Wounded Ukrainians vow to fight on after ‘little Stalingrad’

Three years ago, Ukrainian engineers were completing a €700 million transformation of Donetsk airport, as the city prepared to welcome football fans from across the continent at the Euro 2012 championship.

Cutting the ribbon that spring, president Viktor Yanukovich hailed the sleek glass-and-steel complex as evidence of Ukraine's "strong economy, dynamic development and high level of professionalism".

Today, the ousted Yanukovich is in Russia hiding from an international arrest warrant, and Sergei Prokofiev airport is being called Ukraine’s “little Stalingrad”.

For 242 days, Ukrainian troops fought over the complex with Russian-backed separatists who control the rest of Donetsk city, turning the airport into a skeletal ruin ravaged by tank shells, missiles, gunfire and grenades.

Amid the artillery storm, close-quarters combat gave the battle a deadly intimacy, with men fighting only metres apart, floor-by-floor for the terminals, sometimes defending desperately while sandwiched between enemy-held storeys.

Eavesdropping on each other’s radio chatter, they would interrupt to deliver threats, abuse and declarations of defiance with grim frontline humour, as around them the killing continued despite all supposed ceasefires and peace talks.

Apparent indestructibility

The soldiers who maintained Ukraine’s finger-hold on the edge of Donetsk city – hemmed in by rebels and their Russian allies – were dubbed “cyborgs” for their apparent indestructibility, and became heroes for a nation wearied by the missteps of a military campaign dogged by graft, incompetence and treachery.

They were finally forced from the complex on January 22nd, battered into submission by relentless shelling from tanks and artillery, and by lethal booby traps that several servicemen claimed were set by Chechens fighting with the rebels.

“We heard them on the walkie-talkies all the time, speaking Chechen or Russian with a Caucasus accent,” said Vasily Kosachenko, who was hit by shrapnel while fighting near the airport for the Right Sector nationalist group.

“In the end, they laid explosives on the levels above and below our guys in the terminal. When they set off the explosives, the floor gave way and the ceiling collapsed, and our guys were buried.”

Russian television showed what it claimed were dozens of dead Ukrainian soldiers in the rubble of the airport terminal; the militants have beaten and humiliated captured “cyborgs” on camera, and paraded them through Donetsk.

“Donetsk airport would have given us a base to launch operations to liberate the rest of the city,” said Kosachenko (45).

“But we are fighting with one arm tied behind our backs. We have plenty of artillery and tanks, but we’re not using them. God knows why – it’s full-scale war out there.”

Kosachenko is one of hundreds of Ukrainian servicemen injured at or near the airport who have been treated at the Mechnikova hospital in Dnipropetrovsk, the nearest major government-controlled city to Donetsk.

He is lightly wounded and will soon be allowed to go home or return to the front. He shares a ward with men who face a far longer road to recovery, but also vow to plunge back into battle as soon as their bodies allow.

Paratrooper Vadim Polyantsa (25) was hit by shrapnel in his arm and neck as his unit stormed a rebel checkpoint near the village of Spartak, a few kilometres from the airport. His rebuilt upper arm is now stabilised by metal “cage”, and will take months to heal.

“We took the checkpoint at our second attempt, but I was wounded. When I was being evacuated our armoured vehicle was hit by a rocket, and one guy was killed. Thankfully, I made it here,” he said.

“Everyone at the front is angry,” he continued. “We get stupid orders, and our artillery should be pounding the separatists all the time, like theirs is pounding us. We know where they are, and we should be hammering them.”

Ukraine still officially calls the conflict – which has killed more than 5,000 people and displaced more than one million – an “anti-terrorist operation”, while also accusing Russia of sending in thousands of soldiers to help the rebels.

Dead-end diplomacy

Kiev and its western allies are scared to call this a war, fearing how Russia would react and what it would mean for international relations, but the Ukrainians doing the fighting are sick of mealy-mouthed politicians and dead-end diplomacy.

In a private room at Mechnikova hospital, guarded by Right Sector gunmen, the group’s leader Dmytro Yarosh doesn’t mince his words.

“This is a war for Ukraine’s independence, and increasingly we are fighting regular Russian forces,” he said from the bed where he is nursing a right arm shattered when artillery hit his car near the airport.

“Our military leaders make mistakes, there are information leaks, lots of problems. But we have no choice but to fight, and to improve as we fight.”

Yarosh said that when healed, he would go back to the front, not to his seat in parliament in Kiev.

As if to prove his intent, he cocked the forefinger of his broken hand, as if pulling a trigger.

“This still works,” he said.