A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, MAY 27 , 2022
Most deaths, he added, were
because injured soldiers were not
evacuated quickly enough, often
waiting as long as 12 hours for
transport to a military hospital in
Lysychansk, 15 miles away. Some-
times, the men have to carry an
injured soldier on a stretcher as
far as two miles on foot to find a
vehicle, Lapko said. Two vehicles
assigned to his company never
arrived, he said, and are being
used instead by people at military
headquarters.
“If I had a car and was told that
my comrade is wounded some-
where, I’d come anytime and get
him,” said Lapko, who used his
own beat-up car to travel from
Lysychansk to the hotel. “But I
don’t have the necessary trans-
port to get there.”Retreat
Lapko and his men have grown
increasingly frustrated and disil-
lusioned with their superiors. His
request for the awards has not
been approved. His battalion
commander demanded that he
send 20 of his soldiers to another
front line, which meant that he
couldn’t rotate his men out from
Toshkivka. He refused the order.
The final affront arrived last
week when he arrived at military
headquarters in Lysychansk after
two weeks in Toshkivka. His bat-
talion commander and team had
moved to another town without
informing him, he said, taking
food, water and other supplies.
“They left us with no explana-
tion,” Lapko said. “I think we were
sent here to close a gap and no
one cares if we live or die.”
So he, Khrus and several mem-
bers of their company drove the
60 miles to Druzhkivka to stay in
a hotel for a few days. “My guys
wanted to wash themselves for
the first time in a month,” Lapko
said. “You know, hygiene! We
don’t have it. We sleep in base-
ments, on mattresses with rats
running around.”
He and his men insisted that
they want to return to the front.
“We’re ready to fight and we
will keep on fighting,” Lapko said.
“We will protect every meter of
our country — but with adequate
commandments and without un-
realistic orders. I took an oath of
allegiance to the Ukrainian peo-
ple. We’re protecting Ukraine and
we won’t let anyone in as long as
we’re alive.”
But on Monday, Ukraine’s mili-
tary security services arrived at
the hotel and took Khrus and
other members of his platoon to a
detention center for two days,
accusing them of desertion. Lap-
ko was stripped of his command,
according to an order reviewed by
The Post. He is being held at the
base in Lysychansk, his future
uncertain.
Reached by phone Wednesday,
he said two more of his men had
been wounded on the front line.Yevhen Semekhin contributed to this
report.“Do you know what we have
against phosphorous?” Lapko
asked. “A glass of water, a piece of
cloth to cover your mouth with!”
Both Lapko and Khrus expect
to die at the front. That is why
Lapko carries a pistol.
“It’s just a toy against them, but
I have it so that if they take me I
will shoot myself,” he said.Survival
Despite the hardships, his men
have fought courageously, Lapko
said. Pointing at Khrus, he de-
clared: “This guy here is a legend,
a hero.” Khrus and his platoon,
his commander said, have killed
more than 50 Russian soldiers in
close-up battles.
In a recent clash, he said, his
men attacked two Russian ar-
mored vehicles carrying about
30 soldiers, ambushing them
with grenades and guns.
“Their mistake was not to come
behind us,” Lapko said. “If they
would have done that, I wouldn’t
be talking to you here now.”
Lapko has recommended 12 of
his men for medals of valor, in-
cluding two posthumously.
The war has taken a heavy toll
on his company — as well as on
other Ukrainian forces in the
area. Two of his men were killed,
among 20 fatalities in the battal-
ion as a whole, and “many are
wounded and in recovery now,”
he said.
Then there are those who are
traumatized and have not re-
turned.
“Many got shell shock. I don’t
know how to count them,” Lapko
said.
The casualties here are largely
kept secret to protect morale
among troops and the general
public.
“On Ukrainian TV we see that
there are no losses,” Lapko said.
“There’s no truth.”doned houses. “They have no wa-
ter, nothing there,” Lapko said.
“Only water that I bring them
every other day.”
It’s a miracle the Russians ha-
ven’t pushed through their defen-
sive line in Toshkivka, Khrus said
as Lapko nodded. Besides their
rifles and hand grenades, the only
weapons they were given were a
handful of rocket-propelled gre-
nades to counter the well-
equipped Russian forces. And no
one showed Lapko’s men how to
use the RPGs.
The Russians, he said, are de-
ploying tanks, infantry fighting
vehicles, Grad rockets and other
forms of artillery — when they try
to penetrate the forest with
ground troops or infantry vehi-
cles, they can easily get close
enough “to kill.”
“The situation is controllable
but difficult,” Khrus said. “And
when the heavy weapons are
against us, we don’t have any-
thing to work with. We are help-
less.”
Behind their positions, Ukrai-
nian forces have tanks, artillery
and mortars to back Lapko’s men
and other units along the front.
But when the tanks or mortars
are fired, the Russians respond
with Grad rockets, often in areas
where Lapko’s men are taking
cover. In some cases, his troops
have found themselves with no
artillery support.
This is, in part, because Lapko
has not been provided a radio, he
said. So there’s no contact with
his superiors in Lysychansk, pre-
venting him from calling for help.
The men accuse the Russians
of using phosphorous bombs, in-
cendiary weapons that are
banned by international law if
used against civilians.
“It explodes at 30 to 50 meters
high and goes down slowly and
burns everything,” Khrus said.they were dispatched to Toshkiv-
ka, a village bordering the sepa-
ratist areas where Russian forces
were trying to advance. They
were surprised by the orders.
“When we were coming here,
we were told that we were going
to be in the third line on defense,”
Lapko said. “Instead, we came to
the zero line, the front line. We
didn’t know where we were go-
ing.”
The area has become a focal
point of the war, as Moscow con-
centrates its military might on
capturing the region. The city of
Severodonetsk, near Lysychansk,
is surrounded on three sides by
Russian forces. Over the week-
end, they destroyed one of three
bridges into the city, and they are
constantly shelling the other two.
Ukrainian troops inside Severo-
donetsk are fighting to prevent
the Russians from completely en-
circling the city.
That’s also the mission of Lap-
ko’s men. If Toshkivka falls, the
Russians can advance north
toward Lysychansk and com-
pletely surround Severodonetsk.
That would also allow them to go
after larger cities in the region.
When the volunteers first ar-
rived, their rotations in and out of
Toshkivka lasted three or four
days. As the war intensified, they
stayed for a week minimum,
sometimes two. “Food gets deliv-
ered every day except for when
there are shellings or the situa-
tion is bad,” Khrus said.
And in recent weeks, he said,
the situation has gotten much
worse. When their supply chains
were cut off for two days by the
bombardment, the men were
forced to make do with a potato a
day.
They spend most days and
nights in trenches dug into the
forest on the edges of Toshkivka
or inside the basements of aban-War in UkraineBut Lapko and Khrus’s con-
cerns were echoed recently by a
platoon of the 115th Brigade
3rd Battalion, based nearby in the
besieged city of Severodonetsk. In
a video uploaded to Telegram on
Tuesday, and confirmed as au-
thentic by an aide to Haidai,
volunteers said they would no
longer fight because they lacked
proper weapons, rear support
and military leadership.
“We are being sent to certain
death,” said a volunteer, reading
from a prepared script, adding
that a similar video was filmed by
members of the 115th Brigade
1st Battalion. “We are not alone
like this, we are many.”
Ukraine’s military rebutted the
volunteers’ claims in their own
video posted online, saying the
“deserters” had everything they
needed to fight: “They thought
they came for a vacation,” one
service member said. “That’s why
they left their positions.”
Hours after The Post inter-
viewed Lapko and Khrus, mem-
bers of Ukraine’s military security
service arrived at their hotel and
detained some of their men, ac-
cusing them of desertion.
The men contend that they
were the ones who were deserted.Waiting to die
Before the invasion, Lapko was
a driller of oil and gas wells.
Khrus bought and sold power
tools. Both lived in the western
city of Uzhhorod and joined the
territorial defense forces, a civil-
ian militia that sprung up after
the invasion.
Lapko, built like a wrestler, was
made a company commander in
the 5th Separate Rifle Battalion,
in charge of 120 men. The similar-
ly burly Khrus became a platoon
commander under Lapko. All of
their comrades were from west-
ern Ukraine. They were handed
AK-47 rifles and given training
that lasted less than a half-hour.
“We shot 30 bullets and then
they said, ‘You can’t get more; too
expensive,’ ” Lapko said.
They were given orders to head
to the western city of Lviv. When
they got there, they were ordered
to go south and then east into
Luhansk province in Donbas,
portions of which were already
under the control of Moscow-
backed separatists and are now
occupied by Russian forces. A
couple dozen of his men refused
to fight, Lapko said, and they
were imprisoned.
The ones who stayed were
based in Lysychansk. From there,seize Kyiv and Kharkiv and have
scored battlefield victories in the
east. But the experience of Lapko
and his group of volunteers offers
a rare and more realistic portrait
of the conflict and Ukraine’s
struggle to halt the Russian ad-
vance in parts of Donbas.
Ukraine, like Russia, has provid-
ed scant information about
deaths, injuries or losses of mili-
tary equipment. But after three
months of war, this company of
120 men is down to 54 because of
deaths, injuries and desertions.
The volunteers were civilians
before Russia invaded on Feb. 24,
and they never expected to be
dispatched to one of the most
dangerous front lines in eastern
Ukraine. They quickly found
themselves in the crosshairs of
war, feeling abandoned by their
military superiors and struggling
to survive.
“Our command takes no re-
sponsibility,” Lapko said. “They
only take credit for our achieve-
ments. They give us no support.”
When they could take it no
longer, Lapko and his top lieuten-
ant, Vitaliy Khrus, retreated with
members of their company this
week to a hotel away from the
front. There, both men spoke to
The Washington Post on the rec-
ord, knowing they could face a
court-martial and time in mili-
tary prison.
“If I speak for myself, I’m not a
battlefield commander,” he add-
ed. “But the guys will stand by me,
and I will stand by them till the
end.”
The volunteers’ battalion com-
mander, Ihor Kisileichuk, did not
respond to calls or written ques-
tions from The Post in time for
publication, but he sent a terse
message late Thursday saying:
“Without this commander, the
unit protects our land,” in an
apparent reference to Lapko. A
Ukrainian military spokesman
declined immediate comment,
saying it would take “days” to
provide a response.
“War breaks people down,” said
Serhiy Haidai, head of the region-
al war administration in Luhansk
province, acknowledging many
volunteers were not properly
trained because Ukrainian au-
thorities did not expect Russia to
invade. But he maintained that all
soldiers are taken care of: “They
have enough medical supplies
and food. The only thing is there
are people that aren’t ready to
fight.”
UKRAINE FROM A
Volunteer fighters
in east say they’re
without support
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESA Ukrainian tank moves along a street in Severodonetsk on May 18. The Russian invaders are focusing on eastern Ukraine, where they already have a foothold, and have come close to surrounding key cities.
ANDRIY ANDRIYENKO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A teacher visits the destroyed gymnasium of a school in the village of Druzhkivka, Ukraine, on May 16.
Forces in the region report constant shelling and the destruction of bridges and other strategic targets.