Editor’s Note: On Aug. 29, Ukrainians remember the soldiers killed in the Battle for Ilovaisk and other battles of Russia’s war against Ukraine. On this day in 2014, the Russian soldiers shelled the Ukrainian troops that were leaving the encirclement in the city of Ilovaisk in eastern Ukraine. By official count, 366 soldiers were killed and 429 wounded in Ilovaisk, which made it Ukrainian army’s most devastating battle in the war. This reconstruction of events was originally published in the Kyiv Post on March 30, 2018.
The Kyiv Post has reconstructed the tragic events during the Battle of Ilovaisk by telling the human stories of those who were there, in a multimedia project called Surviving Ilovaisk.
There are stories of confusion among military leaders, and chaos on the ground when soldiers came up against not lightly armed Russian proxy forces, but the full might of the well-trained and equipped Russian regular army. But there are also stories of the heroism of those who fought on, even when the situation seemed hopeless, those who clung on to their own lives, and saved the lives of their comrades, in dire circumstances.
