By the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine's account, Mykhailo, one of its soldiers, deployed to the forest in October 2024 with the rapid-response border commandant unit Shkval and held off Russian assaults while fortifying the ground under constant drone attack.
Holding a position like that on a static, drone-saturated front takes endurance as much as firepower. A unit has to supply itself, down to digging its own water under fire. The Serebryanskyi forest, on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, has been contested since 2022. Euromaidan Press has previously reported on Ukrainian storming operations in the forest and on Azov's account of driving Russian forces from some positions there in 2024.
Mykhailo worked abroad in construction after his studies, then signed a contract with the State Border Guard Service in 2020. He served first at the Nismychi unit, then at Belz, where he worked as a district inspector, before the October 2024 rotation with Shkval put him on the positions for 115 days.
"Logistics were not easy. Drones delivered the food, and we also had to supply the positions with water. So we even dug our own well, to have our own water and to be able to bring in more food," Mykhailo recalled.
He returns repeatedly to the men around him. When his own endurance ran out, he said, it was his brothers-in-arms who kept him in place.
"Your brothers-in-arms motivate you. When I said I couldn't take it anymore, they said: 'Sit tight. Together to the end.' And so we all sat there together to the end," he said.
Mykhailo is motivated by his family, which he considers his greatest incentive to defend Ukraine.
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