Ukrainian military commander, Sergey Alymov, captain of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the AFU, described the cunning combat tricks that the Wagner fighters made on the Ukrainian battlefields.
What tricks they did there? For example, the artillery spotting. “In the old fashioned way”, our guy says on the walkie-talkie: “to the left of the position ‘hamster’, 200, for 11 o’clock”. Nonsense!
I tell him: “Give the radio to the commander, let the commander adjust the fire!” He says: “There is no commander, already killed.” I say: “Give it to the senior in rank!”
So that you understand, I am responsible for my words. I speak for my commander, for my soldiers. So that you do not think that I claim to be the best, as if I can do everything, I know everything and so on. I am responsible for every word I say.
So, my commander tells him: “Tell me X, Y and I will shoot”.
He says, “X is so-and-so, Y is so-and-so”.
We ask: “The nature of the target?”
Then we hear in the walkie-talkie, “Infantry with dogs”.
Commander to him: “We did not get it.” We supposed he was drunk or drugged. What does “infantry with dogs” means?
Again to him: “The nature of the target?”
He: “Infantry with dogs!”
He gives us coordinates, we say: “So this is our position!”
He says: “Not ours anymore! Fire! Fire!”
We start shooting according to the coordinates. Then it turns out that the Wagner fighters trained war dogs: bulldogs, shepherds, rottweilers. They just let them off the leash on our positions, the dog runs very quickly, it is very hard to shoot at it and you cannot kill it. The dogs run into the trench and while you are trying to kill them with a pistol or cut them with a knife, Wagner’s soldier runs up and kills you on the spot. These are the tricks they did.
Another trick was when they started storming us. So that you understand what an offensive is! I saw it with my own eyes because I sit on a hill and see the battalion in front of me, I see a neighboring brigade, in my binoc I see almost everything and I measure the distance and transmit all the data by walkie-talkie, which, as it turns out, does not work, because they are jamming us. As I understand they’ve been jamming us since the 70s. They have been developing their EW means, while we weaseled out of it. Their EW is very, very strong!
It gets dark in the Donbass at 9 pm, at 4 am it is already light as day. I see a wheat field in front of me. To my left is a forester’s hut, which is a landmark. There is an observing point of the 58th unit.
The Wagner fighters crawled for 8 hours in the wheat field! They started at 9 in the evening and they crawled across this wheat field which is white as milk. How can one not see them?
After they crawled this field, they jumped out in front of this position like jack-in-the-box. The battle began. They shot everyone there, then the next position. We respond, correcting the fire, shelling them. What are they shitheads doing?
They step aside and calmly smoke their cigarettes. As it turned out later, there was a high-voltage power line, where they hung up a camera and look from where we’re shooting. Then they signal to their guys: “Fire!” on our mortars, they destroy everything they see. Then they go further.
– Did they hang up the camera at that moment?
No, it was already there, as it turned out. They are not so crazy. I could not understand why they shoot so accurately, how could they hit targets so precisely.
They begin to ruin all houses along the street. They need 2 or 3 shells of 120mm to destroy a house or just one of 150 mm.
How do they shoot? They shoot with a battery of about 5-6 systems. There is an SOB, a senior battery officer, who gives them the coordinates and they shoot according to this data. If you suppress, injure, kill the SOB, then the battery is blind and deaf.
After the houses are destroyed, the Wagner fighters approach. We try to shoot back but where can we hide? You may only make a position in a house or some basement to shoot from there.
If there is dense fire, they step aside, smoke another cigarette, and order “Fire”! Everything is ruined, our forces have to step back again.
When night falls, everyone goes to have some rest, but not us. Because then they used tactics of rolling artillery barrage and we were shelled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
– I.e. until we began counterbattery operations?
Yes, they were constantly shelling us. In 10 minutes they recharge, drag the ammunition. Most often one vehicle drove away and the second came to replace it. At about 2-3 pm there was a half-hour break for ‘lunch’. At night the same from 11 pm to 4 am.
We got used to sleep when they were shelling the next street. It ended two months later, when we came out to the rear. I could not sleep if there was no shooting. I could not fall asleep when it was quiet. I thought, “what the hell?”
