Ukraine Airport Battle: Ambush at Zero Dark Thirty

HOSTOMEL, UKRAINE — In part two of this video series we looked at how — on the first day of the Russian invasion — Hostomel airport was hit by first a cruise missile, then by three hours of helicopter strafing, followed by Russian special forces being inserted by helicopters. That night, Ukrainian forces tried to infiltrate the area around the airport to shoot down incoming Russian troop-carrier planes. A force of 48 Ukrainian paratroopers were approaching the airport under cover of darkness when they were spotted by a Russian microdrone. Here’s what happened next. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ukrainians, knowing they had been spotted, stormed the airport, but they ran into the airport’s tall concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Lacking explosives to blast through, the team cut a hole in the wire and started scaling the wall. Five made it over. Then a Russian machine gun opened up at them. Three of the Ukrainians were badly injured. The incoming fire pinned the team down, and a grenade exploded close to them, setting the grass around them on fire. They realized that the enemy had used their time to build a strong line of defense, so they called in coordinates for Ukrainian artillery to hit the enemy from the south. At that stage, another Ukrainian attack was launched by an armored unit that had approached the airport from the north, so the team managed to set up firing positions for anti-aircraft missiles. Their commander was then told via radio that the Russian airlift operation was called off, because the Russians realized Ukrainian missile teams were active in the zone outside the airport perimeter. We’ll show you how the battle for Hostomel ended tomorrow. The battle happened on the first day of the invasion, and it resulted in a flood of video footage as Ukrainian civilians used their phone cameras to record images of the battle. The footage shows hundreds of Russian helicopters flying low over Ukraine as they headed toward the strategic airport. Some also show Russian helicopters being shot down by missile teams while on their way.