him in the neck, and he was still reluctant to hear the hoop-hoop-hoop-hoop of the helicopter rotors.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, not today,'” he recalled. “And suddenly someone shouted, ‘You forgot the soldier in the truck!'”
Because the cargo bay was full, the buffalo were kept crosswise from the others, which were loaded onto nearby ships. If a crew member grabbed her hand and told her not to worry, they would make it home.
“All my life,” he told the crew, “I dreamed of flying a helicopter. It doesn’t matter when we arrive – my dream has come true.”
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In his cockpit, waiting for Alexander seemed endless, the minutes felt like hours.
“Very scary,” he said. “You see explosions all around and another shell can reach your location.”
In the fog of war and the full picture of covert missions still emerging, it is not possible to be entirely certain that Buffalo and the pilot were on the same flight talking to reporters in a video interview recorded and shared by the military. But their account details match.
Both gave the same date: the night of April 4-5. Alexander recalled being shot by a ship after falling into the water outside Mariupol. The blast ripped the helicopter “like a toy,” he said. But his escape tactics got them out of trouble.
The buffalo also remembers the explosion. Rescuers later said the pilot escaped the missile.
Alexander flew the helicopter at a speed of 220 kilometers per hour and flew about 3 meters below the ground – except while hopping on power lines. The second helicopter on its mission never returned it; On the return flight, its pilot radioed him saying he had no fuel. This was their last conversation.
At his gurney, the buffalo had seen the terrain jeep through the porthole. “We flew in the fields, under the trees. There is very little, ”he said.
They reached Dnipro safely. During the landing, Alexander heard the injured pilots calling. They were expected to shout at themselves for being thrown so violently during the flight.
“But when I opened the door, I heard the boys say ‘thank you,'” he said.
“Everyone applauded,” Buffalo recalled. “We told the pilots they did the impossible.”
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Contributed by AP journalist Sofiko Magrelidje in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Oleksandr Stashevsky in Kiev.
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