Note: "200-ed" means dead, "300-ed" means wounded.

From the outset, everything went through a familiar place. At the beginning of March the brigade moved into the area of Rubezhnoye. They approached from the north. According to eyewitness accounts, on one of the forest roads on the outskirts of the town, the column stopped and sent a reconnaissance party forward. The reconnaissance team found two Ukrop strongholds, the Ukropians did not suspect anything. It took 40 minutes to decide what to do next. During that time, the Ukropians discovered the column and opened a barrage of mortar and artillery fire. In this raid, the personnel of our battalion were halved before engaging in combat. I will write further about my own battalion, as I am not familiar with the actions of others.

We were in Luhansk at the time, together with Vityuk and Irish, trying to go to war - I wrote about it here. The Irishman, through some acquaintances at the hospital, was voicing some monstrous figures of 300-ed and 200-ed, but I didn't believe it at the time. As I realised later, we could not leave because those who were to send us were busy delivering the 300s and organising the identification of the 200s. Later, already at the battalion's camp, the returning lightly wounded confirmed the losses.

After this rout the battalion dismounted and lay down. It was frosty, snowy, we were lying under fire for three days. It was forbidden to make fires. To the losses were added frostbitten in large quantities. In general, by the beginning of the assault only one third of the battalion staff was left.

Then, with the support of the brigade's artillery, the northern part, where there were 5-9-storey apartment buildings, was stormed.

The Ukrops did not defend them and quickly withdrew to prepared positions in the private sector. At the end of March, Chechens were stationed in these houses and posted staged videos about how they were heroically "cleaning up" the five-storey buildings they had cleared two weeks before.

And then the shit started to get really bad. The Ukropians used concrete garages as their stronghold - they are on the right side of the picture. The blocks they were defending are circled in red.

They have prepared their positions perfectly. To the south of the positions is a low ground that shelters from artillery. There are message paths leading to it. At the ends of streets leading north through the settlement there are concrete pillboxes. In the settlement's quarters, "firing bags" are arranged in advance - sectors for crossfire are cleared, machine gun emplacement in basements are equipped, sniper positions are prepared. Paths were carefully paved into the "sacks" themselves - fences and sheds were pierced. The fighters, attempting to reconnoitre in combat, so as not to walk through the shelled streets, go in yards. They don't know who was breaking through the passages - maybe ours. And through these passages they come under the crossfire of machine guns and snipers. Groups were killed before they even realised they were being shot at.

Look at the chaos of buildings. You can't see anything in the courtyards - everything is blocked by fences and houses.

A group went into one of these bags. Nine bicentennials at once. The commander - not a scratch. Came back, took the men, led them to pull out the 200-ed men. Same trail. Took out three more. And so on for a week. As a result, there were 20 200-ed men lying there who could not be taken away for several weeks. The order to "take out the 200-ed men" became tantamount to an order to "go and die".

By mid-April there were a couple of men left of our "pre-war" company. Volunteers and reservists were already being sent to the battle. Volunteers in masses were with experience of 2014-2015, but here it is absolutely other war and their experience does not help anything. And the reservists are miners caught on the streets without the slightest experience. Nobody cares. Put your submachine gun in your hands and go forward under the mortars. There was a catastrophic shortage of men, fighters were not allowed to leave the front line for a month or more. Many went nuts from such loads. Some began to drink heavily, fortunately there was no problem with booze at the front. Mathematically there was almost no chance of getting out alive and uninjured. The longer you stay there, the less chance you have. Of those I was friends with or shared bread with, eight people died in a fortnight. The rest were wounded or shell-shocked. Within a week, three company officers had changed - two were killed. There were no company-platoon level officers left at all.

In mid-April, after numerous attacks and heavy losses, the garages were taken. A day later, a Ukropov tank came up from a low place and simply destroyed the garages to their foundations.

Ukropov tanks operate there with complete impunity. Two Ukropov tanks took apart this nine storey house next door to us for several hours - methodically and calmly. Where our artillery was looking at at that time - I don't know.

Separately, there were explosions at the Zarya plant. I was in a nine-storey building both times. Complete sense of a powerful incoming straight into the house - the metal doors of the flats just flew up. Considering that the explosions were five kilometres away, the area around the factory must have been a lunar landscape - the amount of explosives here goes by tens of tonnes, if not more.

All this could have been avoided by using aviation. But Pasecnik said: "We will manage with our own forces". So they coped with this, throwing people to the slaughter in packs.

I will write separately about the Chechens later.