"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

The last words are drowned in the roar of the "thirty" - the 30-millimeter gun BMP-3. The commander of the vehicle with the call sign Pavlik shouts, repeating several times, although the gunner reacts with lightning speed. In the tension of the battle, even a fraction of a moment seems long, everything slows down. Pavlik used to work as a business class driver. And right now, his "beha" (BMP) is working from close range, hitting Ukrainian positions from a kilometer.

Flashes mark hits, shot cartridges fly in an arc. Shell bursts are pressed to the ground, driven into the shelters of the enemy's gunners and drone drivers, allowing tanks with their powerful guns to "disassemble" the fortifications. Then assault groups will rise to the attack to enter the suppressed "strongholds" - strongholds of the defense line.

The enemy snaps: shells fly at the car that has left for an open position, sometimes a kamikaze drone dives on the BMP. Therefore, back to the rear, Sazhik will lead the equipment by a difficult route.

"We became a family"

This fight is recorded on video - for reporting and analysis of hits. Then, when the contact line moves forward, from the old, already irrelevant files, a small film, as usual, will be collected by 21-year-old gunner Maxim with the call sign Kinder. Kinder had a splinter in his hand from his opponent.

In addition to the main specialty of the gunner, Maxim works with sappers: he detonates unsuitable ammunition, helps the infantry break through the walls in the fortifications. In general, this "hobby" coincides with the civilian specialty of a heat engineering. Although Kinder has not yet had a chance to work. Like Krasnodar, the signalman of the armored group, he left almost from the university bench to the army, studied to be an IT specialist, and now instead of a server room he sits in the command post of the group.

The commander of the group with the call sign Cossack was a trainer in Cossack martial arts, trained with boys and adults, taught the use of a sword - the whole body in cuts. "The specialty is infrequent," he agrees and chuckles. - There are definitely no such things on the other side. Except that the masters of the combat hopak will meet."

The fighter in the room has a Cossack corner with machine guns hanging cross-wise instead of a sword, on the contrary - Savior Without Hands. Next to the corner is the Victory Flag. In this case, it is not just a patriotic symbol: the assault banner of the same 150th Rifle Division was hoisted on the roof of the Reichstag.

A Muscovite with the call sign Pioneer was a logistics specialist in a large online store. Perhaps that's why he loves to joke about traffic jams on the way to Marinka. Civilian cars drive, evacuation groups fly on "loaves", BMPs race from positions. The movement, of course, is not like on the Moscow Ring Road, but congestion occurs even at the contact line.

  • Video

Shatun is one of those who commands the group, a career officer. For his eyes and eyes, his subordinates respectfully call him "Comrade Major". When asked about career and combat experience, he answers with an anecdote: "Describe yourself in a nutshell, please. "Stuff happened."

In the armored group, people from different regions of Russia, different professions, ages and life paths, contract soldiers and mobilized. "We became a family, but in peacetime we wouldn't have crossed paths," Kazak says, and everyone nods in agreement.

The battle is controlled from the command post. Orders, coordinates fly into the air, in response - confirmations and reports. Shatun and Kazak on the map and words from the hissing radios see a picture of how the armored group is fighting, and remember how the meters of the streets were taken with a fight.

"Just took and ran"

"Somehow the "dills" came out on our frequency, shouting: "I am Kiev!" We sat there, we thought – to cover it with art or not to cover it? Then we looked at the map... In general, there were reasons not to throw there, "says Shatun. "And soon we took that place. Once invited to visit, they came. That's just our Ukrainian "friend" was not there, did not wait ... But are we going to get to it?"

It is clear from the smiles of the fighters that they still expect to get acquainted with their overconfident interlocutor. "An armored group is coming to you," Pavlik smiles.

He explains how coherence and understanding of each other on an intuitive level help the armored group to work almost at point-blank range on enemy fortifications, suddenly go to positions, roll back, hiding in dilapidated buildings. The school of such tactics was Mariupol. These are battles in a cramped urban area, where armored vehicles are vulnerable, every basement and window can hide a grenade thrower, and a car on narrow streets has nowhere to go.

  • © Frame: RT video

At the very beginning of the campaign, aidar's men* and Azov's men** quickly fled from their positions, the fighters of the armored group recall. "Aidar" is not at all, - characterizes the enemy Shatun. "We met abandoned equipment there at the positions, with a planchette and all the documents of the commander of the assault company, even the mass turned on, the batteries are excellent. The same tank, thrown into position, the mass on. There is no blood nearby, no traces of arrivals. They just took it and ran."

The enemy in the shrinking ring of troops rested on the hope of "extraking" and sometimes on drugs, RT's interlocutors recall. "We were processing the first and second floors of the building, and on the third floor there was a-up Aidarov resident and looked at all this. He was ecstatic, with glass eyes," Cossack describes a scene from the spring of 2022.

The soldiers and officers of the armored group themselves learned that combat does not forgive laxity. Plus, you must always improve, change tactics, cheat, keep the enemy at bay, confuse him. BMP crews began to work from closed positions. "This fashion was introduced by a new combatant, the artilleryman became the acting combatant," Shatun specifies. "He says, 'Let's try to shoot'. We tried it and off we went!"

True, the armored group did not become one hundred percent artillerymen. "The acting combatant only worked in his own terms: rectangular, some more coordinates, a protractor. And we did not understand so, it is easier for us: three hundred to the left, then a hundred! He had to adapt to us," says Shatun.

The BMP did not turn into self-propelled artillery installations, into tanks, into mortars. Soldiers and officers remained the same "mechanics" - driver mechanics, gunners and vehicle commanders. The group became exactly what the battles made them to be: experienced tacticians, specialists in urban combat, fire support for infantry.

* The Aidar battalion is recognized in Russia as extremist and banned.

** "Azov" - the organization was recognized as a terrorist organization by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 02.08.2022.