On Thursday, August 14, at the height of the day, the road leads toward Chernihiv along the Kyiv Sea. The water looks like a mirror, and the driver, Roma, wearing a striped tank top with a tattoo on his tanned arm, points to a tiny island with two trees.
He says that at the very start of the full-scale war, his group was positioned in a tree line alongside anti-aircraft troops and Territorial Defense fighters. Their task was to prevent Russian forces from breaking through to the dam and then advancing toward Kyiv. Roma recalls that at the time everything felt almost unreal, like a scene from a film.
It was then, he says, that Russian helicopters appeared over the reservoir, flying very low. It became clear that an airborne assault was underway. One of the helicopters was immediately shot down with a Stinger. Roma says that once the missile locks on, it does not let go until the target is destroyed, and he specifically thanks the Americans for supplying such weapons at that stage.
“Things started falling out of the helicopter: gear, body armor, all that stuff... Right by the little island, the machine went under the thin ice,” Roma recalls.
He says that he and the others were tempted to take the risk and try to recover weapons and body armor. But an elderly man from a neighboring village, who was also serving in the Territorial Defense, stopped them. According to Roma, the man said they should remember the spot and come back in summer to catch crayfish there, once the war was over.
Without taking his eyes off the road, Roma turns his smartphone toward the passengers in the back seat. In several photos, a trophy can be seen from different angles: a gray, bulky aircraft with a pierced side bearing the word “Russia”. It is an Alligator helicopter.
At the end of the story, he adds that a few months later that same elderly Territorial Defense fighter was killed in combat.