‘I survived 471 days in an underground bunker fighting for Ukraine against the Russians. This is my story’ | EUROtoday

When Serhiy Tyshchenko arrived on the tiny underground mud bunker close to Bakhmut, on the entrance line in japanese Ukraine, Joe Biden was president.

By the time he left, a brand new US chief was in cost and had largely taken Vladimir Putin’s aspect. Not solely that, Donald Trump was making an attempt to influence Ukraine to surrender the land Serhi had defended for 471 days.

In a unprecedented feat of endurance, Tyshchenko spent greater than 16 months underground, near suffocation, below fixed Russian bombardment, struggling starvation and excessive thirst.

He survived a number of underground mud collapses – but he emerged and continues to serve near the entrance line.

Now 46, he missed two birthdays and all of the landmarks within the lives of his 5 kids whereas, from 13 July 2023 to twenty-eight October 2025, he and his diminishing crew dug an underground effectively for water.

They frantically used selfmade sandbags to plug breaches of their bunker day and night time as drones fought to get into their cave and kill them.

“Everything is underground. Everything was dug out. There was a trench at the entrance, then a section covered with logs and camouflaged with dirt and sand,” Tyshchenko tells The Independent in Sloviansk.

“Our position was dug right under an asphalt road. So we were limited by the width of the road, but we kept expanding it in length. So it was all underground. We did observation, at first, while it was still possible to go out, and hold the defence.”

His extraordinary stint underground began when, early on in that summer season of 2023, he and a comrade had been gathering rations from a close-by bunker after they had been noticed by a drone, which chased them right into a ditch.

They hid behind tall grass. His pal bade him farewell, satisfied they had been going to die because the drone circled again on them.

Tyshchenko – who goes by the callsign Viter, which means “wind” – advised him to make a touch for the bunker. They each made it. Much worse was to come back.

Holding the road in fashionable drone fight has taken infantry troopers to new ranges of private endurance. Tyshchenko, a former veterinarian, is probably the most excessive case of what has change into a grinding fact of recent warfare.

Military phrases like Forward Line of Enemy Troops (Flet), and the Forward Lines of Own Troops (Flot), have been understood for generations. When battle goes static and the 2 sides face off, there’s a contested no man’s land between them.

Now there’s no apparent Flot or Flet, however a zone – typically 15km deep – the place tiny teams of males on either side flit a couple of shattered panorama, or extra typically merely cover from the sight of hunter-killer drones. Old-fashioned preventing is minimal – survival is victory.

At first, it was all too private when a Russian assault crew attacked his bunker in Tyshchenko’s first week. One attacker killed three of his comrades after ambushing them within the entrance to the dugout.

He additionally would have killed an unarmed Tyshchenko who had rushed him and not using a weapon – however the enemy’s gun jammed. Before he might clear it, one other Ukrainian had killed the Russian.

A couple of days later, the crew of 5 misplaced one other soldier, leaving 4 males to carry the opening below the highway for greater than a yr.

The first signal they knew they’d be there so lengthy was when reinforcements weren’t despatched – it was too harmful to get males in or out.

“The breaking point was when the guys died in that assault, and I saw that there is no one to change for the dead guys,” he recollects. “Five, then four of us remained. I realised that we will sit here for a long time after that first assault”.

He didn’t guess that he’d be there for greater than a yr, via summer season, winter, spring after which summer season once more.

Evacuating our bodies was laborious. Living with the unburied Russian lifeless that had constructed up across the entrance to the hideout was grotesque.

“We climbed over them and had to throw soil on them to get rid of the stink. But that stink never goes,” Tyshchenko says, talking in a basement of a hospital in Sloviansk.

The thump of artillery or drone explosions may very well be heard however not felt within the concrete security of the hospital.

It was lower than 10km from the place Tyshchenko and his fellow troopers had buried themselves alive in an effort to carry the road on the highway to close by Bakhmut.

Weeks was months. Now down to 5 males with him in cost, as a sergeant, the group carved coffin-sized beds for themselves below the tarmac of the highway.

He says the drone assaults had been relentless – too many to rely and arriving day and night time.

A small commentary window of their sandbags used to look at for enemy assaults was a bullseye for the Russian FPV pilots. So it was blocked.

Resupply got here through small “bomber drones” in a position to drop a most of 10kg of water and meals, which was a uncommon incidence. Often they had been all the way down to 50cl – barely a sip, of water each four-hour shift.

Day and night time had been indistinguishable within the darkness of the bunker. Boredom solely relieved by the runs into the open to retrieve rations, a mortal threat.

Or the sprints to a midway level on the way in which to a greater served bunker that might cost batteries, which was performed at night time each two weeks, at most.

The lack of the window meant a lack of oxygen. Breathing was laboured, asthmatic, and on a regular basis the drones pounded the bunker making an attempt to power explosions via the tarmac.

When small breaches emerged within the bunker they had been plugged with luggage of soil, which had been subsequently blown up, throwing earth round and masking the goal, Tyshchenko explains.

They recorded messages for his or her households on flash drives that had been swapped with lifeless batteries on the nighttime dashes for provides after which despatched through Starlink connection dwelling.

Their family members despatched messages again.

“The support from the children helped; it gave me strength because I thought if I die, I don’t want to leave them alone. It gave me strength to keep going. I didn’t expect that I would be strong enough to survive it.”

The scarcity of water meant that the crew dug their very own effectively, underground.

Hiding the soil from their work meant harmful moments scattering the fiddle their bunker – however that they had no alternative – they’d have died of thirst in any other case.

His Ukrainian headquarters by no means understood the gravity of their scenario – not least as a result of the asphalt above them appeared intact, even when blasts prompted elements of the bunker to break down and the crew had been left concussed, ears ringing, and compelled to re-dig their cave.

His household lobbied to get him out and when his commander was modified, the angle in the direction of the bunker modified.

He obtained orders to organize to go away, however the first try was deserted below Russian air assaults from drones. He had a three-week look ahead to the following try.

“Everyone had their own duties: Mishka was cooking, Briks was running for power banks, and Kruger was digging and managing the sandbags.

“Since I had been there the longest and knew the area, I was worried about how they would find the supply drops, as they weren’t always in the same spot. As they couldn’t walk around, they didn’t know the landmarks.

“I was also concerned about the various improvised explosive devices we and the enemy had planted.

“I wanted to make sure they knew everything before I left. Because they entered the position at night, and didn’t know the surroundings.

“Ironically, the delay from the first failed attempt gave me those extra three weeks to show them the ropes and make sure they were prepared.

“Because, at first, I was worried, how would the first supply pick-up happen without me. But the delay gave time to explain it to them.”

His sprint for freedom was solely over 3km lengthy – and helped by dangerous climate that saved Russian drones away.

But his muscular tissues had been so atrophied and his physique so unused to wash air and oxygen that he was dizzy and weak.

Awarded the nation’s highest gallantry award, Hero of Ukraine, he’s planning to open a veterinary clinic when the battle is over.

Briks left with him, Misha got here quickly after. Kruger remains to be there, within the gap, on the entrance line.