"We walked path of deadly shadow" — story of soldier with call sign Fin about fighting on Sumy border
The time will come when a film will be made about the events described in an interview with Censor.NET by Bohdan Bakhtyn, a soldier of the 67th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, call sign Fin. A feature film. Because of what happened this year near the village of Zhuravka, in how our soldiers, despite severe wounds, fought back against the enemy who surrounded them, and then made their way through swamps and forests to rejoin their comrades, there’s so much packed into it that it will be watched in one sitting, reliving what these guys went through.
And this would be symbolic to some extent, because my interlocutor worked in the film industry before the great war, and when the full-scale Russian invasion began, he returned to Ukraine from Europe and volunteered for the front.
"TO REACH THE POSITIONS, WE HAD TO CROSS TWO SWAMPS"
– You began defending the Sumy region during the renewed Russian offensive, before it was even reported in the news. That’s when you were seriously wounded. Where exactly did it happen?
– About three kilometers from the village of Zhuravka. Our positions were right on the state border of Ukraine. At that time, our forces were pulling out from the Kursk region, and the katsaps were trying to break through the defenses of our northern flanks, first to create a pocket, and then to encircle, our units that had not yet withdrawn from enemy territory. We were there, holding those lines. I was on one of the forward positions, they kept assaulting us constantly. That day was no different.
It was tough, because you had to defend yourself and return fire, but you couldn’t, drones kept dropping explosives on us, FPVs were hunting us nonstop. There were a lot of them in that area.
At first, we lost our observation post. It happened during my shift. Another guy was with me; we were inside when an FPV hit. He was buried under the soil, and while I was digging him out, another one nearly hit us.
They drove us into the dugout with drones, and that’s when their airborne troops began the assault. We could already hear they were surrounding the positions, their gunfire is distinctive because of the specific ammunition they use.
My comrade tried to throw a grenade. Our dugout was built in such a way that you couldn’t exit, you had to climb out. He climbed up, and there was already a b#stard above, who shot him. My comrade fell back into the dugout with the grenade, he had already pulled the pin. The Russian kept firing, wounding another of our guys in the neck, he was KIA too. And then the grenade detonated. I dropped to the ground, covered my groin with my leg and that’s when the shrapnel hit me.
There were four of us in that dugout, two of whom were killed. I thought the Russians would throw another grenade to finish us off. I had to take my fallen comrade, use him like body armor and throw him on top of me so I could at least apply a tourniquet.
– They didn’t throw another one, did they?
– No. But after I applied the tourniquet, I had to climb out to control the sector. Another comrade was wounded at that point too. I couldn’t help him then. If only the two of us had stayed there, who knows what would have happened next. I see him starting to recover somehow, grab my rifle, and climb out.
To continue firing, I had to stick my head out of that dugout a bit and see what was happening beyond it. There was a suspicion that the Russian soldier who had gunned down our comrades had run in that direction. He ran away from us because guys on the adjacent position helped us. They laid down heavy fire. They scared him off.
At that moment, I didn’t realize my leg was broken, so when I climbed out and started to move, I fell. I began to roll and realized I’d actually fallen out of the trench. I decided to make for the neighboring position. My wounded comrade was climbing out at the same time. But the thing was, he knew the route to that position and I didn’t. I was just yelling to my guys so they wouldn’t shoot me and heading straight toward them. When I finally got there, that position was being assaulted by the katsaps as well. We had to fight them off.
First aid was given on site. Later, I had to loosen the tourniquet myself, because medevacs weren’t getting through.
To reach the positions, you had to walk through two swamps.
– Two swamps?!
– Yes, that kind of forest. This is the Sumy region. That happens there often. And you had to go to the positions on foot, because with drones flying 24/7 no vehicles would go in. We, for example, took local guides.
– What happened next at that neighbouring position? Did you repel the assault?
– We held that second position and even called artillery fire onto our own location. After we lost one of the cellars that covered our right flank, only a single deep cellar remained. You enter a corridor there, then descend further down through entrances, it was quite deep. When they tried to encircle our position, we shot one Russian almost at the entrance and took his radio. Over that radio, they were telling us that "taking someone else’s stuff is bad." We told them to come and take it themselves. From their radio, we heard that they were calling for reinforcements; we passed that info to our side and our artillery "cut apart" their next group before they reached us.
– Why call artillery onto yourselves?
– They were above and we were in the cellar. We had no way to return effective fire. We lost another fighter; over the radio, we asked our UAVs to watch over us because we no longer had a flank. To spot them, you had to climb out and look.
Only one of the enemy was left; on the radio, we heard he was wounded. We needed to monitor their net to anticipate their next moves. He was lying there not finished off, applying a tourniquet, while over the radio they were cussing and urging him to "finish the job." He was saying, "We need support, there’s a volunteer battalion here." They knew the 67th was holding this sector, our brigade, formed from elements of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps "Right Sector." That, for a moment, lifted our morale.
Then they brought in their strike-drone operators and pushed another group forward. At that point, only one of our fighters remained combat effective; the others had sustained varying degrees of wounds.
The drones blew the entrance to pieces, and when a comrade ran from one that flew into the cellar, shrapnel hit his buttocks. He was the only one of us who could move more or less. In my case, the left leg was injured; another comrade suffered a severe concussion and broken ribs. There was also one whose back was completely "wrecked"; he walked bent over, and the guy who had been with me on the first position had his right leg badly mangled above the knee by a grenade.
– That’s a mess. How did you all even hold on in that state?
– On those positions, it was basically a "celebration" every day for as long as we held there. But those days were especially hard. After they blew up our entrance, they threw gas inside. And we had only two gas masks between all of us…
The guys who had them nearby put them on. I grabbed a cloth and tried to cover my face, it didn’t help, of course. I took out my phone, looked at a photo of my wife, and realized I had to smash it so the Russians wouldn’t get it later. I already thought my war was over at that point…
I smashed the phone and dropped to the ground. The more you breathed that gas, the more it burned everything inside. Your lungs, your throat, everything starts to burn. I thought, dying like this is pure agony. I had to get out. I was almost suffocating; without breathing I started scrambling out fast.
When I got into the tree line, I saw another comrade, he was the first to jump out. No sooner had I climbed out than, a second later, an FPV flew into the cellar. After that, the rest of the fighters climbed out — it was impossible to stay down there.
We sat there reporting to command: this is the situation, and the second position is effectively lost. They told us a group was on its way; we had to wait.
I asked the guys how far it was to our next position. They said about 400–500 meters. Right then, another FPV came in on us, missed, and detonated nearby. I understood we wouldn’t make it, everyone was wounded and our weapons were left in the cellar. It was daytime, the trees were still bare, early spring. We’d be sitting ducks. So we all crawled back into the cellar.
– Were you able to move at all with that leg injury?
– I could put weight on the leg, but if my foot was at a certain angle, I went down immediately. The fibula was broken, and everything below the knee was peppered with grenade fragments.
We waited for a group equipped with thermal anti-drone ponchos. I put one on, it’s long, in the dark you can step on it and go down right away. You also have to keep the hood on at all times; it gets unbearably hot. By then my temperature was already up because sepsis had set in.
That group stayed on the position; the Russians were practically out of everything. Both ammo and manpower. Only drones were left in the air.
We decided to split into threes and move out of the tree line. To reach the first swamp we had to sprint across a clearing. It had to be crossed at a sprint so we wouldn’t be detected by enemy drones.
I was the last in our three. I couldn’t run fast; my guys had already made it across. I figured I’d just move as best I could. I still had my body armor and rifle on me. An enemy drone spotted me. And then it started — short, over; short, over. I was being bracketed by mortar fire. I kept pushing forward.
Either their mortar crew was clumsy or it was simply that a single man is a small target and they couldn’t get a bead on me. Under that mortar fire, I crawled all the way to the swamp. Once I got into it, my legs began to stick. You step with the injured leg, it sucks you in, you fall. You push yourself up, fall again. I also lost contact with the guys. I started wading around that swamp…
– Why didn’t the guys wait for you, knowing the state you were in?
– They did wait, but I didn’t know where they were. It was dark, and you couldn’t shout or signal — we were in immediate proximity to the enemy. There’s no actual line of contact there; it’s the kind of area where ours and theirs can run into each other. Literally, as we’re moving toward them and they toward us. The only way to patrol is with drones.
And I couldn’t keep pace with my own. One had only a buttock wound; another had broken ribs. The second wasn’t carrying armor anymore, just his rifle. My ankle wasn’t working, and I still had full armor on. If that leg got stuck somewhere, I had to work it free and that took strength I didn’t have.
– That’s painful. I’ve broken my leg twice. I know what it’s like.
– I was taking three paracetamol tablets at a time to bring the fever down. After I was wounded, I took everything in my pill pack You know, the kind they make for the military?
I washed it down with river water. On those positions, we took water wherever we could find it. No supplies could be brought in because of the intensity of the fighting, so we drew it, boiled it, and used it.
Even on the first and second positions, after we’d been wounded, we kept repelling enemy assaults and slept three to four hours.
– Did you eventually link up with your own?
– Yes. Ahead was our third position; I was literally crawling into its trenches, I had no strength left. In the morning, we heard over the radio that another group had come to support the one that relieved us, and they were being assaulted again. The guys told us to move faster, because if the Russians broke through, we wouldn’t get out.
So the decision was made to go out again in teams of three, in broad daylight, and head for the checkpoint, as I call it. It was a building like an old village community hall. There was a cellar where all groups heading to or from the positions, as well as the guides, could rest because crossing those two swamps in one go was hard.
The guys carved me a stick from a piece of wood, made it into a crutch. There were three of us, all wounded, trying to reach the edge of the village where there was signal, from where we could be evacuated. We set out along the road I call "the road of a deadly shadow."
– Why?
– Leaning trees all along the way, and bodies everywhere. I didn’t see any of ours there or they just didn’t happen to be there. The ones I could identify by their uniforms were katsaps.
We kept moving, listening to the radio, realizing the fight was still raging on the position where we’d been relieved.
We finally reached the checkpoint. Two guides were there, telling us not to linger and to push on to the next swamp. It was basically a cellar in the middle of the forest, you couldn’t hold a defense there.
I said to the guys, "At least give us some water and we’ll move." I knew the state I was in, but what else could we do.
What helped was that there were few enemy drones in our sector, they were concentrated over the position where the battle was ongoing. But by the time I got to the second swamp, I had no strength left. And we still had to cross it. It turned into a Fort Boyard–style ordeal. A wide stream ran there, you couldn’t just ford it and the bridge had been blown.
There was a broad log and a slack rope strung across. You had to cross along the log while holding the rope. Then the rain started, and everything got slick.
– That must’ve been slippery…
– And I still had to make that crossing on an injured leg. Thankfully, I managed. I got up the bank and moved with a shuffling step; my balance was fine. The hardest part was for the comrade with broken ribs. He climbed up, tried to tighten the rope, but it kept wobbling side to side. He couldn’t stabilize and fell. Another comrade climbed down after him. I immediately opened up distance so we wouldn’t bunch up, moved off, and kept an eye out for drones.
– Did you get across the swamp?
– It was a struggle. We had to make it to nightfall before the Russians switched on their thermal imagers and found us. I kept telling my comrades to leave me, I couldn’t move fast and was only slowing them down. It wasn’t that I wanted to die there; I just understood the situation.
Twice, I told them to leave me. They asked if I was out of my mind, joking, of course. The third time, I talked them into it and they moved ahead. I crouched under a tree, there were plenty of fallen ones, and crawled under a broken willow. I took the side plates out of my armor and started off-loading everything I could to shed weight. I kept only the front and back plates.
Then I began recalling the map I’d studied closely before stepping off. I knew we’d have no comms. My phone was smashed, too. But I had in my head where those tree lines led, which ones I could duck into, and how to reach the village.
I started inching forward, hiding from drones. The plan was to make it to the village, to buildings that were at least partly intact, somewhere I could crawl into a room. Since I had no strength, I’d catch my breath in one building, then move to the next, then a third, and so on until I reached the edge of the village. That was the plan.
When I reached the village, the rain picked up. Because of that, I didn’t hear the drone right away.
I climbed out of that building, but I couldn’t move quickly to the next, everything around was rubble, stones and bricks underfoot, nowhere solid to place my foot. It was night, pitch-black. I had to move along the road and then slip into the next house. And as I step out onto the road again, I hear a drone coming.
– Right at you?
– Yes. And as it turned out later, there wasn’t just one. I realized it was a Mavic and that I needed to hide somewhere. I went into some hangar with a shattered roof. Feeling around in the dark, I found a big sheet of black plastic, pulled it over myself, and lay still.
I didn’t know then whether plastic could block heat at all. But I used what I had to hand.
Several drones reached the hangar and started searching for me. A mortar hit nearby twice. I just lay there without moving, and they circled and flew off.
After a while, I crawled out of the hangar. The leg hurt badly by then, the meds had worn off. I headed down the road again and heard another drone. But this one was flying at full tilt. Usually, when something was screaming along toward the state border, it was ours for reconnaissance or to drop something. I was right: it was one of ours, it just passed right over me and kept going. Still, to be safe, I went into the next house and saw a door tied shut with a rope. I started smashing it with my rifle butt and then I heard: "Who are you?"
– In Ukrainian?
– Yes, in Ukrainian. They were our mortar men. As it turned out, they were due for rotation in two hours. And they were the only ones crazy enough to drive into that village and then drive back out again. That’s how I got out. The other wounded who made it to the very edge of the village were picked up a day later by a Bradley.
"ON THE X-RAY, IT LOOKED LIKE A STAR-FILLED SKY. LOTS OF FRAGMENTS OF VARYING SIZES."
– Words don’t convey everything you endured in those days. You’re a very brave man. Tell me, what did the doctors do with your leg afterwards?
– They removed fragments and treated it. I’m now at the rehabilitation stage.
– Were there many fragments?
– On the X-ray it looked like a starry sky, lots of fragments of different sizes. Because they were embedded in soft tissue, I couldn’t be given a wide range of rehabilitative procedures and load-bearing exercises; there was a risk of further damage.
– And did you originally serve in the infantry?
– No, I was in artillery. I was attached to an infantry unit. There weren’t enough people to defend the populated agglomeration — Zhuravka, Basivka. It was very hard there and it took a lot of manpower and means to hold those settlements.
– When that renewed Russian offensive in the Sumy region began, what was their tactic? Were they moving in small groups this time, not as massed as before?
– At the very start, you could see a strange picture. I don’t know why, people talk about it more now, less before. Even earlier, it was discussed in military circles that perhaps the Russians are given some injections that make their bodies, not just resilient, but numb to pain and fear. At least we saw that they would march a kilometer from the position singing. Then you shoot them with an RPG, someone is missing limbs, but they still run at us.
– You said you were an artilleryman. Before the war did you have any basic military education?
– I didn’t, but like many others in 2022 I volunteered, I came back from Europe.
– Were you working there?
– I just decided to see Europe before the war started. I knew this would happen and I was preparing. So I went first to my parents in Poland — they live there, then to Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark. After the full-scale invasion began, we helped Ukrainians — those leaving — with housing and work. While I could help, I did. When refugee acquaintances ran out, I went to fight.
– You said you realized a big war was coming. It’s a pity not everyone believed or prepared.
– I studied in detail how the Russians fight, how many times they took Grozny, and how they later leveled Grozny to the ground — they left ruins. I said it would be like Chechnya, only thirty times worse. For them as well, mind you.
– You meant in terms of the resistance we would mount?
– Yes. If they suffered such losses and problems in small Chechnya, what about Ukraine? It’s a huge territory and you have to attack on so many axes. With their approach to war… it’s a Soviet school — throw people at positions in assaults.
– I think they somewhat underestimated Ukrainians.
– Yes, they underestimated us.
– What motivated you to go from Europe, where things were relatively calm, to the front? What was the real reason?
– Then Bucha happened. Before it hit the media I heard from friends and military acquaintances who had been in the counteroffensive in Kyiv region about what happened there. It was a thirst for revenge, a thirst for justice, hatred. If we all blow together, there will be a storm.
– I’ve been told you write music. Is that true?
– Yes, I’ve even recorded a track, while here in rehabilitation. I started writing music to go with the videos I shot of our artillery at work on the positions. The idea came spontaneously. We were sitting with the commander talking. I mentioned I’d worked in the film industry before the war, directly on set, and that I wanted to adapt cinematic shooting techniques for phone filming so it would look great and not like it was shot on a phone. I told the commander I could film the guys at work and make it cinematic — like Michael Bay.
I shot the first video, everyone watched and liked it. Then the idea came to create an Instagram page for the unit to post such footage. We needed music without copyright, which is hard to find. I started thinking what to do, and then learned there are phone apps that let you compose something simple. I gradually taught myself.
For about six months, whenever I had free time, I’d sit and compose, experiment with things. Eventually, I reached a level where I could create dynamic music tracks to accompany the footage, so the content, both video and sound, would be entirely ours. It was a small personal project.
I’d show up and tell the guys, "Do your job, I’ll do mine, pretend I’m not even here." That was inspiring; it made me feel like I was driving a few nails into history from my side. I film these people so they can show their kids, relatives and friends how they defended the country. And they do it really well.
By the way, some viewers DM asking how to join our brigade. I immediately forward them to the right person for those questions. What makes me happy is that my work motivates people to join the military and not be afraid because we have to defend our country and our freedom.
Tetiana Bodnia, Censor.NET
Photo and video provided by Bohdan Bakhtyn
