Risky missions evacuate Mariupol defenders

Helicopter forays to steel plant emerge as acts of true heroism

KYIV, Ukraine — As was his habit before each flight, the veteran Ukrainian army pilot ran a hand along the fuselage of his Mi-8 helicopter, caressing the heavy transporter’s metal skin to bring luck to him and his crew.

They would need it. Their destination — a besieged steel mill in the brutalized city of Mariupol — was a death trap. Some crews didn’t make it back alive.

Still, the mission was vital, even desperate.

Ukrainian troops were pinned down, their supplies running low, their dead and injured stacking up. Their last-ditch stand at the Azovstal mill was a growing symbol of Ukraine’s defiance in the war against Russia. They could not be allowed to perish.

The 51-year-old pilot — identified only by his first name, Oleksandr — flew just one mission to Mariupol, and he considered it the most difficult flight of his 30-year-career. He took the risk, he said, because he didn’t want the Azovstal fighters to feel forgotten.

In the charred hellscape of that plant, in an underground bunkerturned-medical station that provided shelter from death and destruction above, word started reaching the wounded that a miracle might be coming. Among those told that he was on the list for evacuation was a junior sergeant who’d been shredded by mortar rounds, butchering his left leg and forcing its amputation above the knee.

“Buffalo” was his nom de guerre. He had been through so much, but one more deadly challenge loomed: escape from Azovstal.

A series of clandestine, against-the-odds, terrain-hugging, high-speed helicopter missions to reach the Azovstal defenders in March, April and May are being celebrated in Ukraine as among the most heroic feats of military derring-do of the four-month war.

Some ended in catastrophe; each grew progressively riskier as Russian air defense batteries caught on.

The full story of the seven resupply and rescue missions has yet to be told. But from exclusive interviews with two wounded survivors; a military intelligence officer who flew on the first mission; and pilot interviews provided by the Ukrainian army, The Associated Press has pieced together the account of one of the last flights.

The military intelligence officer said one helicopter was shot down and two others never came back, and are considered missing. He said he dressed in civilian clothes for his flight, thinking that he could melt into the population if he survived a crash.

“We were aware it could be a one-way ticket.”

If Buffalo had had his way, he would not have lived to be evacuated. His life would have ended quickly, to spare him the agony he suffered after 120 mm mortar rounds tore apart his left leg, bloodied his right foot, and peppered his back with shrapnel during street fighting in Mariupol on March 23.

The 20-year-old spoke to the AP on condition that he not be identified by name, saying he didn’t want it to seem that he is seeking publicity when thousands of Azovstal defenders are in captivity or dead. He had been on the trail of a Russian tank, aiming to destroy it with his shoulder-launched, armor-piercing NLAW missile on the last day of the invasion’s first month, when his war was cut short.

Tossed next to the wreckage of a burning car, he dragged himself to cover in a nearby building and “decided it would be better to crawl into the basement and quietly die there,” he said.

But his friends evacuated him to the Ilyich steel mill, which subsequently fell in mid-April as Russian forces were tightening their grip on Mariupol and its strategic port on the Sea of Azov. Three days passed before medics were able to amputate, in a basement bomb shelter. He considers himself lucky: Doctors still had anesthetic when his turn came to go under the knife.

When he came around, a nurse told him how sorry she was that he’d lost the limb.

He cut through the awkwardness with a joke: “Will they return the money for 10 tattoo sessions?”

“I had a lot of tattoos on my leg,” he said. One remains, a human figure, but its legs are gone now, too.

After the surgery, he was transferred to the Azovstal plant. A stronghold covering more than 4 miles, with a 15-mile labyrinth of underground tunnels and bunkers, the plant was practically impregnable.

But conditions were grim. “There was constant shelling,” said Vladislav Zahorodnii, a 22-year-old corporal who had been shot through the pelvis, shredding a nerve, during street fighting in Mariupol.

Evacuated to Azovstal, he met Buffalo there. They already knew each other: Both were from Chernihiv, a city in the north surrounded and pounded by Russian forces.

Zahorodnii saw the missing leg. He asked Buffalo how he was doing.

“Everything is fine, we will go clubbing soon,” Buffalo replied.

Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31, after three failed attempts.

It was his first helicopter flight. The Mi-8 took fire on its way out, losing one of its engines. The other one kept them airborne for the remainder of the 80-minute dash to the city of Dnipro on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine.

He would mark his deliverance with a mortar-round tattoo on his right forearm: “I did it not to forget,” he said.

Buffalo’s turn came the following week. He was ambivalent about leaving. On one hand, he was relieved that his share of the dwindling food and water would now go to others still able to fight; on the other, “there was a painful feeling. They stayed there, and I left them.”

Because the helicopter cargo bay was full, Buffalo was placed crosswise from the others, who’d been loaded aboard side by side. A crew member took his hand and told him not to worry, they’d make it home.

“All my life,” he told the crew member, “I dreamed of flying a helicopter. It doesn’t matter if we arrive — my dream has come true.”

In the cockpit, the wait seemed interminable to Oleksandr, the minutes feeling like hours.

“Very scary,” he said. “You see explosions around and the next shell could reach your location.”

They made it to Dnipro, safely.

Upon landing, Oleksandr heard the wounded calling out for the pilots. He expected them to yell at him for having tossed them around so violently during the flight.

“But when I opened the door, I heard guys saying, ‘Thank you,’” he said. “Everyone clapped,” recalled Buffalo, now rehabbing with Zahorodnii at a Kyiv clinic. “We told the