04/27/2025

National Guard soldier Denys Melnychuk “Mel” single-handedly cleared the landing near Siversk and captured six enemy attack aircraft. The invaders, as it turned out, had set up a position right next to the dugout of the Ukrainian defenders, so they had to be neutralized unplanned. Denys threw grenades at them and covered them with machine gun fire, after which the frightened invaders decided to surrender.

“Mel” told about this in an interview with military journalist Yuriy Butusov. The 27-year-old soldier from Zhytomyr, a scout of the “Force of Freedom” battalion of the 4th brigade of the National Guard “Rubizh” , said that the events took place during one of the Russian assaults near Siversk, Bakhmut district, Donetsk region.

The invaders launched an attack in five UAZs.

“Two UAZs drove through the engineer unit, drove through the infantry across the field, and reached us too, there was a problem with communication – the enemy was actively using electronic warfare. By the time communication was established, our UAZ was already standing near the dugout,” Denis said.

According to him, three other cars turned around and fled – apparently they were reconnaissance vehicles.

“They somehow agreed among themselves there, and the authorities threw them out again,” said the National Guardsman.

One of the UAZs was hit immediately – it drove straight into the field and burned down 200-300 meters from the position of the Ukrainian soldiers.

When silence reigned, Denys was tasked with finding out what happened to the UAZ that ended up next to the Ukrainians.

“I went down, took two machine guns from it. The stormtroopers left two clumsy machine guns. I look, there are cartridges for the pump. The ammunition is there too. They left all their things in the UAZ. The wheels, it seems, were not deflated. The entire dashboard was disassembled. They asked to see if there was a key in the ignition lock. And there is no ignition lock at all. The entire torpedo was disassembled there. The machine gun was on top of that UAZ. They threw it away and ran away,” said “Mel.”

One of the machines was signed with the call sign of an unknown occupant.

The next day was “somewhat quiet”, except that at night the kamikaze invaders tried to storm the infantry positions ahead.

“I don’t know, they’re also so desperate. Every night there are assaults, you go to every landing, there are already so many of them lying around. And they leave anyway. But somehow one day went well,” says Denis.

On the third day, he and his comrades were drinking coffee at lunchtime when the soldiers heard someone walking right above them.

“Someone passed by, the earth fell over our dugout. It’s very interesting, because we were in a place where the drones were changing. They were changing one for the other. That is, you go outside, you ask ten times if the sky is clear. Because there, just like the enemy birds, they change somewhere in our square, plus ours change too. Here this time the earth fell apart. Okay, maybe a mouse is running, this is a standard program. And we hear: “Neighbors, are you here?” And here we were a little lost,” the soldier said.

Then the defenders heard an occupant walking upstairs call out to someone and give the call sign written on the enemy machine gun.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I think we got hit. We were a little bit stupid.’ My partner quickly gathered in a group. And he shouted to him in Ukrainian: ‘What’s your call sign?’ And they were mumbling something: ‘Guys, we’re our own.’ And my partner didn’t think for a long time, and from the queue he threw them through the ceiling. They realized that we weren’t their friends: ‘Guys, what are you doing, a**hole?’ – and ran away,” said Denis.

Then the soldiers contacted their leadership, saying they had a problem – the occupier was walking around, looking for his friend.

“They looked from the drone – tracks were visible in the snow – and at their neighboring position. Very close. It turned out that for two days we lived next door to those “Obizyans”. And they showed no signs of life, because we were there doing our everyday business right next door.”

It was clear that someone had to go clean up, “because those neighbors were a bit of a nuisance.”

“They told us: they fled there, you were there, throw a couple of grenades there. I was like: no questions asked… I took a full inventory of the grenades and left,” says Denys Melnychuk.

The defender fired a few shots, threw a grenade, and ran to the opposite side to distract the invaders. Then Denis began practicing from other angles, trying to create the impression that the enemy was being attacked by many people, their two entrances were controlled, and they had nowhere to run.

“I threw eight pieces (grenades. – Ed.) into the passages. That is, I hit their moral and psychological state. The goal was not to take them prisoner. It was necessary to neutralize them. They heard me from the fifth or sixth time. I shouted at them directly: “F**ks, surrender!” – said the National Guardsman.

When he was about to leave to take another grenade, he heard the occupiers asking him to surrender.

“In a sense, we give up. I think you’re even alive there? … He says there are six of us. And here I am again. I had the same feeling when they came looking for our neighbors. My heart skipped a beat – how can this be? Six. I went to the authorities with half a heartache, because the first question in my mind was, where are we going to put them? We have nowhere to put them. I had no intention of finishing them off or anything else. There are prisoners, prisoners. We have to take them.”

Then Denys decided to order the occupiers to come out two by two, their backs to him.

“The most interesting thing is, I shouted at them in Russian, they shouted back at me in Ukrainian. They shouted something about Poles. Some new tale of theirs, that Poles work here. They shouted back, we thought you were Poles. They told us that a regiment of Poles had arrived here. … They said they were wounded. That’s how I understood that the wound was not as a result of my actions, but before.”

The Russians had one helmet and one bulletproof vest for each of the six prisoners. When they came out, they threw everything away, handing over radios and phones, which contained a lot of information.

The management highly praised “Mel”, but reproached him for taking such a risky step.

“They say they can kill you, why did you climb on it yourself? We had to come up with something else. But there was no time to think. The brigade commander personally came and presented the medal on his behalf,” said Denys Melnychuk.

As OBOZ.UA reported, two Ukrainian soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were captured, and the occupiers received an order from the command to kill them. However, the Ukrainians persuaded the Russians to surrender themselves to avoid a “cleansing” by their own people, which helped everyone survive.

https://war.obozrevatel.com/ukr/ukrainskij-voin-samotuzhki-zachistiv-posadku-pid-siverskom-i-vzyav-u-polon-shistoh-okupantiv-video.htm