Tom Mutch
LVIV OBLAST, Ukraine—Ihor and Andriy’s helicopters flew under cover of dawn and fog deep into enemy territory. “We came from the sea to avoid being spotted by Russian defenses, flying at altitudes of less than ten meters… it is extremely dangerous because you can run into power lines or trees,” Andriy told The Daily Beast while puffing on a cigarette in a training ground near the city of Lviv. Ukrainian servicemen generally do not give last names for security reasons. Despite being only 22, Andriy has already flown more than 30 secret missions in the world’s most dangerous airspace. “We were flying into Mariupol at the height of the siege [in April last year],” he said.
Their mission was considered impossibly risky when it was first proposed and—perhaps because it was so audacious and unexpected—it was working. For weeks, the Russians had surrounded the port city of Mariupol, trapping resolute defensive forces in the Azovstal steelworks. With no way in or out of the city by land, the only way to resupply the defenders was by air, a death-defying infiltration that required them to get in and out across 70 miles of Russian controlled territory.
The exhausted soldiers were astonished when the pilots landed, having expected to be trapped with no possibility of escape or resupply. In a trip lasting under an hour, they unloaded supplies of food and ammunition, and picked up some wounded soldiers for extraction to the safety of free Ukrainian territory.