In this Victory Commanders series interview, Ukrinform sat down for a talk with Volodymyr Popelyshyn, Command Center officer at the 16th Brody Separate Army Aviation Brigade headquarters. The success of each army aviation operation is hinging upon how effective his decisions and performance of his subordinate personnel are. Volodymyr Popelyshyn stood up for the defense of the country back in 2014. Behind his shoulders are fierce aerial battles for the Donetsk city airport in 2014. Mr Popelyshyn was serving his duty in the Kyiv region before the Russian Federation launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In this interview the Army Aviation officer talks about his combat history and lessons he learned through his war experience.

- You are in lead of a combat management group. Tell us what this means, what you do and what makes your job that important.

- Aviation is not only about pilots and a flying vehicle, an aircraft, but also a set of measures, without which an aircraft simply will not take off to perform a combat mission. There are also different auxiliary functions to ensure a combat mission is a success, designated targets are hit accurately and the aircraft departs safely from the site of impact. That is why combat management groups such as ours have been created within the structure of Army Aviation.

- Does that involve also monitoring of aircraft condition and compliance, and ammunition loading?

- If this is about an integrated group, it additionally includes aviation engineering service officers and various auxiliary personnel to support takeoffs of helicopters and airplanes...

- And also intelligence gathering and reconnaissance, probably...

- Intelligence gathering and reconnaissance is related to the provision of data on forward the advanced targets for gunners within combat management groups. If integrated missions are being planned for, if we have a full complement of personnel assigned to support the work of stopover bases, for example, then many other officers and contract servicemen are engaged to ensure combat aviation brigade commanders are receiving outstanding support from an integrated team.

- What are your tasks and responsibilities and those of your personnel?

- If it is an integrated team, these include loading aircraft with ammunition, maintaining the aircraft in mission-ready status, aircraft inspection, maintenance and refueling, takeoff, and emergency medical evacuation is also among the tasks and responsibilities assigned to personnel at the stopover base. Our pilots call the position I hold “eyes on the ground”: a pilot in the air does not see the battlefield as well as a person on the ground or on a forward position close to enemy lines. And so, we tell the pilot by radio where he should fly to, at what speed and heading, when to open fire and where to depart after mission is complete. And the aircraft crew follows our instructions for a safe approach, strike and safe departure. If there is no such person, the aircraft simply will not fly to deliver a strike.

- It sounds quite simple, but it is a titanic job involving a lot of different processes…

- Starting from the selection of the target, selection of air-launched weapons, this information comes from the Forward Gunner located on a forward position – what to hit the target with, how close a helicopter can fly to enemy lines to hit this target, whether the helicopter can safely approach the target at all, given that the enemy too has means of destruction. It all depends on the choices to be made by this Forward Gunner: if he makes right choices, selects a target qualitatively, and the target’s characteristics are well aligned with the aerial weapon selected, I think the mission success will be 70 percent probable.

- You stood up for the defense of Ukraine back in 2014. What tasks did you perform at that time?

- The year 2014 is a major departure from 2022 in terms of the level of technical provision and support, which advanced far ahead.  In 2014, we could talk to crews safely over the radio, more or less, and provide guidance over the radio so that the crew could finish their firing mission and depart from the mission area safely. But that’s not so any longer. In 2014, offensive operations were less extensive than they are now, being of more local, regional extent, and enemy lines could be approached at closer ranges. It seems to me that it was a little easier to fight in 2014 than it is now.

-- What tasks did Army Aviation perform then?

- The most difficult ones. For example, our Army Aviation was recapturing the Donetsk airport; it was engaged in the operation to recapture the Luhansk airport in 2014, seized it and held the defense; in Kramatorsk, we had a strategic airfield from which we took off and carried out strikes. Back then there was more room, more opportunities.

- What do you remember from these complex operations?

- It was an experience that turned very useful to me in 2022. First, there were anticipations of enemy strikes, it was no longer new to me in 2022. From 2014 to 2018, we were constantly on the line of contact with the enemy, on the front line, we were attached to brigades who provided us with support as to where we should move, watched the helicopters approaching targets, from where it was safer to approach, where to strike. In 2014, it was such a static situation, and now everything is in motion and changes are much more frequent.

- How are you adapting to this, because you said that it was all safer previously due to communications?

- For example, our radio communication is frustrated, we need to approach it differently, solve this issue. So, before that, we fly over the targets that we want to hit, learn everything about them, their characteristics, what they can be hit with, and then we deploy our combat aircraft without using radio communication. Before that, we give them everything we could, but during the strike we are located in the maneuver area, that is, where the missile launches are taking place. Now we have amended the target programs, where we can see how the helicopters are flying, and the helicopter can see live, online where we are located.

- That is, this is continues technology development.

- Yes, that’s so. Whereas in 2014, no one knew what a "mavic" was, a quadcopter was, now a soldier does not feel complete without it.

- Are they integrated into your work?

- Yes, we fly over targets, examine them, identify their characteristics, provide data on where electronic countermeasures are active and where not active, where it is better for a helicopter to approach the target area, where the passage will be safer, where the approach is safer – this all is determined in preparation for the strike.

- On the eve of the full-scale invasion, you and your personnel went on training. How was it going on?

- It was on February 15, I understood that this was one of the first, perhaps the first combat order issued by the Ground Force commanding headquarters. Recall how the Russian Federation entered Belarus in 2022 to conduct joint exercises with them, amassed personnel and materiel there, and then a full-scale invasion of our Ukraine followed. But they did this all under the disguise of military maneuvers. They were conducting their exercises, and we were conducting our exercises at the same time as they were. It was perhaps then when the Ground Force commanding headquarters issued its first combat order to dispatch a combat management group and set up a stopover base in a metropolitan area, in Kyiv.

- Did you understand that there would be an all-out invasion?

- I'll tell you, many didn't understand. We departed having with us only 120 rounds of ammunition per assault rifle, and that was it, nothing more.

- Did these exercises fit what happened next?

- You know, we missed the exercises proper, because when we arrived in Kyiv on the night of February 15, we were welcomed, shown the location of our field base camp, we deployed; on the 16th, of February, our senior from the Army Aviation headquarters came, told us something, he and we chose a site where the helicopters would be stationed. It already took some time while we deployed, on the 17th we started testing this site. What did testing the site mean? This included helicopters flying in and landing, pairs of helicopters flying in and landing, followed by them takin off and departing the site (it was already on the 17th of February). And then we were issued ammunition, weapons, got them prepared for use and that's it – then February 24 arrived.

- How well prepared were you, including in terms of morale, to respond to this challenge?

- I somehow did not believe until the end, that, in the 21st century, there could be such a large-scale invasion occurring in the center of Europe, that there could be such a war at all, that someone would have enough sense to do that. As it turned out, they did. But we were ready for that, basically.

- How did events unfold further?

- We deployed a field base camp in Kyiv, located just alongside a busy highway, where one and the same vehicle was constantly driving. And once I said: stop this vehicle, check the driver's documents. They stopped the vehicle, the driver got out, greeted us, I looked at the documents, there was an officer with me who had acquaintances in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The driver was run through databases – he seemed like a normal guy named Serhiy, he started contacting us. Seeing what the situation was leading to, he was contacting us more and more frequently. On February 22-23, when weapons began to be issued to civilians in Kyiv, he came to see me and inquired what we are supposed to do. We started teaching him how to use weapons (he was from the Kyiv municipal territorial community, and Territorial Defense Forces began to be formed at that time). We engaged their territorial defense elements into our group, and they helped us a lot in the future.

On February 24, at two in the morning, the unit commander called me to warn that something bad was gonna happen. He stayed with us on the 22nd, looked at everything we deployed on the site, and told me: stretch out your transportable ammunition stock and the fuel tankers in different directions, and if possible, pick up non-transportable ammunition stock from the ground (I had 25 tons of anti-aircraft ammunition). We stayed in a shelter beginning from half past four (we left our camp) until fifteen minutes past five. Then people started to get nervous, saying it was time for them to wash up, have breakfast, and return to the camp. We returned to the camp at fifteen minutes past five, I contacted the commander again, I said that everything was quiet with us, nothing was wrong, and he replied: it's good that it's quiet, it seems like it's over. I just hung up the phone, went out onto the bridge between vehicles and the trailer, and I hear projectiles flying in, in threes, in fours at a time...

Around eight o'clock I got a call from higher command ordering that we receive the first wounded casualty, evacuate him and provide accommodations for the crews of the helicopters stationed at airfields in Kyiv. And then everything turned into a "carousel". What does this mean? A pair of helicopters land, we refuel them, load them with ammunition supply, they fly away, then a second pair arrives, we refuel them, load with ammunition supply and they fly away too. A "carousel" meant they invariably went in a circle through the stopover base. What is the role of the stopover base? To reduce the time of refueling, ammunition loading and the flying time from one strike to another: the closer the stopover base to the area of hostilities, the shorter the time to the next strike. So we refueled and loaded quite a lot of helicopters on the first day of the war.

- How many of these cycles occurred per day? How long does it take to fully load a helicopter with ammunition supply?

- With the number of personnel (36) available to me, we would not be able to do the job in a full and timely manner. That's why I said that the territorial defense element helped us a lot. Even the pilots themselves were surprised looking at civilians picking up rockets and loading them onto the helicopter.

- Did that happen, really?

- Yes, they got their territorial defense unit busy doing something that was beneficial to us. We were coping well enough, including the loading of ammunition into a helicopter (one helicopter needs to be loaded with 40 unguided rockets, plus two tons of aviation kerosene). It took us 20–25 minutes to load a pair of helicopters.

- How many helicopters did you load per day?

- There could be seven, eight or ten of them.

- Russian aircrafts were flying in streams at that time and they were superior in numbers. What helped us keep on our feet?

- They were flying in streams aiming to destroy all of our combat aircraft with this integrated strike. They were 100 percent confident that they had succeeded. But our first wounded casualty didn’t occur until after one of our helicopters flew into Gostomel and discharged its ammunition into their parking lots, where their helicopters were already dug out, where the engineering personnel of their service were walking, and the guards were walking around the parking lots. Our helicopter flew in and shot out at them.

- What they were confident of?

- Confident that that was it, that there is no aviation left in the air at all. Our helicopter had fired out with rockets and flew away, but the pilot/gunner sustained injuries. And then they realized that not everything went to plan. When our Army Aviation struck Gostomel and was shooting at each vehicle convoy moving from Belarus towards Kyiv -- almost each of the convoys was fired upon by the Army Aviation, helicopters. Perhaps there was someone who knew that such a situation would come, that there would be a full-scale invasion, and someone did not know, but this comprehensive set of measures that had been planned by the Armed Forces of Ukraine senior leadership, the Ground Forces command helped us in that we were able to stand firm in those first days, to give a tough resistance against the invaders.

- What did you feel while seeing Russian aircraft being destroyed, seeing the results of your work?

- I was a little proud of myself, of my personnel, that I was able to complete the tasks set without any losses or even without any damage done to our aviation equipment.

- How did you support your personnel, coordinate them in those first emergency hours, minutes?

- You know, I immediately saw who had been fighting repelling the offensives, fending off the aggression since 2014, and who had not. Because after the first strikes on Kyiv, I saw some people in a stupor, others had pale faces and stiff legs, I had to talk to everyone, to set them for work. There were a lot of conversations conducted, because without conversations, without reasoned explanations, people wouldn’t have endured, would have broken down psychologically.

- But you succeeded to motivate them…

- Yes, I did, I succeeded to motivate not just men of my own, members of territorial defense forces were also working, helping me very efficiently. I brought together all the crews that were stationed in Kyiv at my place, where there was a shelter, and set tasks to everyone. Crews on rest time worked with members of territorial defense units, teaching them how to use weapons, providing shooting training.

- I wanted to ask about your work. You made a reference to 20 tons of ammunition kept on sight…

- Twenty-five, actually.

- That's huge amount. How did you cope with that?

- I'm telling you, the territorial defense guys were helping, my guys were all busy with work, no one had a single minute to spend on some nonsense, sometimes there wasn't even time to call their loved ones, relatives. Because everyone worked and knew what they were working for: that we needed to hold out and win in the first few days. We had another base where personnel were ordered to withdraw, and they withdrew. They brought me all the ammunition they kept there. The Kyiv operation was in progress until March 8, if memory serves, and, on March 3, I was already given the order to leave the place. But there was a lot of ammunition remaining there, we had to do something with it. And again, the guys from territorial defense came to help, we sheltered all the ammunition, which was then taken out.

- How did you organize your work, given that the stopover bases are priority targets for enemy strikes? Did it happen that you had to relocate to another area urgently?

- We did change locations. There, where our base camp was located, we were deployed right on an unsheltered site. After the large-scale offensive began, we had to move out of there, because the location was clearly visible even to enemy’s unmanned aerial systems, that’s one hundred percent definite. We changed locations as frequently as twice in every six or seven days, literally, and that’s a lot of tonnage that had to be carried over, transported.

- The Kyiv operation aside, were there any more others?

- Yes, they were. After the battle of Kyiv, I was assigned to the 28th Brigade who were fighting defending Mykolaiv. We took Mykolaiv back and stabilized the line of defense. Afterwards I was fighting as part of the 95th Brigade, supporting their operation, a very difficult one, from the beginning to the end, all the way to Kreminna. As part of the 72nd Brigade, I was fighting defending Vuhledar at the time the city was still under our control. There were lots of different fronts I fought on, all difficult.

-What do you mean by "difficult” when referring to the operations you fought?

- Five or six strikes every day, during which you have to remain in place, both on the offensive and defensive lines. Basically, it was difficult everywhere, because targets changed very quickly, there were almost no stationary ones. Choosing a target is also a matter of coordination -- coordination with the brigade commander, with the battalion commanders, so as not to accidentally hit your own troops somewhere, because there is a constant change in the line of combat, which you also need to monitor. So, six strikes a day - it's just that at the end of the day you don't want anything anymore, just to fall somewhere and rest, despite shells falling from the side.

- You are also responsible for the lives of the crews who are taking off. How do you feel about this responsibility?

- Believe me, thank God, I didn’t loss a single life wherever I fought. But you worry every time, like the first time.

- I wish it would continue like this, that all pilots and crews always return intact. Were there situations where you were joking when talking to pilots on mission in order just to relieve tension?

- Yes, we are telling jokes not only in the situations you’ve mentioned but also during training, we are telling jokes when flights are in progress, and we are telling jokes after pilots return from missions. We don’t joke only when we go into combat. Then everything has to be clear there, calculated to the millisecond. When you press this button, when rockets are about to release, it’s no longer time for jokes. But when the firing mission is complete, when the pilot is on the way back, and you see that everything is okay, everything is safe, no one is chasing him, there’s no first-person-view (FPV) drone or [Russian reconnaissance drone] “Orlan” behind, you can tell jokes again.

- Did such situations occur?

- Yes. When an FPV drone flies in by the time a rocket is launched, that's it, the flight has to be turned back; you're tracking that drone and shouting into the radio (although you must not): "A drone is chasing you!", it starts to turn away and fly away, and you are tracking it telling where the drone is, whether it's catching up or not. But even in such a situation, you need to remain calm. Because any wrong movement, and the aircraft can crash, and you will be responsible for this, because the pilot trusted your instructions, it was you who controlled his actions.

- Among the targets hit, is there one that you boast the most?

- Well, we mostly hit trenches, infantry, lightly armored vehicle targets, hits are almost definite, plus interceptions. Work is always going on there. It would be difficult without our aviation. It is very helpful even in containing the enemy. I would like that we have rockets with a range extended by at least one kilometer, and then everything will be fine with us. If the range of our rockets is extended by a kilometer, then, I think, we can defeat the enemy.

- What kind of weapons have you worked with, how are you adapting to the new ones?

- It’s definite that our Western partners are helping us. We have already fully consumed our own ammunition stock, are deploying foreign supplied weapons. We go to the country that is providing us with assistance, they instruct us, show us how it works, how far it can reach, what its performances are. And still, we continue to improve it here in Ukraine, trying other ways and methods of its combat deployment with an eye to extend flying ranges. We succeed, and our Western partners are very surprised that we were able to increase the range, and they did not even know that we did it.

- What is your assessment of the Ukrainian aviation’s current development level? What has been achieved, what has been changed, and what is still lacking?

- There have been some outputs achieved; we have already clearly briefed our foreign partners about what we need, what we are lacking, and what we are also working hard on. What have we achieved? I will tell you about my Brigade. I think that our Brigade, the 16th, has fulfilled its tasks so perfectly and unadmonished that my brigade commander has been promoted to the top brass. And, I believe, you will hear more about the 16th Brigade, we have some achievements and options.

- But is this still a surprise for the enemy?

- Yes.

- What do you think is the future of Ukraine’s Army Aviation?

- I would like to see it unmanned, so that the pilot sits on the ground, controls the aircraft that is in the air; so that families have waited for their loved ones back home alive and uninjured, so that pilots and people do not die in such air battles, like it is now.

- Have you ever asked yourself about what would you have done differently?

- Of course, I have, and sometimes I don’t even have an answer.

- Because it was impossible otherwise?

- That’s how it was with me: the end of the Kiev operation, I received an order to leave the group, load the helicopter crews and the personnel of the engineering aviation service into three helicopters, board with them, be the senior and depart for a regular base. I didn’t sleep all night, called the commander, talked to him, promised that I would execute this order. But I never did it, I didn’t know what to say to my personnel, with whom I had talked all the time before, saying that we are one team. I simply didn’t tell them, nor did I obey that order.

- So, are you inclined to defend your thoughts and actions where you see that it’s impossible otherwise?

- Yes, I am, I stood up for it. The commander said: "Volodya, you are an officer, the decision is up to you, we, if something goes wrong, will be in such and such a location, go break through." I understood this such that he, for his part, gave me the okay to stay with my team, that's it. We got out successfully, every one, didn’t suffer any losses.

- If we compare Ukrainian and Russian aviation, what are our strengths, what do we have that the enemy doesn't?

- Now I associate combat operations with complete improvisation. And we have enough intelligence to improvise and turn a situation that is not at all favorable for us into a direction that is favorable for us. The enemy cannot even hope doing the same thing, they try to duplicate our actions, but fail, because they lack the intelligence for that. For example, we extended the flying range of our unguided air rockets, the enemy saw it, tried to do the same with their rockets, with the result that these rockets were hitting exactly their own troops on the front edge.

- Troops of their own?

- Troops of their own; 95 percent of the hits were on their own troops, and so they abandoned this idea.

- In this studio, we are always very cautious talking about aviation, pilots, asking questions about where you are fighting now, on which fronts, what operations you are carrying out...

- My most recent deployment was to the Kharkiv region, in Vovchansk, I did a good job there too: I carried out 60 air strikes within a span of two months. I think this is a good result, the enemy was stopped there and the situation was stabilized.

- What time period was this?

- August-September of last year. Afterwards, I was engaged in missions against enemy’s air targets.

- The enemy is persistently terrorizing our cities and civilians with attacks, in particular with Shahed drones. What can be done to counteract this threat?

- Counteraction is already underway, the work is being done, it is just that a lot of attention is being devoted to the enemy's air defenses and fire capabilities deployed in border areas. We cannot fly to ranges closer than what is allowed by specifications. The higher the altitude, the greater the range reachable by enemy’s air defenses. So we have to fly at low altitudes, and there is not enough mileage to better protect our cities, we want to protect everything, but it doesn't work out so far.

- Is this the main deficiency or is there something else?

- I think so.

- What can you say about the routes that the enemy uses in an attempt to confuse [our air defenses]?

- Yes, they manipulate, unmanned aerial vehicles fly into the territory of Ukraine, then turn around, fly the opposite direction and strike at some village. Lots of UAVs fly into Ukraine from Belarus. We can’t fly in there to do anything with them, a lot of unmanned vehicles also come through the 22nd zone. The enemy uses the locations, the terrains that are unapproachable to us. We know about them well. Where attacks are launched from the sea, the drones travel along the border with Moldova, along Transnistria – we can’t approach there.

- We would like to see other countries responding...

- Yes. I myself was waiting for a response when a missile was flying through Romania, for example, to strike our Transcarpathia. There was no response. Another missile was flying through Moldova, no response either. Flying from Belarus – I’m not talking about such instances at all, it’s a daily story.

- You said that we can’t reach certain ranges to neutralize these threats. But what about the availability of missiles needed to counteract them? Are they available in sufficient numbers?

- Counteract what? Drones?

- Drones.

- There are no missiles needed there, drones are not shot down with missiles. We shoot down drones with small arms fire. Well, I think it's no secret anymore, because the Internet is buzzing with this all, there are lots of videos showing this. You don't need missiles to shoot them down.

- Is it more effective?

- It's very cheap, very effective.

- And we use Patriots when...

- Missiles. When high-speed threats are incoming, then, yes, missiles are used. This Shahed, it is not considered a high-speed target. In addition, now it is clear that the enemy began to experience problems with Shahed drones, they use them less frequently than before, but more frequently use the Gerbera drones instead, which are smaller than Shaheds, carry less amount of ammunition; they launch more of mockup drones that simply clog the airwaves of our air defenses so that our attention is diverted to these false targets, but they are absolutely harmless. It is clear that they do have problems, and we had a hand in it.

- Do you mean a shortage, mean that not everything is good with production?

Exactly so.

- We traditionally ask our guests about the victory. How do you see it and what will victory mean to you?

- What does it mean? It will not be possible to return everyone. Well, at least compensate us for what they did. And to what extent it will be, I don’t even know, because they have done us so much harm that no amount of money in the world will ever be enough to compensate for all that. To me, a victory will be when the Russian nation is ranked lower than the lowest caste in India, the lowest one, so that it is not respected anywhere at all, not perceived as a nation. The destruction of the enemy by methods that have never been seen before.

- What does aviation signify to you?

- My life.

- What does officer honor signify to you?

- It signifies a lot for me now, especially as everything has changed dramatically. I love my job, I am an officer.

- Can one person change the course of history?

- Yes.

- Your greatest fear in life?

- Fear of heights.

- What is your greatest reward?

- My family.

- To you, war is...?

- Evil.

- What can you never forgive?

- Treacherousness.

- What thought do you wake up with?

- Today will be easier than yesterday.

- What will be the first thing you do after victory?

- I'll probably go to a resort.

- Where?

- In Ukraine only.

- Thank you.

Interviewed by Diana Slavinska

Photo: Danylo Antonyuk