How one of Ukraine’s elite units fights at frontlines and in Russian rear
From defending Moschun outside Kyiv to sabotage on enemy territory – NV describes the combat path of a Ukrainian Defense Intelligence (HUR) special unit.
After learning that NV is going to take a photo for an article about HUR’s Shamanbat [Shaman battalion] unit, the assault group’s commander Said, a stocky 40-year-old man, immediately hides his face under a balaclava. Although the case is taking place in Kyiv, the officer clearly remains cautious.
Shamanbat, of which he is a member, is the long and tough arm of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence: the HUR secret unit conducts both sabotage and reconnaissance, as well as full-fledged combat operations either on the front line or in Russian-held territory.
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Said says that Shaman’s fighters carried out enough different operations during the war to provide material for several books.
“It’s not that there aren’t so many such universal fighters in Ukraine, even in the world,” the HUR officer describes his subordinates.
So far, the unit’s most high-profile operation, the results of which were widely reported in the media, took place in early August 2023. At that time, Said’s fighters carried out several raids on the left bank of the Dnipro River in the coastal zone near the village of Kozachi Laheri in Kherson Oblast.
This place was optimally suitable for advancing Ukrainian troops deep into the enemy’s defenses. As part of that operation, the HUR fighters worked together with the soldiers of the Special Operations Forces (SSO), as well as the 222nd Battalion of the 126th Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces (TrO), which were led by the deputy commander Nick.
An intelligence officer Vito, a cool-headed reconnaissance company commander of the 222nd Battalion, was killed on the left bank a month ago during a battle with Russian troops. During the August special operation along the southern outskirts of Kozachi Laheri, where the T2206 rolling road runs, connecting Oleshky and Nova Kakhovka, Vito and his fighters played a very important role as they gained a foothold and defiantly held the ground, giving the special forces room to maneuver.
It was when the Shaman assault fighters were working in this area as part of a joint combat mission with the SSO and TrO, that Russian army intelligence major Yuriy Tomov, often praised by Russian military bloggers, arrived to inspect Russian positions, and was captured.
As Said recalls, the major arrived “relaxed” and, having met the Ukrainian patrol soldiers, tried to use a Russian password for safe passage.
When Ukrainian special forces captured Tomov, they found unencrypted minefields maps and a lot of other data on his phone.
“It was great luck,” Said recalls with a smile on his face.
“It’s not so easy to get such information at the front. And here, the orc [Russian soldier] himself brought it into our hands.”
With a story about the work of Shamanbat, NV begins a series of stories about HUR special units.
First steps
Said remembers the beginning of the war in the smallest details. At that time, being a regular soldier, he was not involved with HUR but served in the Aidar volunteer battalion. However, before the invasion, he contacted an intelligence officer Shaman and gathered a small group of experienced fellow Aidar soldiers, with some coming from abroad.
All of them were drafted into the TrO but seconded to Defense Intelligence.
Said led one of the assault groups, while Shaman headed the unit itself, which was named after his call sign.
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The defense of Moschun, a village in the immediate vicinity of the northern outskirts of Kyiv, was the first serious task for the newly created unit: from the outermost houses of Moschun to the high-rise buildings of Kyiv’s Obolon district, only 7 kilometers apart.
Said is sure that at that time Moscow had two major objectives for the invasion force in this area. The first was to capture the Hostomel airport and land there a strike group of the Russian Airborne Forces, aimed at downtown Kyiv. The execution of this task was disrupted by several hundred National Guard fighters and Ukrainian paratroopers who came to help them later.
But it was precisely the capture of Moschun and the subsequent advance to Kyiv that became the second objective for the invaders.
The Russian assault units managed to enter the village on March 9.
“Many [from Ukrainian units] came there, but no one stayed longer than a day or half a day because of shelling and constant enemy attacks. Can you imagine what it’s like to have disparate units that don’t know each other, don’t interact, nothing?” Said says.
“At that time, we made a decision that we would stay there until the end, because I’m from Kyiv Oblast, and I know this area. And I understood: if Moschun falls, the Russians would enter Kyiv.”
At first, about 15 people worked with Said. After three days, fighters from the 72nd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine joined them. Later, 12 more guys joined the HUR unit.
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The weather was severely frosty in those days, and everyone was dressed lightly, so everyone warmed up as best they could, Said recalls. However, combat clashes were very hot and took place every day.
The Shamanbat fighters, each of whom had combat experience, at that time struck a dozen pieces of enemy equipment and killed many Russian troops. And thereby proved that the unit has a high combat potential.
“This is some kind of miracle, for sure. I probably can’t explain it, because such a critical mass of good, motivated, understanding people gathered in one place. Great luck during a war,” recalls Said.
“I even had guys from the Afghan war. Unfortunately, they’re no longer alive: they were killed in Moschun and later in Irpin.”
In Donbas
In the same first spring of the full-scale war, Shamanbat was transferred to Luhansk Oblast to defend Severodonetsk. The Ukrainian army command considered this city a critically important defense link in Donbas. It had to be held to buy time and wait for the first deliveries of artillery pieces and shells from Western allies.
At that moment, at the end of spring, the front line had already shifted to the urban industrial zone. The Shaman fighters arrived at the site, recaptured one of the Severodonetsk neighborhoods and held it for a week and a half.
In those days, HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov also arrived at the front line to join his soldiers.
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At one time, Budanov told NV that upon arrival he came under artillery fire and survived only thanks to an armored car that covered him from the fragments of a shell that exploded nearby.
“Our task was to counterattack, and we recaptured one of the large neighborhoods. We could develop and expand it, but, unfortunately, on the other flank, the enemy broke through about two neighborhoods. Our flank fell completely. But we were still fighting. Until [the Russians] damaged the bridges [across the Siverskyi Donets River]. Later, we had an order to withdraw; we defended Severodonetsk until the very end,” explains Said.
Tasks similar to Severodonetsk are not uncommon for his unit. HUR units, including Shamanbat, are often sent to critical areas to prevent the enemy from advancing.
“We performed the function of both military intelligence and just a combat unit, a kind of stabilizing moment,” says Said.
That is why the Shaman fighters, among others, had taken part in the defense of Bakhmut for several months as it was the period of the most dangerous and insane Russian assaults.
“We were entering the most difficult and dangerous area. We covered it first with our own people, involved the adjacent units that were deployed there, reassured them, hugged, kissed, saying that ‘everything is fine, guys, we’re with you.’ This was enough for many of them,” says Said.
“When we stayed out for a day, two, or three, we showed that the enemy can be killed, everything is fine, there is nothing terrible, they [fighters of other units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine] immediately became different, they became lions.”
“There are good soldiers everywhere, in any unit,” he adds.
Zmiinyi Island
A little earlier, the fighters took part in the liberation of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island.
The Ukrainian command was hoping to oust the enemy from there almost from the first days of its capture. But the situation was complicated by the fact that the Russians turned a piece of land in the western part of the Black Sea into a fortress, namely they deployed special forces there and mined the entrances.
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Said recalls that his group and several other units, including TrO and Alpha SBU [security service], landed on the island and engaged in battle on May 7, 2022.
The battle took place quite chaotically, and, according to Said, this “ragtag team” assembled from different units lacked coordination.
“When three different units attack without working together, there will always be some kind of imbalance. If only one unit works, there are more chances of success. At that time, we lost some very good fighters and had to retreat. And the island itself is fortified as it still has Romanian concrete bunkers, and it’s very difficult to recapture it,” he explained.
The second assault on the island was scheduled for May 9, 2022. But then Ukrainian intelligence received information that the invaders had seriously strengthened their group on Zmiinyi Island, namely they had deployed Pantsir and Tor anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as many other pieces of equipment. In addition, a Russian amphibious ship landed an additional 250 soldiers on the island, while the skies above the island was patrolled by five to 10 enemy planes.
Therefore, the assault was postponed.
“Then we flew to one of our military bases and started preparing for a new assault, i.e., on our own, without other units. We made a training model of the island itself and fortifications and had been preparing for the landing for a long time,” recalls Said.
At the same time, intelligence found out that the Russians were urgently delivering reinforcements to the island from the so-called “Boyko towers,” oil and gas drilling platforms between Zmiinyi Island and the western coast of Crimea.
The operation leaders decided to start shelling the platforms with artillery. For this, they used Ukrainian-made Bohdana wheeled self-propelled howitzers, as well as French-made CAESAR howitzers. At the same time, they opened fire on Zmiinyi Island.
“The Russians could no longer replenish their forces so quickly and decided that they couldn’t hold the island. They started burning their equipment, deciding to leave it,” says Said.
In July 2022, Ukrainian units landed on the empty island, taking it under control.
Later, Shamanbat fighters and other HUR units took part in the assaults on Enerhodar, a satellite city of Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant. The Ukrainian forces failed in these amphibious operations, but they prevented Moscow from connecting the power plant to its power grid.
Covert operations
Shamanbat military intelligence officers periodically carried out sabotage raids on enemy territory, aimed at carrying out sabotage at airfields, military infrastructure, as well as striking clusters of military personnel and deployment sites of various Russian units.
The HUR fighters either planted explosives at such sites or shelled them.
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“The guys were carrying heavy weapons, in general they had to cover dozens of kilometers at night and reach their target in two or three days,” explains Said.
His group had more than 10 such operations.
The officer clarifies that each of these operations is a “multi-layered” action, which includes radio reconnaissance, detection of electronic warfare equipment, the attack itself, followed by the organized retreat of saboteurs to Ukraine-controlled territory.
“If we had everything we needed, our efficiency would increase. Everything rests on technical means and certain weapons,” Said says.
And in conclusion, he adds that Shamanbat, whose numbers are still kept secret, as well as the location of its base and other details, is the result of a unique experiment.
“To date, this is the most successful hybrid unit, in which it was possible to combine assault actions with reconnaissance and sabotage, so to say, to fit a square peg into a round hole,” says Said.
“And it paid off.”
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
