Serhii steps out of the BMP (infantry fighting vehicle) and lights a cigarette. He is 54 years old and has just returned from positions on the hottest front — Pokrovsk.
"Caught two grenades. We were stormed twice. It was a bloody battle, fu*,*" the infantryman tells the medic examining him in an evacuation vehicle.
Serhii belongs to one of the newly formed brigades, and he was extracted by soldiers of the 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skala." They were storming positions south of Pokrovsk. While retreating, they evacuated allied fighters as well.
This night, according to medic Dmytro, they were lucky — everyone made it out alive. But Dmytro examines them nonetheless. The stormtroopers are emotionally recounting the battle.
"We had just started moving in, didn’t even get there yet, and they hit us so hard we were in shock,"* says one soldier.
"Bastards, while we were retreating from the village, they kept firing at us from behind. They’re crawling out of every crack. You take them down, and they just keep coming. They’re insane. Even when 'Baba Yaga' hit and leveled the building, they kept crawling out from under the rubble,"* another stormtrooper recounts.
The "Skala" stormtroopers arrived at the Pokrovsk front to halt a Russian breakthrough into the city from the south. In November, Russian forces advanced to the village of Shevchenko, located right next to Pokrovsk. Here, "Skala" managed to stop them. However, the Russians shifted further west, moving toward Udaine and Kotlyne in an attempt to cut off the road from Mezhova (in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) to Pokrovsk. The "Skala" regiment is also trying to halt them there.
More about how the stormtroopers fight for Pokrovsk can be found in a report by Diana Butsko and Vlad Safronov.
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