Hero of Ukraine, colonel, commander of the 95th separate air assault brigade of the Air Force of Ukraine Oleg Apostol spoke about the operations of the 95th brigade, the battles for Voznesensk and in the Serebryansky forest and the situation at the front.
The conversation took place within the framework of the project Krila zakhistu — project Druzi DSHV.
Among other things, Oleg Apostol compared the main change in our army compared to 2014 and said that it is necessary for us to achieve the desired victory over the invaders.
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— It’s just a legend among the military how you flew helicopters with Stugnas and Corsairs to Kherson. Please tell us about it.
— We were flying to stop the enemy, who was supposed to advance from the Kakhovka hydroelectric station in the direction of Kherson. We were landed at night, we occupied a line, blocked the road and waited for the enemy. The enemy was not there until the morning, and my unit and I were transferred to the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric station. After that, it was decided and we went to support the Antonovsky Bridge.
It was already too late, because we began to plan how we would drive the enemy beyond the Dnieper. And at that moment the enemy walked across the railway bridge and thus bypassed the entire defense. But before all these actions began, the commander and I got together and I determined the meeting point in Kherson, because anything can happen, that we were separated somewhere. Some were cut off, some were already from the Dnieper, I was higher, but we, however, all gathered in Kherson when the enemy left.
And it turned out that the enemy had already reached the Kherson bypass and went to Nikolaev. That is, Kherson is already completely cut off. And the enemy began to set up roadblocks. We occupied key bridges, occupied high-rise buildings, waited for the enemy to go to Kherson, but he did not enter the city then, but immediately marched in columns towards Nikolaev.
I had two guys dressed in civilian clothes. There was a raised shooter, 15 meters high, where they sat, transmitting information: 100 units of armored vehicles had passed. You understand that at that time it was a lot.
— You only had anti-tank weapons — and that's it? You were ready to accept 100 units of equipment, take on the battle?
— I think if she had come into the city then, they would have been ready. The enemy had not yet carried out such actions as now. He did not have such reconnaissance means. That's why we were ready then. And the guys were all contract soldiers who were charged, motivated, psychologically adjusted, the most important thing. They were ready to tear to the end.
And we sat in Kherson. There were many different offers, say, to stay, but you understand that the Russian Guard will come in plus checkpoints and you will not be able to leave. And these people need to be preserved, and not lost there.
— You led people out of Kherson and went to Voznesensk?
— Yes. We went out at night and the civilians helped. There were locals who brought fuel and food, because the gas stations were already empty. They helped us. I asked two civilians to take a certain route, and took two more civilians, separately, who did not know each other, because I did not trust them.
That is, they drove separately, they described the general picture of what was happening on the highway, in the surrounding villages, and it remained to piece together an approximate route of advance from this.
I won’t call it a breakthrough, but just to rush through the enemy and escape through the fields, I understand that he will not be ready at this moment. And so more than 100 people left Kherson and headed to Voznesensk. Already in Voznesensk the order was received to organize defense and meet the enemy. The 126th Coast Guard Brigade was coming to us then.
— What happened in Voznesensk? There is really very little information. What happened in general in the Nikolaev region and how the battles for Voznesensk went ?
— We understood that we had two days to organize the defense of Voznesensk. I then talked to the mayor and told him that if they want us to hold the city, they must do as I say. And we created the letter Z for them — check-in, central and check-out (it happened by chance). We left one main road, and dug up the rest, placed blocks, mined the streets so that the equipment would go where we needed… And plus they deployed anti-tank weapons.
The brigade commander supported us with his own funds — This is aviation, artillery. We blew up almost all the bridges because the enemy was already coming. Plus, we went forward in a small group and mined the road, and also placed four MANPADS on the enemy’s advance route. They stood in a forest belt about 1 km from the road.
I thought that when the column moved, it would cover itself with helicopters, but there were none. The column just stuck. That's why the guys were safe, returned three days later, and walked there themselves.
The sappers did their job in the same way. We mined the road, not just barriers, but rolled mines into the asphalt. We know for sure that the column bypassed the first one, but they were blown up at the outer two barriers. And we were already waiting for them on the bridge. They were ready to explode. At first they wanted to launch about 10 of them into the city, and then blow up the bridge. But the enemy got scared, drove onto the bridge and began to roll away.
I was then a battalion commander in the 80th brigade. The tanks hit the bridge, some of the shells flew off or broke the cables. And a command came over the radio station that there would be no explosion.
I understand that even if the enemy entered the city, he could not enter, because he would be destroyed. Corsairs, anti-tank weapons — they were all ready, they had no room to maneuver, the enemy would simply enter a narrow corridor. This would have been Chechnya-3, the enemy would have suffered huge losses.
That is, the enemy stopped, we began to inflict fire damage, at that moment – more than 10 T-72B3 tanks — this is together with the intact ones that were abandoned by the crews, plus the damaged ones. The tanks were completely intact, we were still thinking whether to take them or not. We then gave them to the 28th brigade.
— When the enemy set foot in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, he saw that the civilian population was not waiting for him, that the locals were not happy with the so-called liberators?
— Definitely! Maybe in the Mykolaiv region they communicate more in Russian, but it doesn't matter. They were all ready to destroy the Russians! The locals were preparing, making Molotov cocktails, ready to fight alongside the military. I remember the first weeks, the population was very mobilized and ready to conduct military operations.
— How much did this factor play into your hands and allow you to protect the population better, to do your job?
— In the sense that they helped with engineering barriers, especially the mayor of the city, his deputies. Everything we asked for was done. Where it was necessary to dig up and put up blocks, fence off, fix the rubble in time – they helped us a lot with this.
— Well, the fact that the locals were not in the mood to greet them with flowers did not add to the enemy’s fighting spirit?
— Yes, there were no tricolor flags. Nobody greeted them with wreaths. They saw that people were against them.
— Tell us about the battles in the Serebryansky Forest.
— At that time I was already the commander of the 95th brigade. We went there at the beginning of December 2022, but not with a full crew — only two battalions. Two more battalions were separated and carried out tasks in other directions. Therefore, we were a little short of strength and resources.
It’s just a big stripe and when you go forward, you come out with a large ledge, which is dangerous for you, since the enemy can cut you off from any direction. We did not reach Kreminnaya, in general, about 2 km.
— But you, however, carried out a successful operation. I know that you defeated their VOPs (platoon strong point), and even special forces were deployed against you.
— The Russians were transferred to reinforce the 76th Airborne Division. We later encountered them. This is the 104th regiment, 234 and 237, from where we took prisoners. We later fought with these regiments in the Serebryansky Forest. It was a worthy opponent.
We moved forward quite successfully, but we had little strength and resources. The enemy mostly lost their positions; during the day several positions were definitely passed. But this is a forest, and the difficulty is that there are many positions there — the distance between them is 70-100 m, and each time you have to spend ammunition and storm them. This is precisely the difficulty of fighting in the forest.
We moved forward quite confidently. We're a little tired of it. At some point, we found a hole 300 meters between the units, and during the night my reconnaissance company brought two battalions behind enemy lines. During the night we walked 2 km. The enemy didn’t realize for almost a week that we had cut them off.
In order not to fight for every position, we hit the flanks with artillery. There were up to 70 people there, the whole company was stretched out. And we decided not to storm, but to attack the flanks, and we completely knocked them out. And they were commanded by an ensign; there were no officers.
— That is, the Russians had no officers?
— Yes, the company of the 104th regiment, which was destroyed near Kremennaya, was commanded by an ensign.
— Let's talk about modernity. Where is your team now, what is it doing?
— Now it's no longer a secret. The brigade moved from Kupyansk to Terny.
— How would you describe the situation now? Everyone is talking about complications — commander-in-chief, international experts.
— If we take the direction where my brigade is operating, while we have the initiative, the enemy fights head-on and is unsuccessful.
It’s no secret that the enemy walked more than 2 km near Terny, took a landing, and we knocked him out of there. But he realized this probably only a week later. Seeing this moment, we began to increase our assaults, but did not lose a single person.
— How the enemy changed tactics and strategy for today?
— Tactics change depending on the availability of certain means — drones, electronic warfare, air defense. All the work on the battlefield is definitely done by the soldier: how motivated he is, psychologically and morally prepared, and also combat training. However, a large percentage of success depends on drones, the same Lancets.
Or, for example, FPV drones appeared — both from our side and from theirs. You begin to move in a completely different way, to equip positions to counteract them.
— How do you manage, on the one hand, to conduct constant exercises, because the situation is changing, and on the other — maintain morale? What is Oleg Apostol's recipe that commanders of other brigades can borrow?
— Probably, the first — is combat training. So that the soldier understands that the commander cares about him. This is clear. Of course, there are nuances, because the brigade is large. This is a material and technical base, instructors, training. It should be constant. The soldier must feel ready for combat operations, in particular, morally and psychologically.
Why we fight, what will happen if we don’t fight? Show some video materials plus your work as a battalion commander. We try to show mistakes and even analyze them. Either our mistakes or successes…
Because people come unprepared. I understand that I am a career officer, this is my job, I studied for this, but now I have the same servicemen who were not ready, and now they are destroying the enemy at the same level as those who trained, say, for 2 years.
— How do you manage to combine academic work with combat operations? That is, mobilized people come to you so that they do not feel some kind of, say, inferiority?
— This is probably the atmosphere in the brigade. It did not arise overnight. People see who teaches them, what the material base is, the training, what the approach to soldiers is, food, supplies, and so on. Of course, there are various nuances, for example, they gave them combat boots, and they fell apart. But this does not mean that the entire brigade received them.
Some may speculate on this or make an issue of it. But this issue can be resolved by the company commander or battalion commander. However, basically the soldier sees that they care about him, and that they have not forgotten about him on the battlefield.
I had a situation when one position was cut off for three days, completely surrounded. If we had not held this position for three days, we would have withdrawn the people at night. The enemy attacked it with a tank and an infantry fighting vehicle from different sides, but without success.
We supported them with all possible means as much as we could, and the reconnaissance company completely released the position, destroying 3-4 enemy positions.
These five ordinary guys, one of whom was wounded, held out for three days. But this is due, in particular, to the fact that they heard the voice of the battalion commander, and this motivated them.
— You are a person who, since 2014, knows what war and the Ukrainian army are in practice. How our army changed in 2014 and how in 2022?
— The first thing that has definitely changed — this is the approach. That is, senior commanders chose the right direction for training troops. When they saw that the war — this is serious, after 2014 it brought big changes in the training of people. Exercises began that were closer to combat operations; they no longer skimped on ammunition and fuel.
And it was thanks to the trained contract servicemen who witnessed the war in 2022, and the people who fought in 2014, that we held out for the first months. And also thanks to the quick and correct decisions of commanders, including low-level ones. This played a role.
— What else needs to be changed for the victory desired by all Ukrainians to happen?
— We need to adapt to the war and take some kind of counteraction. For example, the Russians have “birds”, Eagles, Lancets, we need to look for ways to solve this problem at a round table, then there will be success. We need to counteract Russian technologies.
We also need to think about how to completely close our sky. That is, we are talking about the whole complex of activities. Air defense will not work — You cannot carry out assault operations, conduct counter-battery combat, and the like.
Krila Zahistu — This is a series of interviews with paratroopers who are today defending Ukraine from Russian invasion. The cycle is published within the framework of the Druzi DShV project, which is being implemented in cooperation between the Air Assault Troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Starlight Media.
Interviews are aired weekly on the national telethon One News, the full version can be viewed on the digital platforms Starlight Facts and Vikna.
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