When Kostiantyn Chykachkov received his call-up papers in the summer of 2015, he started dancing.
"It was a drizzly day, something was falling from the sky," he recalls. "I looked out of the window and saw Auntie Zhenia from the village council coming up. Her eyes were wide: 'What's wrong with you, Kostia? Why are you dancing?'"
"Because I'd been waiting for this moment for so long," replied the future sergeant of the Vovkodavy (Wolfhounds) Battalion of the 57th Brigade. The woman was stunned. "I brought call-up papers to four people today," she told him, "and all of them told me to f**k off."
The 36-year-old soldier, alias Chykist, has fought in Luhansk and Kherson oblasts, in Bakhmut, on the Kupiansk front and in Vovchansk. He had wanted to be a soldier since childhood.
"When I was first summoned to the enlistment office – that was in 2006, when I was in the ninth grade at school [14-15 years old] – they asked me where I saw myself in the army," he says. "I don't know why – maybe my gut told me – but I answered very clearly: I want to join the infantry."
"They wouldn't take me as a volunteer at the start of the Anti-Terrorist Operation [combat actions in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts against Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists]," Kostiantyn says. "By then I already had three children, although my wife and I weren't officially married at the time. I wanted to sort it out properly at the enlistment office, but they said: Kostia, your family record will still show the children. Go home." [Fathers of three or more children were exempt from mobilisation and were only allowed to sign up for service in their own region.]
He had to wait almost a year.
"I got the call-up papers," Kostiantyn continues. "I went to the military medical commission. They gave me a checklist, and I went into every room with it and said straight away: don't examine me, just take my word for it – I'm healthy. Just stamp it: fit, fit and fit."
In an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Kostiantyn talks about the fiercest battles against assault troops from Russia's Wagner private military company and the so-called Storm Z, penal units of the Russian military, clashes at the Aggregate Plant in Vovchansk and the mystical Black Forest near Synkivka.
What follows is his experience of the full-scale war in his own words.
They came at us from every crack
Before 24 February 2022, our unit was on the Luhansk front [where fire had been exchanged sporadically since 2014]. By 19-20 February, they had already started "greeting" us. We understood it was ranging fire: before that it had been quiet, and then suddenly everything started moving. It was clear this was serious. They were not hitting us like that for nothing.
The first truly unforgettable battles I had were in Bakhmut and Synkivka, on the Kupiansk front. We were ordered to move to Bakhmut on 19 November 2022, after the liberation of Kherson. We took up positions near the five-storey buildings, relieving other soldiers, including some from the Third Assault Brigade. At that point, we still did not know we would be facing Wagner fighters.
It turned out the position we were given was the same one where I had been stationed in 2015. You could say the boomerang had come back to where it started (he laughs). This time, there were 15 of us. The senior man in the group had the alias Povar [Cook]. So, naturally, we became Povar's Group.
The Wagner men came at us from every side, from every crack. They pounded us with everything they had. The moment that surprised me most was when wave after wave of men came at one of our two machine-gun positions. Our machine gunner, Vania, hit one of them with the M240, somewhere around the neck or chest. The man fell, then suddenly jumped up and kept running – only faster. They were definitely on something.
The Wagner fighters we faced there were serious men, I'll tell you that. Especially the ones who had been through Syria and other places. They were fired up, and they understood tactics. If they were ordered to assault, they assaulted. They had a very particular f**king way of doing it – they didn't count their losses. But we dealt with all that "peculiarity" very well. Their wounded spent half a day shouting: "Help us, help us!"
There were so many of them. Honestly, so many. They kept bringing them in by vehicle, again and again. They had more men and more ammunition. They rained fire on us all day until darkness fell.
In the end, they came straight at us, head-on, trying to encircle us.
Calling for fire on ourselves
The position in Bakhmut was about two kilometres from the sparkling wine plant [Artwinery], maybe even less. The plant was still under our control then. Maybe the Wagner men were pushing so hard because they wanted to drink our Ukrainian sparkling wine [he smiles]. Later I saw a couple of videos online showing how they had set up their headquarters, or a command and observation post, there.
We had barricaded ourselves very tightly inside the building we were holding. Then the Wagner men reached the door and simply knocked, as if someone had come to visit. From the radio intercepts, they already knew we were Povar's Group. They just didn't know how many of us were inside. First they told us to surrender and promised they would spare our lives, and the next moment they were throwing everything they could get their hands on through the windows.
There were four of us near the entrance, another seven in the basement and four more who had run up to the third floor. They were hammering us, and we were shouting back, driven by anger: "F*ck off!" Some of our men were wounded. The Wagner men tried to break down the door but couldn't. Then they hit it twice with an SPG-9 anti-tank grenade launcher from a nearby slag heap. A hole opened up by the entrance, big enough for an average-built fighter to crawl through. We saw it and tried to slip into the basement, but they started spraying us with machine-gun fire.
Povar and I looked at each other and understood: this was it. The end. We were encircled. At that point, we did not know our machine-gun position near the building was still alive and still working. So we decided to call fire on ourselves. The radio was still crackling a little, and we managed to get through several times: "Hit us directly! We're encircled anyway."
Thank God, our own shells missed us. We finally managed to make it down into the basement. There were wounded guys there too, because the Wagner men had been throwing in grenades. They were doing it so quickly they must have gone through a whole crate in five minutes. Everything was on fire.
During the bastards' assault, it turned out their little tank was firing at our machine-gun position. But instead it hit the end wall of our building, right at the bottom, and left a hole we later crawled out through. Our machine gunners were about 70 metres from the five-storey building, and they threw a grenade at us (laughs). Glory to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it didn't hit anyone. We shouted: "Kolia! Vania! What are you doing?! It's us!" They thought we were all dead and that it was the bastards climbing out.
"Black Forest"
The first time we really felt what munition drops from Mavic drones could do was in autumn 2023. The enemy had already been using drone drops on other parts of the front, including near Bakhmut, in February and June that year. But it was in the forest near Synkivka, on the Kupiansk front, that they came in such numbers that they became a serious problem. In less than a year, the war had changed dramatically.
We went into that forest near Synkivka to relieve Da Vinci's Wolves [now known as the 108th Separate Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine] and ran into the Russian "Storm Z" group there for the first time. From radio intercepts, we knew they had been ordered not to take any of us prisoner. Well, being good Ukrainian people, as always, we even gave them medical aid.
Storm-Z also came in large numbers, but to be honest, they did it stupidly. They simply moved through the forest towards us, running from tree to tree. That was their idea of an assault. To be fair, though, their assault groups were surprisingly well put together, as we learned from prisoners. Each group had two machine gunners with two assistants, two snipers with two assistants and two RPG gunners – also with assistants.
![There were also some Voronezh airborne troops operating alongside Storm Z near Synkivka. Their job was purely reconnaissance, and you could tell them apart by their uniforms. The paratroopers wore the Russian Gorka suit, while the Storm Z troops wore their standard Zhaba [a type of camouflage pattern – ed.] and unit patches](https://uimg.pravda.com.ua/buckets/upstatic/system/MediaPhoto/photo/3/6/868232/360c8cda19a3cea9911f62c62c505ff31783620845.jpg?w=1200&q=90&f=webp)
If it hadn't been for the sheer number of grenade drops and the massive artillery support, those f**kers wouldn't have made any gains in that forest.
We took losses there as well, but we inflicted devastating casualties on the enemy. By the end of it, there was practically nothing left of the forest. They had simply ploughed it into the ground, shredded it. They could afford to fire 10 or 15 tank rounds at just a couple of our fighters.
We called the forest near Synkivka the "Black Forest", for reasons that remain a mystery to me to this day. Our positions were only 20 to 25 metres apart. There were cases where a soldier running from one position to another would simply vanish. You'd watch him leave the observation post and head for the next one, and then someone there would come in over the radio asking, "Where is he?" You'd reply, "What do you mean? He was running to you – I saw him a second ago." They'd answer that they'd seen him too, but he'd never made it.
We'd move out from the position and search the area, but there would be nothing – no soldier, no body, nothing at all. How do you explain that? Maybe they accidentally stepped off the path? I honestly can't say. We had one theory. Our position was on what looked like a sandy ridge. Perhaps a soldier failed to keep a low profile while moving, got hit, and rolled down the slope towards the Russian lines... But that's only speculation.
There was another strange incident in the Black Forest. One day, our company commander "Raptor" and I were leading a group into position. Barely two minutes later, I turned my head and saw this f**ker sprinting straight towards us along the very path we'd just used to bring our men in. I killed him and shouted to Raptor, "The f**kers are coming from that direction!" "What do you mean?" he said. "Our guys are there." About seven minutes later another one came running. I killed him as well. When Raptor and I got back, we followed the path straight to our observation post and demanded an explanation: "How the f**k did you let them get through? They're running around behind our line!" "Nobody came through here," they told us. "Nobody's been along this path except you."
The Vovchansk Aggregate Plant
My first deployment to Vovchansk was back in 2024. The town was still standing then, although it was already being pounded with guided bombs because they couldn't break through our defences. We'd dug in well and were holding our ground.
The second time I went into Vovchansk was a bit harder for me. A group of seven of us reached a position when something heavy was dropped on us. Two of our men were killed, sadly, and everyone else was wounded. Thank God we all made it out, and every casualty was evacuated. The hardest part was getting out across the river via a narrow footbridge that the Russians kept bombing, trying to destroy it.
After recovering from my injuries, I returned in 2025. This time it was the Aggregate Plant itself in Vovchansk. The fighting there was different because the engagements took place at point-blank range. If the Russians managed to slip through one by one, they'd immediately start digging in. Then it became our job to go in and root them out.
So there you are, heading out specifically to assault the Russians, then you take someone prisoner, and it turns out you've got a whole bloody international legion there. Chinese, Koreans, Afghans, Pakistanis, Colombians, Africans. At times it felt as though we weren't fighting Russia at all, but half the world.
There was one funny incident at the Aggregate Plant. A Russian two-man assault team came running towards us. We killed one of them, but the other kept going. From intercepted radio traffic, we knew someone was supposed to meet them by voice and identify themselves with a red torch. So as the surviving soldier was running, we started shouting to him in Russian: "Come on, this way! Faster, faster!"
He ran up to us, caught his breath, got on the radio and reported to his commanders: "That's it, I've made it. I'm with our guys." They replied, "Good. Stay on comms." We looked at him and said, "Finished your report? Right then, hand over the radio. You're a prisoner." He just stared at us. "A prisoner? What do you mean?" And just so you understand the kind of situation he was in, they'd sent him into the assault with a single magazine in his rifle and two spare rounds in his pocket. That was a fully fledged assault trooper – from Tuva [in south-east Siberia].
God's gift
I've had three serious wounds over the past few years. I don't even count the smaller ones or the countless concussions.
The first serious injury was a shrapnel wound I took in 2022 on the Luhansk front. We were under fire from a Nona self-propelled mortar. At one point, I just didn't make it into cover in time. A fragment tore into my pelvis, ripping away a chunk of flesh. The blast was so powerful that as I was running, it actually spun me around in mid-air.
The second injury came near Berkhivka near Bakhmut. We were moving towards our position, passing a row of small houses, when a shell landed nearby. I was lucky – my ankle was smashed by a stone. Had it been hit by debris instead, my foot would simply have been blown off.
The third wound came in 2025, at the Aggregate Plant. Three Russians managed to slip through, and because of them my brother-in-arms, "Ambal", was killed. I was tasked with assaulting them. After Ambal's death, I was furious. I was consumed by rage.
"Shchuka" was number two in the assault team, while number three, "In", stayed behind to provide covering fire. We attacked the occupiers at point-blank range. They'd taken cover behind concrete slabs. We came in from the flank, and one of them threw a grenade right at my feet. Shchuka managed to jump clear, but I couldn't. There was rebar underfoot, stones, the remains of walls. I managed to drag myself forward a little but found I had barely moved at all. There was about a second left, and with the grenade just over a metre away, I dropped to the ground with my back towards it.
The shrapnel went into both my legs, my arm and my side. I didn't even feel it hit my legs – the adrenaline was pumping too hard. Blood started running down my arm. The only thing I really felt was something hitting my side. I took a deep breath, realised my lungs hadn't been punctured and hadn't collapsed, so I could keep fighting. I rolled back towards Shchuka, took a grenade from him and threw it at the bastard who'd thrown one at us. The only thing I saw after the blast was his rifle flying out of the cover. That firing position fell silent immediately.
The next day, I realised something wasn't right with my leg. Later I found out there was a fragment lodged inside it – one that had severed a nerve.
During that rotation at the Aggregate Plant, I turned 35. As it happened, my birthday fell on the day of the Easter truce. I came out of the position wounded – and that was God's gift. Our withdrawal went smoothly.
The greatest gift, though, was the cake my wife had baked for me. She's a pastry chef. She baked it and sent it to me by post, and our commanders and drone pilots did everything they could to get it to my position. Every cream decoration on that cake – the patterns, the ornaments, the writing – arrived in perfect condition. I even offered some to a Pakistani prisoner of war, and he said, "Good, good, good."
After everything that's happened, I can honestly say I've never once thought about stopping.
When there is peace in the country, when my family and everyone around me are truly safe, then maybe I'll think about living a little for myself.
My wife asks me, "Kostia, when are we going to live like a normal family?" I tell her, "Soon. Just a little while." "How many more 'just a little whiles' are there?" she asks. "It's been 11 years, and those 'just a little whiles' never seem to end."
What helps me get through everything that's happening in this war is my children, my family, and the thought of them. I've always said it, I say it now, and I'll keep saying it: I'm ready to give my life for them. That's my calling as a man. After all, that's what men are meant to do – protect their women and children.
By Yevhen Rudenko, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by: Ganna Bryedova and Anna Kybukevych
Edited by: Shoël Stadlen