In the afternoon the commander told us we did not accomplish our objective and that the next morning we have to go and assault Dolgen'koye. Many company commanders in the two battalions of the 752th regiment told their fighters that we are being sent to a sure death, since the Ukrainians are well prepared. So they said - decide for yourself if you want to go or not. Four fifths of us (if not more) refused to go. So did I. In many ways because I simply had no physical energy to keep going into an assault. Yet many volunteers from other companies went into that attack in the morning. Not me. From our company, three people went including the Sr. Lieutenant. He got wounded in his leg. As those who later came back from the assault were telling us - it was 7 kilometers of walking through the fields between Suligovka and Dolgen'koye. They left at 10AM and only by 4PM managed to reach 600 meters from the village. They were exhausted. All this time they marched under heavy mortar and artillery shelling. Dead and wounded started appearing. When we reported to our battalion commander Major Vasyura about dead and wounded, he cussed: 'leave them and keep advancing!!!'.
They said that reconnaissance squad commander who was moving together with our incomplete companies got wounded. He himself told his scouts to keep going forward and support the attack, and to pick him up later. He appointed another senior to them. After all, they picked him up. When they almost reached Dolgen'koye the mortar shelling became very intense. A Ukrainian tank started firing. This resulted in even more dead and wounded. The officers (who were alive and not wounded) did not know what to do. Then, one of the volunteers (he told me that in person; he was 40 years old and for 12 years prior he served on a contract, including in GRU; a combat veteran) said: 'Guys, we need to fall back, otherwise we will be smashed with mortars and those who stay alive will be finished off'. So they retreated. Everyone was exhausted. It was very difficult carrying the wounded. We came back at 11PM. One of the volunteers, Andrey from Kursk who came together with me said that many simply ran off while retreating. He yelled at them to help pull out the wounded, but they didn't help. He said he wanted to grab an assault rifle and start shooting in their backs... Thus, the grenade launcher platoon commander, Captain Nikolaev who was dragged for 4 hours, died from blood loss... I didn't know him personally, but everyone said he was a very good person... So that was an attack on Dolgen'koye on 20 April...
After this attack, almost everyone refused to go into another attack the next day... Only a part (11 people from the remnants of two battalions) stayed and were sent to the very frontline, into shrubbery half a kilometer away from Suligovka to help motorised riflemen from Sakhalin who held defence there... It's important to note that, in principle, many of those who refused to attack (myself included) were ready to hold defence under mortar fire, yet we were still told to walk with on our own to Izyum. In fact, they took away our weapons. They took our weapons at the very frontline...
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