The Battle for the “Menagerie”: how the Russian army cleared the most important fortified area of ​​the Ukrainian Armed Forces

As the commander of the reconnaissance company of the 33rd motorized rifle regiment with the call sign Yastreb tells RT, most of the “Zverinets” fortified area was liberated by the summer of 2023.

“It was a difficult operation. The “Menagerie” itself was a complex of several buildings with positions equipped inside, the approaches to which were thoroughly mined, he says. “At night, sappers quietly removed the mines, and attack aircraft immediately entered the resulting passages.”

However, part of the “Menagerie” after a thorough summer assault remained under the Ukrainian Armed Forces - and there was no way to knock them out of there. The final liberation of the famous fortified area by Russian troops, including the 33rd motorized rifle regiment, occurred after the liberation of Marinka.

“We managed to capture the oporniks and push the enemy back to the west, making significant progress,” says the commander of the assault company with the call sign Boa Constrictor.

According to him, this advance made it possible for neighboring Russian units to work in Novomikhailovka and build on their success in the Maryinsky direction as a whole. 

“It’s enough to remember how long we were stuck in this Marinka, which on the one hand was supported by the notorious “Menagerie”. Now Marinka has been completely liberated - it is necessary to develop fortifications in this direction,” says Udav.

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“Kidnapped together with cameramen”

The commander of the assault company recalls that during the battles for the Menagerie, the enemy constantly tried to install their electronic warfare stations to combat our drones.

“He disguised them very cunningly, and our assault and reconnaissance groups abducted them, sometimes even with a cameraman. We had the opportunity to identify them. If something interferes with our drone, then that means a station has appeared. Intelligence found them, and then, using bad weather, we acted in several groups and took away both the stations themselves and the operators who served them,” says Boa.

When asked whether the fighters took the operators alive, Boa constrictor replies: “Not always.”

I'm interested in what other memorable feats our soldiers performed. Boa constrictor stubbornly refuses to go into the specifics of the assault work. 

“My subordinates have routine work. We are given tasks and we must carry them out,” says the officer, who also notes the heroic work of the tank crews. 

“They literally walk along the aisles by touch, and sometimes even when a mine is detected, they visually perform miracles of aerobatics in heavy soil, in difficult conditions,” he says. 

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A young tank officer, Nikita, says: the other day they destroyed an enemy AGS. We had to wait several days for confirmation of the target being hit.

“But this is the specificity of our work. The target is not considered hit until intelligence reports it, he says. “At the same time, certain enemy points are hit daily. These are either dugouts, or enemy equipment, or even mortars.”

Skier, the commander of a howitzer self-propelled artillery platoon of an assault detachment, also talks about his work. His task is to cover the assault groups when they go on the offensive.

“I remember we were constantly trying to catch one Ukrainian tank,” says Skier. “It’s not so easy to hit a moving target.” But we still knocked him out. The target was suppressed, it stopped its work, rolled away and never appeared in the area again.”

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Also recently, artillerymen, according to Skier, destroyed a group of enemy sappers.

“We hit a mine directly - the shell detonated and the whole group died,” says the soldier. — Just recently, the enemy’s rotation was disrupted. We set up an artillery ambush - this is when there is a firefight at certain points and we wait for a command. Every hour the weather conditions change and the guns have to be re-aimed. The distance is large, all parameters are calculated, and the projectile flies for a minute. And you need to calculate so that the arrival is directly at the enemy. But everything went well. Our shell hit directly the infantry group that came for rotation.”

However, according to the soldiers, all these stories are just small episodes of the great work that the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment is doing. And now, after taking the Menagerie, the unit will have to move on. No one is going to stop until complete victory.