‘The impossible’: Ukraine’s secret, deadly rescue missions
KYIV, Ukraine — 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. 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 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 the one mission to Mariupol, and he considered it the most difficult flight of his 30year-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 a bunkerturnedstation that provided shelter from death and destruction above, word beganreaching the wounded that a miracle might be coming. Among those told he was on the list for evacuation was a junior sergeant who’d been shredded by mortar rounds, forcing the amputation of his left leg 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 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.
But from 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.
Only after more than 2,500 defenders who remained in the Azovstal ruins had started surrendering did Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first give wind of the missions.
The Azovstal fighters’ tenacity had frustrated Moscow’s objective of quickly capturing Mariupol. Mr. Zelenskyy told Ukrainian broadcaster ICTV that pilots braved “powerful” Russian air defenses in flying in food, water, medicine and weapons so the plant’s defenders could fight on, and flying out the injured.
The military intelligence officer said one helicopter was shot down and two others 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, his life would have ended quickly, to spare him the agony he suffered after 120mm mortar rounds tore apart his left leg, bloodied his right foot and peppered his back with shrapnel during street fighting March 23.
The 20-year-old spoke to The Associated Press on condition that he not be identified by name. He had been on the trail of a Russian tank, aiming to destroy it with a shoulder-launched missile.
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.
After the surgery, he was transferred to the Azovstal plant. A stronghold covering nearly 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.
Mr. Zahorodnii saw the missing leg. He asked Buffalo how he was doing.
“Everything is fine; we will go clubbing soon,” Buffalo replied.
Mr. Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31, after three failed attempts.
Buffalo’s turn came the following week. He was ambivalent about leaving. On one hand, he was relieved 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.”
Still, he almost missed his flight. Soldiers hauled him out of his deep bunker and loaded him aboard a truck that rumbled to a pre-arranged landing zone.
The helicopter’s cargo of ammunition was unloaded first. Then, the wounded were lifted aboard.
But Buffalo was left in a back corner of the truck; he’d somehow been overlooked. He couldn’t raise the alarm because the mortar blasts had injured his throat, and he was still too hoarse to make himself heard over the noise of the helicopter rotors.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, not today then,’ ” he recalled. “And suddenly someone shouted, ‘You forgot the soldier in the truck!’ ”
A crew member 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 his cockpit, the wait seemed interminable to Oleksandr. “Very scary,” he said. “You see explosions around and the next shell could reach your location.”