Surrounded, thirsty, unbroken: The 42-day stand that earned Ukraine’s highest honor

Father and son in the same trench

Liubomyr Mikalo calls his younger kids by tender nicknames: “Matviyko, Terezochka.” They are now 13 and 10. But the oldest he addresses more formally: “Bohdan.” Maybe because he is 29, has his own family, and is fighting.

Both men have been at the front since the first days of the full-scale war. The question of not going never came up.

“From our little town (the Mikalos hail from Sheptytskyi, formerly Chervonohrad, in Lviv Oblast — ed.) to Belarus — it is 300 kilometers, and we were not about to wait and hide until the Muscovite and the Belarusian came knocking. Any man has to protect his family, and especially the country he was born and lives in. My son went to fight, my brother, my brother-in-law (sister’s husband — ed.), a lot of people I know,” Liubomyr recalls.

They ended up in the 103rd Separate Territorial Defense Brigade. For a year and a half, they served together on combat missions and shared a dugout.

“There were more pluses to having my son nearby. I could see him and, naturally, worried less than if he were 20 kilometers away, and I imagined the worst. Plus, if danger came, I could help him and cover him. Though it was a little the other way around,” Liubomyr smiles as he tells about an incident near Lyman in 2023:

“The enemy assault started, and we were covering the withdrawal of our guys. They were hitting us with artillery and mortars. At the same time, there were tons of drones — they’d rotate: drop, then fly back to recharge. And at one point, a recon drone started circling over me. I got under a tree, but it kept looping, hunting. Then ‘click’ — the sound of the pin coming off a grenade. A drop. You’re not running far in three seconds — I tried to jump as far as possible, but didn’t duck, so the blast would go over me. Something pinged below my lower back. Thought it was a branch or a clump of dirt, felt with my hand — blood. Yelled: ‘I’m a WIA, I’m a WIA!’ My son was close by, gave me first aid: cleaned the wound, poured in hemostatic agent, packed it.”

At home, Bohdan called his father “tato,” but in the war, he started calling him “batia.” That is how Liubomyr Mikalo became Batia for everyone. The callsign stuck like a second skin.

It has been more than two years since his son transferred to the drone unit — or as they are also called, the “flyboys” — while the father stayed in the infantry. He defended the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, and Sumy oblasts.

Surrounded by the enemy

It was in Sumy Oblast that the events took place for which Liubomyr Mikalo received the title Hero of Ukraine.

On May 30, 2025, five servicemen were given a task — move out in the evening to a position in the village of Oleksiyivka and from there work on the Russians, track their movements. Usually such outings last five to seven days; food and ammo are issued for that period. Batia had plenty of experience with them.

The Ukrainian fighters thought the enemy was only in front of them, unaware that they had already dug in behind them too.

“Our position was supposed to be in a cellar of one of the yards, because only walls remained of the houses. The population had evacuated, animals had scattered. A drone checked the cellar; we were sure it was more or less intact. But right before leaving, the commanders warned: a ‘KIA enemy’ had crawled into the cellar, and you could only poke in there with a grenade. That wasn’t a problem, and we headed out,” Liubomyr says.

But on the way to Oleksiyivka the armored vehicle came under fire with barely 200 meters left to the position. The soldiers jumped off and rushed to the cellar, but it was on fire. They took cover in a tree line. Meanwhile, the drone guys found another cellar: in the brush, inconspicuous, overgrown. The house nearby had collapsed from age and long been covered in weeds. In the confusion one of the brothers-in-arms fell behind. He later made it back to the unit.

So four fighters reached the position.

They heard the vehicle that brought them getting shot at again, realized the enemy was already behind them too. But they had no choice: the mission had to be completed.

“If we heard enemies moving, talking, we reported it to the command — a drone would come and work them over. We also didn’t let the enemy mass up, so our guys would have less work getting to us when they cleared the whole village. Just our regular job, nothing critical,” Oleksiy reflects.

Everything would have been fine if the defense had not dragged on for 42 days.

Death of the first brother-in-arms

The cellar — earthen, deep, with a high ceiling; you could walk upright in it, size roughly 3 by 4 meters. There was one metal bed with boards laid on it. You could lie down, rest. The fighters set up guard duty and rotated in pairs. They rarely went topside to avoid giving themselves away. Even though it was summer, they froze in the damp basement.

On the very first day, they KIA’d a Russian who passed too close. They dragged him in because they did not know if anyone was following, planning to dump him later. But the body started decomposing, and they left it alone. So the corpse lay near one of the walls for nearly a month and a half, covered with garbage bags.

Enemies passed the cellar often, as they had their routes there. The Ukrainians chose the tactic of taking them out quietly: single shots, then tossing a grenade. That masked it as a drone drop. So the enemy could not pinpoint Ukrainian fighters.

Every day, the Ukrainians took out one or two Russians, and on the sixth day, three came at once. One of Liubomyr’s brothers-in-arms opened up with his rifle and leaned out the door. Whether something flew in or a grenade was dropped, a fragment hit him in the neck. Instant death. He rolled down the stairs into the basement. They laid him by the wall opposite the Russian. They kept thinking their sortie would end soon, and they could take the body with them.

That left three Ukrainian fighters.

Overall, the group eliminated more than 30 Russians, and thanks to their spotting, our drone guys took out no fewer than 30. No one looked for the dead: there were many Russian units, different people coming from different directions, no communication between them.

“Once I tossed a grenade when I heard voices, and from there shouts [in Russian]: ‘Who threw the grenade?’ ‘Not me.’ ‘Not me.’ ‘Maybe a tripwire?’ ‘Maybe. Watch your steps,” Batia recounts.

Glovo delivery and a cup of coffee for two

The food supplies they took lasted six days. After that, Ukrainian heavy drones delivered rations: dry packs, energy bars, and bottled water. True, of the nine bottles that dropped and almost always shattered, the fighters could barely collect 1.5 to 2 liters. In 42 days on the position, they never once drank their fill. Each got no more than 500 grams a day.

Twice, they treated themselves to a “feast”: on a gas burner, they brewed a mug of coffee for the three of them and steeped a pack of Mivina noodles.

They also scavenged water and food from the backpacks of dead enemies. Before that, they asked their drone guy to check the area, see if it was safe to move out. Often they found power banks — 50,000, 80,000 mAh. Once, they managed to kill a Russian soldier who tried to run into the cellar. He had three 1.5-liter bottles of water, a full backpack of food.

“Oh, guys, Glovo delivery just arrived.” That’s how they started calling Russian trophies, Liubomyr laughs.

They relieved themselves in bottles and bags. Stacked them in a corner of the basement. When possible, they carried them out and scattered them around so they wouldn’t draw attention.

They dragged enemy corpses as far away as possible, hid them in the weeds, and for those farther out asked for one or two drops or an FPV hit. Then the enemy had no questions about where the dead guys’ backpacks and ammo went.

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The grenade that didn't go off

One day, the fighters let the enemies get very close so it would be easier to take them out. Then “boom” — a grenade flies in from one of them and bounces down the stairs: “tick-tick-tick.” Two fighters jumped to the sides onto the raised parts. Batia froze on the stairs.

“The enemy pulled the pin on the grenade, but the lever didn’t release, so it failed to detonate. We later used the same grenade, with a different fuse, against them. After that, we blocked the stairs with a log to prevent another grenade from rolling in so easily,” Batia recalls.

Death of the second brother-in-arms

On the 40th day, the Ukrainians were discovered.

“We made noise. Four Russians were coming, my brother took out two, the others were trailing, we didn’t spot them. They opened fire on us, but couldn’t do anything because the overhang on the cellar protected us. I couldn’t see them — they were in a dip — so I had to step out into the yard, full height, to finish them. Had to work the rifle, hit them with six or seven grenades. The drone told me what to do, but the enemy realized for sure there were people here,” Liubomyr explains.

The next day, drops started on the cellar, and by evening, they started throwing gas rounds. One Ukrainian used a gas mask to breathe, another breathed through a wet T-shirt, and Batia used wet wipes.

Gradually, the enemy blew away the overhang and everything around with grenades, and fragments cleared the approach for an FPV drone. It was already trying to fly inside. The fighters took apart the bed, braced the entrance, and barricaded it with boards. They plugged the vent hole with a helmet so a grenade would hit it instead of the cellar.

At the same time, the soldiers reported to command that they’d been spotted. The command asked them to hold out for a few more hours while they looked for a way to extract them.

"When night fell, we used captured shovels to dig a trench right there in the cellar; somewhere we could lie low and take cover if a drone came in. If it hit the wall or floor, we’d be lower down, out of the path of the fragments. We filled sandbags with the dirt, lined the trench with them, and covered it with captured body armor. Then, the next morning, without any warning sound, an FPV drone struck. It hit the entrance, critically wounding our brother-in-arms Alex, who had been sitting on the stairs, taking a break. The blast tore open his entire side; I saw his organs. There was nothing we could do to save him…" Batia sighs.

They laid the body next to the brother-in-arms who died earlier.

Two Ukrainian fighters remained. They kept digging the trench deeper. Blisters bled, and water ran out by noon the next day.

On prayers and the breakout to friendly lines

On the last, hardest day, when the chances of getting out were slim, fear flooded in. His brother-in-arms even asked Batia to shoot him, despair hit that hard. One of the FPVs broke through the barricade, exposing the entrance. If one more flies in, it’s over…

“I didn’t have those thoughts. I was more than certain nothing would happen to us,” Liubomyr admits. “All these 42 days I prayed: my wife and I go to church, I knew she was praying for me, and my parents, friends. And, as it turned out, once we got out, my wife said: ‘You can’t even imagine how many people prayed for you — and not just in Ukraine.’ So I knew, I felt that support. Miracles really happened those days: when the grenade rolled into the basement and didn’t explode, when I stepped out full height into the yard.

Of course, I was scared — only a fool or a dead man isn’t afraid. But inside, I felt calm and even uplifted, knowing people were praying for me. Plus, I’d promised my wife and kids I’d come back. I had to keep that promise.

I calmed my brother-in-arms like this: ‘Everything will be fine with us, it’s all good. If we’re here, there’s a reason for it. I want to get home, and I want the same for you, so let’s not do anything stupid.’”

Toward the end of the second day, the guys were sucking on wet wipes to moisten their tongues somehow. Contact with command was lost, but Batia managed to hook up a spare cable to the radio. That’s how he reached neighboring positions, reported the situation was critical, and they needed extraction.

They were told to prepare to move out at night.

The fighters were no longer shelled; the enemy decided they were dead. To reinforce that illusion, Liubomyr set fire to a piece of their mattress — it smoldered, and smoke was pulled outside.

When breathing the toxic fumes became impossible, he covered the mattress with dirt.

At night, they moved out; a drone was already waiting. The weakened fighters followed it to friendly positions for at least two kilometers. They desperately wanted to collapse in the tree line and not get up, but fellow soldiers on the radio encouraged them: “Pull it together, men, with your last strength. You have to make it.”

Fortunately, there were no shelling or enemy drones.

In another tree line, they found half a bottle of water.

“Never in my life have I tasted water like that,” the fighter recalls sincerely.

A few hundred meters later, they met their guys, who gave them another 1.5-liter bottle (they couldn’t give more; they had little themselves). There, they were fed and checked by medics. It turned out Batia had three broken ribs (blast wave threw bags of dirt onto him), ruptured eardrums. They rested for a few hours until morning, then had to walk another seven kilometers or so to the evacuation point.

At home: taking care of his wife and granddaughter as solace

They finally got a full night’s sleep in the evening at the hospital. But was it really sleep?

“All night I was ‘fighting.’ It felt like I was back in that cellar, shooting.”

In the hospital, he washed properly for the first time in a month and a half, and it was bliss.

After the cold, damp cellar, Batia came down with pneumonia. They moved him from the ward “to quarantine” — a basement room. There PTSD hit: it felt like he was fighting again, plus delirium from high fever.

Now, almost six months after the events, after treatment and catching up on sleep, he can go into basements.

Liubomyr Mikalo submitted a report for discharge: his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and after surgery, she needs basic care and help.

“I clean the house, run errands — she can’t do any of that. Or worry.”

Liubomyr is not just Batia, he’s a grandpa too: his granddaughter, Bohdan’s three-year-old daughter Yevochka, is growing up.

“She says: ‘Grandpa, Grandma, I love you.’ She’s such a comfort, such a treasure,” Liubomyr smiles.

He hopes his worst days are behind him.