Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Igor R. Salikov
Excerpted from Putin’s ‘Viper’ Detachment: One Man’s Role in a Russian Special Forces Unit and the Invasion of Ukraine, by Igor R. Salikov, published by Frontline Books.
War is a tiresome thing, even in conversation. Especially if you tell the truth. These are not dashing stories and descriptions of great battles on new equipment, movie shootouts from modern blasters, launching deadly rays into columns of the advancing enemy. War is a shitty life, dirt, stench, rusty equipment, battered hands with abscesses, and eternal fatigue with hunger. Sometimes lice. An eternal road. This evil old woman brings grief and suffering to everyone.
Sarmat – Commander of the Steppe Battalion
Looking at Sarmat, you wouldn’t say that war is dull. He stood to my right, in the heroic stance of a ruler of the local heights. His followers looked no worsethan the Mangalores from The Fifth Element. Some of the most ‘gobarite’ dudes were posing as a human shield for the commander, while others were aiming their SVD semi-automatic sniper rifle rifles somewhere.
“Where were they aiming?” I thought. The Ukrainian Armed Forces positions were over five kilometres away. These shooters were trying to hit Ukrainian soldiers with a simple SVD rifle. Ridiculous.
It should be noted that the Steppe Battalion (which had just arrived) was formed by amateurs.
Sarmat, a former police officer, heading some Far Eastern Cossack army, not very familiar with the performance characteristics of company weapons, also understood the stupidity of his soldiers. He gave the command to stand down.
Excerpted from Putin’s ‘Viper’ Detachment: One Man’s Role in a Russian Special Forces Unit and the Invasion of Ukraine, by Igor R. Salikov, published by Frontline Books.
The new battalion commander surveyed the front line (it ran along the Mius River) and asked me where Ataman Kozitsyn’s Cossacks who were heavily involved in the separatist movement against Ukraine had died. I pointed to the left. There was a forest there, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces had burned with rocket fire along with the Cossacks.
Sarmat sighed heavily. He craved battle and glory. He wanted to run for the regional government of the Russian Federation and needed military glory. But he understood nothing about war and didn’t know where to begin.
We received word over the radio that a platoon of D-30 howitzers was heading our way, and any day now, the Ukrainian Armed Forces could attack Dmitrovka. This village was the key to the Donetsk Ridge. On the other side of the river lay a lush forest and a Ukrainian oligarch’s preserve. Our intelligence had already spotted Ukrainian military equipment moving there. We were ordered to prevent the Ukrainian Armed Forces from gaining a foothold on any of the heights.
Igor R. Salikov.
There were constant skirmishes between reconnaissance groups in the forest. Both we and the Ukrainians were testing the waters.
Sarmat was interested in order in the village, not the military aspect (he didn’t understand it). He was a police administrator. Scouts from my companyrecently detained four Russian marauders who had previously served in Ataman Kozitsyn’s Cossack regiment. Three of these scoundrels had previously servedunder DPR (Donetsk Republic) Prime Minister A. Borodai. One of them was E. Ivanov, nicknamed Spear. More on him later. Sarmat ordered the marauders executed, but Borodai took them all into his service and awarded them officer ranks. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions occupied the heights of the Donetsk Ridge.
Ukrainian Armed Forces commanders sent saboteur groups to the area around the village of Dmitrovka. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also included militants from the Polish private military company Akademiya. These men were snipers. They set up ambushes on the roads and killed separatist commanders. Among other things, they had orders to capture Russian soldiers ‘on vacation.’
I have already spoken about this tricky term. ‘Vacationers’ is a term Putin used to justify the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine to European politicians. He claimed that Russian soldiers were taking vacations and volunteering to fight in Donbas.
We also found ourselves in such an ambush. Tourist’s group checked the cars passing along the T-05 highway, and my group in the BTR-80 went to control the forest belt and the country road.
But we were given incomplete information. At that moment, another group of saboteurs from the east approached the T-05 road and cut off the road to Dmitrovka. Snipers from the Azov Battalion (Ukrainian Armed Forces) saw the Tourist’s mobile checkpoint and decided to destroy it.
I saved it, because I was the first to see the glare of an eyepiece, flashing in the sun. I drove up the BTR in time, which blocked the enemy’s visibility with a smoke screen and shot at the forest belt with a KPVT.
Strongholds
Besides this damn road, there was a main task. We had to recapture a ‘window’ for Voentorg.
The enemy’s ‘Strong Points’ were positioned correctly, it was simply impossible to attack them head-on. We decided to do it differently.
It was around 18 June. Towards evening, we received a message on our Balalaika about a fire platoon of D-30 howitzers moving towards us along theVoentorg corridor. Along with it, they said that two Grad BM-21 122mm self-propelled multiple rocket launcher crews would also arrive, which would be used to carry out a separate task. Sarmat was asked to prepare for action in the area of Kozhevnya, Dibrovka and Dyakovo.
The Grad BM-21 installations were to move towards the border of the Luhansk region with our escort. Scouts of the volunteer battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were operating in the forests. They, too, were tasked by their command with capturing Russian military groups crossing the border. In several cases, clashes occurred in the forested area.
Operation Mushroom Picker
The BM-21 passed earlier. I had to assign an incomplete platoon of scouts to accompany them. The final destination of the route was the settlement of Vishnevoye. It was planned to drive the Ukrainians away from the border with the Rostov region so that they could not maintain military bases there. This long-range weapon BM-21 was supposed to solve the problem.
We had our positions in Dmitrovka. The key height of the area was designated on our maps as ‘Hill 185’. According to the communications scheme, the Ukrainian Armed Forces called it ‘Granit.’ Hill 185 was under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they were strengthening their presence there. This prevented the Kremlin from delivering weapons to Donetsk and Lugansk. Therefore, Moscow (the FSB Special Operations Centre) ordered the bombardment of the hill to disrupt the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ military communications with their other strongholds and protect the supply of weapons.
Training ground in Belarus. (Photos courtesy the author and Frontline Books)
We were sitting in our house and conferring before visiting Sarmat. Tourist told us the intricacies of the order. The head of the special department, comrade ‘Sever’ (everyone knew him by this call sign back in Chechnya), had his own data and his own opinion. Based on this, we developed tactics to counter the Ukrainian Armed Forces. By this time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces controlled three main heights and key areas of terrain: Zelenopillya, Dyakovo and the Kozhevnya area.
The 72nd Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Donbas Battalion… were primarily concentrated in the area. According to our intelligence gathered by our Sever security officer, the Ukrainian Armed Forces brigade was armed with Akatsiya self-propelled howitzers.
Hill 185 was blocking the passage of yet another ‘Voentorg’ (a convoy carrying weapons for the separatists). Ukrainian Armed Forces with advanced electronic warfare and reconnaissance systems were dug in here. They were monitoring the entire airwaves and blocking our communications. They also had UAVs. The hill was ordered to be disabled.
For this purpose, we developed Operation Mushroom Pickers. In this, a group of my scouts goes out to the neighbouring mountain through the forest to ‘pick mushrooms’ but in doing so acts as forward observers for the D-30 howitzer platoon that has arrived.
*Mushroom Picker* was scheduled for 00.30 hours. The artillery strike was supposed to start at 04.20 hours. But everything went wrong. The forward observers did everything perfectly, the artillery guys screwed up by starting to deploy late. While we were placing an air defence group with MANPADS in the woods, our reconnaissance group was detected by the enemy’s electronic warfare group. The Ukrainian Armed Forces spotted them and began firing at them.
We heard on the air, ‘Where’s the music?’ The music is artillery in Army slang. It was an order to fire.
It was my group that requested action because they started coming under fire. We heard the sound of artillery strikes – the Ukrainian Armed Forces were shelling the forest. Soon the Ukrainians could raise a helicopter and then our positions would be exposed. We could have panicked. The artillery platoon commander was at a loss. He couldn’t find the correct compass bearing to fire his howitzers – he even had two of his guns pointing in completely the wrong direction.
Then Sever and I calmed him down and began helping. Sever ran to man the MANPADS, and I took command of the artillery. The D-30 platoon commander’s name was Ivan. He calmed down.
The first shots missed the main target, which was a Ukrainian Armed Forces stronghold – the one I mentioned marked ‘Hill 185’ on the map.
But by pure chance, they hit the enemy’s mechanized company’s ammunition depot.
Khatabych corrected our mistake, and with a second salvo we hit Hill 185. An artillery duel began. We were hitting the target, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces couldn’t figure out where our guns were positioned. But they began to hit hard in the forest where Moskal’s group was. The Ukrainians launched three helicopters into the air. The Ukrainian Armed Forces began to fire shells at the village. The enemy deployed fire support from neighbouring strategic heights, but they did not receive proper coordinates. Ukrainian Armed Forces shells hit the outskirts of Dmitrovka. Two shells destroyed several vegetable gardens and a house.
Our company was spread out along the flanks of the Mius River. Tourist commanded the positions. He didn’t lose his composure when he saw the helicopters. We knew our communications were being monitored because the Donbas Battalion, entrenched on Hill 185, had an American-model electronic warfare system (EWS). They were listening in on our communications and pinpointing the details. We needed to destroy the antenna, otherwise all our manoeuvers would become known. Then Tourist radioed false information to a fake group in the forest. The fake news about an ambush on helicopters was broadcast. And it worked – the pilots received a signal that they were being targeted, and they panicked. Before our very eyes, two helicopters turned away and fled.
We destroyed a fuel depot and an electronic warfare antenna. The Ukrainians fired hard at us but missed. All their artillery shifted fire to the right side of the village of Dmitrovka. The only one caught in the fire trap was Moskal’s group. They were subjected to rapid fire. They were forced to split into two subgroupsand retreat to designated locations.
My deputy company commander’s group, in an armoured personnel carrier, moved to the evacuation site to rescue them.
We caused significant damage. Not only was the manpower at the Granit and Bravo heights destroyed, but the electronic warfare system, communications, warehouse, and other communications were disabled. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were unable to identify our strike positions, and they apparently did not want to strike the entire village. There were civilians there.
The height was weakened. To succeed, we had to attack again. To break into the heights under artillery fire. The Ukrainians would have fled. But the Centre never gave the command. In addition, they took away our D-30 platoon, handing it over to the local idiots.
The order came from Prime Minister A. Borodai.
A strange war. The customer apparently wanted the process and not the result?
Published with permission of Frontline Books. Igor Salikov is a former Soviet and Russian military officer. He served in armed conflict in Africa, South East Asia, Latin America and the Greater Middle East, including with the Wagner Group in Syria. In the spring of 2023, he went to The Hague to testify as a witness at the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding Russian war crimes.
