The officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, commander of a tank battalion, Roman Zui told ArmyInform about the battles against the invaders in the Kharkiv region during the first days of the full-scale war with the russian federation.
On the morning of February 24, Roman's tank battalion received a number of combat tasks: firstly, two tank platoons went to reinforce the motorized infantry battalion of the brigade near Kharkiv, four more platoons were to support another battalion at the Vesele – Kutuzivka – Staryi Saltiv defensive line.
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Throughout February 24 – 26, the rest of the tank battalion led by Roman carried out combat missions in the vicinity of Kupiansk and Pechenih. On one of the days, February 26, in the area of the village of Vesele, two tanks from the officer's unit managed to intercept from the front a column of "OMON" forces – russian special police – that was going towards Kharkiv.
"As a result, my guys hit more than 20 units of enemy equipment – one vehicle per each shot, in particular, armored personnel carriers and other armored and non-armored vehicles, while the infantry entered the rear of the russians and destroyed the remnants of the enemy's manpower. The battle lasted approximately 30 minutes , and, in the end, only scrap metal remained from this column," says Roman.
At the same time, the officer also notes that he was very surprised by the actions of the occupiers, in particular, wondered what kind of tactical task was to be performed by a column of special detachment of the internal forces armed with police batons to disperse the rallies:
"They did not even assume that they would be met by combat units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – that’s how much they were unaware of the real state of affairs. Perhaps, they indeed hoped that people would greet them in the Kharkiv region as 'liberators'."
On the part of Defense Express, we note that quite possibly, the russian column which the UAF officer refers to in this story, as follows from the details he mentioned, really went to fight not with the military, but with the civilian population.
In the video below, you can see remnants of the vehicles, notably a lot of them are not military but police ones, that were destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on a road to Kharkiv, published May 12.
Besides the non-military vehicles used for the transportation of russian police, journalist Andrii Tsaplienko in the video says there were rubber bullets, riot shields and other equipment required to suppress civilian protests in Kharkiv.
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