“I have been a soldier since 2017. I am experienced in war before February and because of this I lead a machine gun team. We were on the frontline in Severodonetsk. My machine guns work well together.

Not the whole army works like this. Many units still do not use machine guns like western countries do in terms of working on the enemy in the advance. I was trained by American Marines how to use machine guns and PICMDEEP. (Employment principals)

We were advancing near Ivonin park to work on the objective. The area was a Russian stronghold with many buildings. I placed my machine guns right of a storage building to use the angle of the road to our advantage. Two machine guns.

We had sight for 900+m. We stayed as others went NNE along the road on the right side of the road. Halfway down our sight we saw 10-12 Russian soldiers moving in a line toward us down the road coming toward us. They must not have known we were waiting in front of them.

We fired before the others in front could. My machine guns killed half of all enemies in seconds.

My experience set up the situation to be success. But my soldiers using their mind and discipline are what saved lives on our side. I am proud to be their leader. Another machine gun on machine gun battle happened and I will tell of that as well.”

“We were forced away from that area by armored vehicles and infantry. Many of them almost immediately after our machine guns killed that group. We had no choice but to run backward to the trees.

We had moved back to positions we had earlier that day. On our way a Russian machine gun killed two infantry. We had no cover until the trees so we all had to keep running. It was a bad moment for us. Many wounded and injured.

Our machine guns saved us from being worked on at close range. I placed one team behind a long, and another team in the hole. I ran from team to team to direct their shooting and to act as a target to give our machine guns time to find theirs back in the city.

It worked. Soon most of our soldiers were back at the defenses and returned the feeling. (Returned fire) My machine guns worked in talking pairs until their (the Russian MG) stopped and was dead or retreating.

It was not a good day, but our machine guns did their jobs and many more Ukrainian soldiers would be dead if our teams were not disciplined with firing and choosing targets. All of my guys and me lived through that day.”

– Ukrainian Soldier. Battle of Severodonetsk. June 10th, 2022

This story was documented by Nicholas Laidlaw.

Every soldier has a story, and every story deserves to be told.