As reported by Ukrinform, fights in Hostomel, Moshchun, and Irpin at the beginning of the full-scale invasion prevented Russia from carrying out the plan of the special military operation “Kyiv in Three Days.”
This was shared by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo Budanov, in an interview with Ukrinform, which will be published soon.
“Two major events changed the course of the Russian operation. The first one was in Hostomel. This prevented them from carrying out their plan. The reason for the ‘three plus ten,’ ‘Kyiv in three days’ was that the heart of the plan was a tactical airborne assault landing at Hostomel. The planes were in the air. These are well-known facts. But in the end, we disrupted these plans together with the National Guard units, which were stationed there at their permanent base, fighting the first battles. Eventually, we created conditions where the Russians couldn’t land any planes there.
And the second event was in Moshchun. If Moshchun had fallen, they would have entered Kyiv from that direction at that moment.
These are the two major events. The third significant one is the battles in Irpin, which ultimately partially divided the Russian forces, essentially cutting them in half, after which the Russian retreat began chronologically,” he said.
Budanov emphasized that the battles in Hostomel were “the heart of the special military operation,” during which the enemy had planned to capture Ukraine by the fourteenth day.
According to him, in the early days of the full-scale invasion, units of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the National Guard were stationed in Hostomel, preventing the enemy’s plans to capture Hostomel airport and land their troops for the subsequent capture of the capital.
The units of the GUR and the National Guard were assisted by artillery from the current Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who at the time was responsible for the defense of Kyiv Oblast.
“Mr. Syrskyi helped a lot with artillery, as we didn’t have our own. Thanks to the coordination and cooperation, which was literally established on the fly, on the first day, we prevented the landing of the airborne troops. Everything else followed from that,” Budanov noted.
As reported by Ukrinform, the defense of Kyiv lasted from February 24 to April 2, 2022.
Russia launched an offensive on the capital with armored vehicle columns from three directions. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ resistance thwarted these plans. The enemy’s forces entrenched themselves along the line of Makariv-Horenychi-Bucha-Demydiv.
Attempts by the enemy to capture Hostomel airport near Kyiv were disrupted. A failed attempt to land troops at the Vasylkiv airfield was also repelled. This made it impossible to rapidly capture the capital, as planned by the Kremlin.
On the evening of April 2, 2022, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine announced that Ukrainian forces had liberated Kyiv Oblast from Russian invaders. At that time, the last enemy units were expelled from Bucha, Hostomel, and Borodyanka.
Tags: russia ukraine war Ukraine
