Kipish, along with several of his companions, held a missile fin in front of the Luis de Vega machine gun he was using on Friday
After almost 10 months of Russian invasion of Ukraine, people have to feed their resistance from little heroes. He clings to her to keep his morale high. On a road leading to the outskirts of Kyiv there is a military checkpoint where a young man in uniform is the focus of the attention of his other companions. At 25, Kipish, a Ukrainian nickname meaning restlessness, poses proudly for the camera while holding one of the fins of the missile he claims – everyone claims – shot down with a submachine gun.
This is one of the 76 launched by Russia on Friday morning, according to Kiev authorities, who claimed to have shot down 60. It was one of the heaviest massive bombing raids on various regions of Ukraine and this group of soldiers from the capital He says he has reasons to puff out his chest. Kipish’s fellow combatants surround him so the group snap lives on for posterity. With them, as an integral part of the scenery, the machine gun with which they want the feat accomplished.
It was after nine in the morning when the first rocket was heard, says Evgeni, 50, one of the Post’s officials. With the alarm activated, the group’s commanders then gave orders to man defensive positions. But aside from their guns, they don’t have armored vehicles or heavy weapons. This 7.62mm machine gun is the best defense. It is carried in the middle of the snow on a rectangular wooden board supported on some tubes. All very homemade, which makes the story even more surprising.
Born in Kyiv, Kipish’s military experience can be traced back to those months of Russian occupation. He volunteered for the Territorial Defense Corps, and after it joined the army it is still on duty in the capital. He has a certain tone of normality that it was his superiors who gave the order to pull the trigger when they sensed a second missile in the sky. “I started shooting tracers and after two seconds it fell,” he comments with no fuss or hint of epicness. When asked if he felt anything, he replies “fear” because he thought he was going to explode and the distance wasn’t very great. But they heard no explosion. “We live,” he clarifies, emphasizing the obvious.
Vira, 39 (right), next to the remains of the rocket shot down in Kyiv on Friday.Luis de Vega
Then some approached the spot where the remains had landed. A few hours later, a group of bomb squads swarmed around the rocket, which was lying between bushes in a snowy field a few meters from the road that leads to the power plant towering around 300 meters behind it. A 39-year-old soldier named Vira, which she herself points out means faith in Ukrainian, crouches next to the wreckage and points to what she says has been numbered on the hull to make the weapon more difficult to locate. Despite the proximity of the plant, fog and sleet hardly allow the red and white chimney to smoke. Kipish and the rest of the military are deployed at a point located next to the populous neighborhood of Troieshchina, on the left bank of the semi-frozen-skinned giant that is now the Dnieper. Everything indicates that the target of this rocket was power plants.
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But is it possible to shoot down a cruise missile with this machine gun? The uniformed men themselves do not hide that it was a small miracle. In fact, unlike other occasions, they feel a certain need to back up their story with evidence and get the reporters to the point where the missile hit. “It happens once in a million,” he says at first when asked what happened to Jesús Manuel Pérez Triana, a Spanish analyst specializing in military affairs. But when he sees the photos of the missile barely being destroyed, he doesn’t see the performance reported by the military as unreasonable. He believes the impact of that 7.62mm round can leave “a finger-sized hole”. It is therefore not necessary to cause major damage. He also adds that these missiles “fly low and relatively slowly. If you’re lucky, you can hit them with a machine gun,” he concludes.
Russia “still has enough missiles for several attacks of this caliber. We have enough determination and confidence to fight back,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned late on Friday. The President congratulated his troops, in particular “the fighters of the 96th anti-aircraft brigade, who were protecting the Kiev region and were particularly effective.”
The young soldier who is the protagonist of this story does not consider himself special. “My family gives me strength to fight,” she says, referring to her mother, brothers and sisters. Kipish has a girlfriend but no children, although he admits he hasn’t been able to tell him yet. “The best reward is that this all ends,” he says. Evgeni, the boss, takes the floor to highlight his shooting style and how skilled he is behind the wheel. “A hero,” he concludes.
Around the power plant, the military admit that they are more brimming with morale than with arms and ammunition. Most took on the Russian invasion inexperienced. Such is the case of Basil, 22, originally from Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region. There he played in the youth team of local football team Shakhtar before settling in Kyiv to work as a laborer. Next to him is a veteran who, although he had served in the military, was a train driver before the war. Both approach surprised to see and feel this type of goliath that is the rocket. Basil gives the reporter his cell phone so he can take a souvenir photo of him on the spot.
Gera, one of the leaders of the group, appreciates the help his country receives from abroad and assures that it will never stop as the danger is permanent. Proof of this, he suggests, is that Friday morning’s bombing did not catch them off guard. But he never tires of repeating that they need more guns as they would achieve much more than the victory achieved with the machine gun that Kipish fired. “Guns… and tobacco,” he adds, smiling.
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