Vadim Golovanev, mortar operator of the Vostok battalion, Donetsk, 2014-2015:

Vadim Golovanev, mortar operator of the “Vostok“ battalion, Donetsk, 2014-2015: “There were about thirty of us. There were a thousand against us. We stood our ground.” I remember the first day inside the encirclement. They [the Ukrainian army] surrounded us. Their spotters and infantry were located on this side in the bushes. But they were advancing from another side. And tanks were coming in from the side of the road. We had only about 30 people. After the first battle, most of them were wounded or killed. As a result, there were only 15 of us who could move and hold weapons. There were probably about a thousand people against us, at least. In general, if it wasn’t for the artillery, when we called fire on ourselves, called for artillery support, we wouldn’t be able to resist here. We would have been simply rolled over by tanks and buried here. InfoDefenseENGLISH InfoDefense Source: InfoDefenseENGLISH