Donetsk winter is fickle. Just yesterday, all the signs of war here were hidden under a layer of dazzling white fluffy snow, but today they were revealed again by drizzling rain. Boxes from ammunition, fragments of bricks and dilapidated buildings, reminiscent of the danger of arrivals. The ruts along which the equipment went to positions along the forest belt cut down by shrapnel were filled with water again.

However, despite the weather, units of the Russian Armed Forces continue to move forward in several sectors of the South Donetsk direction. There have already been some successes in the Novomikhailovka area.

The company commander of the Storm detachment of the Guard, senior lieutenant with the call sign Artist, had just returned from there.

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“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are well equipped, but poorly prepared and demoralized. They are all forcibly sent to the front, kicked into position. They are very afraid of close contact with us,” a 24-year-old officer tells RT.

He has been fighting for eight months now. His unit fought off the summer counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Novodonetskoye area, occupied and held lines in Urozhaynoye, and defended Novomayorskoye. Now the Artist and his company are working in the Novomikhailovka area, where Ukrainian troops are suffering failure after failure.

The lieutenant does not exclude that in order to raise the morale of Ukrainian soldiers, they are specially pumped with some kind of stimulants.

The Artist himself encountered the unnatural behavior of Ukrainian Armed Forces militants in a recent battle.

“We hit them in such a way that there should have been two hundred of them by now, but they, like some kind of zombies, continued to move and reach for weapons,” explains the officer who, together with five soldiers, managed to capture four enemy strongholds at once .

"Polish first aid kit"

“The Ukrainians hit us with a gun and a 120-mm mortar. They had two M777 howitzers targeted, and on one side of the forest belt, where our group started moving, a sniper and a machine gun were working,” the Artist recalls the beginning of this assault. 

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To protect against small fire, a smoke barrier was installed, and only after that the group advanced to the first support post. According to the guard senior lieutenant, there were no problems with him. Four Ukrainian servicemen who were there were immediately killed.  

But it was not possible to occupy the second strong point just as easily. It was in this support room, according to the Artist, that the VSE officers, pumped up with chemicals, were located. They began throwing grenades at the stormtroopers and wounded one soldier.

“In addition to the Ukrainians, there was a foreign mercenary with Polish documents in the opornik. Apparently, he was their eldest,” the officer suggests. “In his backpack we found a first aid kit with a bunch of different medications. As I understand, in addition to the standard set for such cases, there were also some stimulant drugs.”

“They ran away, leaving their comrade behind”

After clearing another supporter, the assault group approached the last, most powerful and largest. It had many dugouts and communication passages.

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“They started throwing grenades at us there again, they threw about 20 of them. In addition, four “birds” with drops and two kamikazes (FPV drones. -

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) flew up from their direction. I contacted our cover group and the drones were destroyed. Then he requested support from the AGS (easel automatic grenade launcher. -

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). We hid in shelters, and he began to work 30 meters from us,” the commander recalls.

As a result, the Ukrainian military could not stand it and ran, leaving their wounded comrade behind. And a few minutes later, these positions, according to the officer, came under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“Having lost their support unit, they simply began to destroy it,” says the commander. “The Ukrainians are targeting their positions so that later they will be able to immediately attack them with artillery if we go there. But we were lucky."

Now the soldiers, who completed their task with honor, are taken to rest and recuperating. In the Novomikhailovka area, fresh units that replaced them in positions continue to fight. After each assault, military psychologists work with the soldiers.

“But there are no demoralized people in our team. The mood is fighting, and everyone is ready to continue working,” says the Artist.