Thread by @MaxRTucker

In Kharkiv for @thetimes, I encountered an astonishing act of heroism by ‘Drago’ (L), a 24 yr-old special forces officer in Ukraine’s Kraken Detachment. He was awarded a medal for valour for extraordinary actions while holding the Russians for 16 hours at the village of Krasne…

Elite Russian Spetznaz had crept into his unit’s rear, he told me: “You could see how professionally and well co-ordinated they were working; it was high-level stuff. They had the latest-model Kalashnikovs and night-vision devices. They covered their movement by accurate fire.”

Drago was recovering from concussion and second-degree burns at Kraken headquarters in the bombed-out city of Kharkiv as he described his encounter with Russia’s feared special forces.

Plumes of smoke trailed into the sky above the city as he spoke, marking the aftermath of a Russian air raid on a factory.

Putin failed to take Kharkiv in the early months of the war and his forces now appear determined to raze the city. Once home to 1.5 million mostly Russian-speaking inhabitants, today it is scarred by flattened apartment blocks and university buildings riddled with shrapnel.

Drago and his men had been watching Russian troops massing across the border since last month, powerless to hit their supplies and ammunition with a pre-emptive strike because of a US prohibition on the use of long-range American missiles on Russian soil.

“There were a lot of Russians gathering, we could’ve destroyed them coming in but we don’t have many ATACMS and we have a ban on using them there,” he said, shaking his head as he discussed the casualties the US policy cost his unit. “We had to wait for them to cross the border.”

When the Russians did move into the Kharkiv region, they ran straight into his First Assault Company, specialist night fighters under the command of Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR. Along with other special forces fighters, they had been redeployed from the Donbas region.

The clash triggered a day-long gun battle between elite soldiers at the village of Krasne as the Russians pressed their new offensive against Ukraine’s second-largest city.

This account is based on a Kraken commander’s report, Drago’s testimony, and the HUR rationale for awarding him the Order for Courage medal, presented by Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, for “bold and decisive actions in a tactically unfavourable situation”.

Russian artillery had opened up at 3am, covering the movement of small groups of specialised infantry. The Spetsnaz bypassed Ukraine’s defensive strongpoints at night, looping back to encircle the Ukrainian troops who held them.

“They came through the marshes and the trees, almost unnoticed by our attack drones,” said Drago, who was encouraged to join the special forces during his training with the British military last summer.

“The adjacent units were newly formed, people who had no combat experience yet. They were next to us, trying to hold the line of defence, but the enemy, consisting of 20 people, came to our rear.”

Drago tried to shoot his way out of the trenches, but the Russians tossed in grenades, igniting the wooden fortifications and burning both his legs. With the enemy in front and his trenches on fire, the situation seemed hopeless. He called in artillery fire on his own position.

“It worked. The artillery killed at least three of them and they dropped back. Then our back-up group arrived with machinegunners,” he said. This second team of eight Kraken soldiers tried to provide covering fire from a treeline.

But working methodically, the Russians took out their machinegunners. One was killed outright; the other was wounded, shot in the lung and coughing up blood. “At first my mind went empty. It felt so hard to see my friend lying dead on the ground,” he told me:

“I was drained and devastated that the guy who came here to save us had died.” The men who had been hit were his friends from civilian life, bonded closer by two years of war together.

“I was trying to pull myself together. I realised I have to be patient, to calm down, and I need to save my other friend’s life.” Drago clambered out of cover to reach the wounded gunner, dragged him into a trench and managed to dress his wound and stabilise him.

Then he was caught by another grenade and concussed as he called for casualty evacuation. He lost his rifle in the blast, so grabbed a Kalashnikov from a dead Russian and fought on.

The Russians arrived inside the first dugout, starting a shootout at a distance of only 5m from the second dugout. Drago’s group killed at least two of them.

The second group of three fell back to another area where the evacuation vehicle was arriving. Badly wounded, Drago and his second group could not make it there before it was forced to leave under heavy fire.

He called in a second vehicle but the Russians were already in the Ukrainian trenches and the driver could not tell where to go to evacuate Drago and his men. In plain sight of the Russians, Drago decided to stand up over the parapet to signal his position, ignoring the bullets.

Ordering the driver to park with one hand on the steering wheel and the other firing his rifle at the enemy, Drago covered the evacuation with a smoke grenade, then dragged the wounded machinegunner into the back of the vehicle.

By the time they pulled away, the Kraken teams had held the Russians at Krasne for 16 hours, buying crucial time for more Ukrainian special forces and assault brigades to take up positions at the village of Lyptsi, where they are fighting fiercely to hold on to high ground.

Their task has been made more difficult, HUR officers say, because the US has still not given the go-ahead to use long-range weapons such as ATACMS on Russian soil, despite Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, hinting at lifting those restrictions.