Ukraine’s citizen warriors with hunting rifles beat 40 Russian tanks

Two days before the Russians came, the citizen warriors of Voznesensk gathered for a military briefing. Several armoured Russian columns were approaching and the Ukrainian military was preparing its defence of the town, which lies at a critical point on the overland approach to Odesa.

The locals were preparing a grim welcome party. Almost 100 civilians volunteered to fight and defend their city alongside the army and local territorial guard, risking their lives for a David versus Goliath battle that has come to symbolise the Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s invasion.

These military novices had little in the way of training or weaponry. Some had dusted off old hunting rifles. Others had assembled Molotov cocktails and there were a few Kalashnikovs. Their military instructors explained the basics: what kind of clothing to wear, how to identify who was who, how to avoid friendly fire, where to position themselves.

Yevheni Velichko, 32, a charismatic property developer who serves as mayor of Voznesensk, said he had never seen the town of 35,000 so united. “No matter their political beliefs, people got together to defend our home,” he said.

Volunteers ranged from barely 20 years old to rather longer in the tooth, including Sushenko Nikolay Semenovich, 66, a retired minesweeper in the Soviet army who shot at the column with his own rifle. “Our commander told me, ‘Get back in the basement, grandpa!’,” Semenovich told CBS. “But my heart simply couldn’t handle just sitting in the basement. These Russians don’t give up. We will kill them all.”

In the days leading to the attack, the Ukrainian military built blockades to prevent the Russians fording the shallow Mertvovod river that runs through the town. Locals chipped in, digging, cooking, bringing torches and power generators. Old ladies filled sandbags.

Velichko roped in construction workers to block off the streets, so that the Russian column would be channelled into a vulnerable area. The Russians arrived on March 2. They had chosen the southern city of Voznesensk as their target because it sits next to a key crossing point of the Southern Bug river. Taking it could open up a pathway to attack Odesa from the north, as the Russian army has struggled to gain a foothold on the southern approaches to the city, failing so far to take Mykolaiv 55 miles to the south.

According to Velichko, three Russian armoured columns set out for the city, but only one of them arrived as the other two were halted by Ukrainian bombardment. “If all three had arrived, we might not have been able to defend the city,” he said.

The critical moment came late on March 2, when the Russian tactical battalion approached the bridges that span the Mertvovod. The Ukrainians had rigged three bridges with explosives, which they detonated. “This meant the Russian army had to stay there. They couldn’t move further because the bridges were gone,” Velichko said. “They were stuck.”

Ukrainians then poured fire into the Russian column, using Javelin anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and whatever else came to hand. “It was a colossal effort by the whole town,” Alexander, a shopkeeper, told the BBC, which produced a startling report from Voznesensk last week. “We used hunting rifles, people threw bricks and jars.” Alexander filmed himself fighting the Russians with an AK-47 rifle, shouting: “Come on my little beauties!”

The Russians retreated to a nearby village, Rakove, where Velichko said they started establishing military positions in homes. “They knew that our army wouldn’t hit them, because they were with civilians,” he said.

In Rakove, Svetlana Nikolaevna, 59, sheltered in a cellar while the Russians turned her home into a field hospital. She found bloodstains on her door. “I came back to get some clothes on the second day,” she told the BBC. “There were wounded people lying everywhere. Ten of them, I think. I’ve cleared up most of the blood.”

On day two of the battle, March 3, Velichko and the local authorities worked to evacuate civilians from Rakove in “green corridors”. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military continued to inflict heavy losses. The next day, the Russians began their retreat. Ukrainian officials in the city estimate that the Russians left behind as many as 30 of their 43 tanks, along with personnel carriers, rocket launchers, trucks and an Mi-24 attack helicopter that was shot down.

By March 6, the Russians were gone and Ukrainian troops were sweeping their positions for stragglers. The Russians sent a helicopter to pick up some of the bodies, but many were left behind. Villagers buried a few. The town’s undertaker, Mykhailo Sokurenko, searched the surrounding fields for more Russian bodies. “I don’t consider them human beings [after what they did here],” he told the BBC. “But it would be wrong to just leave them . . . still frightening people even after their deaths.”

Ukrainian officials estimated that 100 Russians died in the battle. They did not release figures for Ukrainian casualties, but about ten civilians died during the fighting, and two more after hitting a landmine afterwards, officials told The Wall Street Journal.

How did the Ukrainians manage to defy such overwhelming odds? How did soldiers fighting without tanks or armour alongside furious pensioners overcome a Russian tactical battalion with more than 40 tanks? The battle for Voznesensk encapsulates what has become a familiar pattern in this war. Despite their military superiority, Russians planned for the battle inadequately, and then blundered into a determined resistance making the most of their home advantage. Instead of cutting off much of southern Ukraine, the invaders were sent home to lick their wounds in what was one of the most decisive battles of the war so far.