Cameraman of the 2+2 TV channel, The Day’s and the German TV channel ARD’s contributor Ivan Liubysh-Kirdei, along with three other journalists Heorhii Tykhy (ARD), Max Levin (LB.ua), and Markiian Lyseiko (Ukrinform) broke out from a cauldron in Ilovaisk on August 29, after spending five days there. The battle of Ilovaisk is known as the corridor of death, which Ukrainian soldiers had to go along to leave the cauldron. Watch video interview with Liubysh-Kirdei in the section Den-TV on The Day’s website:
“Thinking that I was going to do some peaceful filming, I had left my battery in Kramatorsk. When I got to Ilovaisk, my camera had only two hours of charge left. I stretched these two hours over five days. Can you imagine how hard it was on me as a cameraman? Meanwhile, every day in Ilovaisk presented enough material for a feature-length documentary, having at least five series in total...
“I started fearing for my life only when I first heard the Smerch rocket artillery system at work. There was a strong whistle, and the commander ordered everyone to hide. We ran to the basement of the school we were in. The impact was so strong that we thought: ‘the school is no more.’ The projectile hit just 150 meters from our shelter...
“I saw a Russian prisoner of war taken out blindfolded. Our commander put him in the car and said: ‘Tell your comrades that Ukrainian officers know what honor is.’ There was a report later on that this freed prisoner and several of his wounded comrades were shot by their side. Maybe they decided to sacrifice them in order to defeat Ukrainian battalions.”
