ROARING through reeds on a speedboat with a machine-gun lashed to the foredeck, Central Recorder joined Ukraine’s heroic defenders waging a “secret river war”.
The deck was filled with brass cases from a.50 cal gun fired during a raid by lightning on an alleged lookout.
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The group then sprinted away from the Russian drones.
The islands of the strategically important Dnipro delta became a front line after the only two bridges for 200 miles were destroyed in November by Vladimir Putin’s retreating invaders.
Ukrainian forces have secured a bridgehead on the left bank of one of them — the Antonivskyi road bridge near Kherson.
The raiding squad was called in after Russian soldiers had been spotted sneaking onto an isle and preparing to fire mortars on the town.
Ihor Chyka was our leader. He had been a tax officer before the war.
Macer Gifford and Tony (a 51-year old former soldier) are Brits who have joined the battle since December.
They described a campaign of deadly close-quarters gun battles, drone attacks and artillery blitzes — yet one overshadowed by the bloodbath Battle of Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region.
Macer said: “Everyone was talking about Bakhmut while this secret river war was going on.
“We have tied up a lot of Russian forces to stop them going to other fronts.”
They are both members of the Witcher or Vidmak unit.
The islanders said that they would rotate in and out of the islands on a daily basis.
In one mission, Tony’s team hid out in a wooden dacha blitzed by grenade-firing Russian drones.
The former Royal Anglian soldier said: “The first blew out the kitchen, but no one was in it.
“The second bounced and luckily didn’t go off.
“The third one was an incendiary bomb, like a Molotov cocktail.
“You hear the hit of the bottle then the whoosh of the fire.
“We stayed in the house as long as we could because you know the drones are waiting for you. We had to leave.
“We hid in the void under the house for about five minutes and then made a run for it into the bushes.”
Vidmak’s commander Damien Rodriguez said his troops had faced hundreds of drone attacks and mortar bombardments, plus a handful of close quarters gun battles.
In one instance, Russian soldiers posed as “friendly forces” — but did not give a password and were told to “f*** off”.
It was stormed by stun and smoking grenades.
The Vidmak team was now on the 1st floor.
The fighters opened fire on the stairs until a grenade fell into his bedroom, forcing him to jump from a window.
Damien told Central Recorder: “He came face to face with the Russians downstairs.
“They were right there in front of him, through a window, and he just emptied his magazine.”
When Central Recorder joined the daylight river raid, Ihor said: “It is easy to see a boat with a drone. Russians are also very well-equipped with drones.
“We don’t have enough kit to stop them.
“We need more electronic warfare and anti-drone weapons.
“But as long as we keep moving it is very hard for them to hit us with artillery.
“The most important thing is to never stop moving on the water.”
Never stop moving
The spy drones of his own company had seen the four- to six-man Russian teams moving along the bombed-out dachas at the southern end of Potemkin Island about two miles downriver from Kherson.
He scrambled the fast assault boat, armed with the .50 cal belt-fed machine gun, a PKM machine gun and Ihor’s AK-47 Kalashnikov.
Mikola, the boat driver, stomped the engine to 250hp and cut through channels that were barely wider than his vessel.
He had worked on a trawler before the war and was the team’s most experienced river pilot.
He said when Russian forces abandoned Kherson they took boats from the city’s marinas and scuttled the rest.
Our team’s boat was donated by friends in Kyiv.
We zoomed past rows of splintered dachas, with a comrade from Ihor’s battalion guiding progress via a spy-drone overhead.
A sudden, the boat began to slow down. Serhii opened fire.
First bullets were fired into the river. They plotted their fatal course towards the shore. Bullet cases covered the deck.
Ihor sprayed his Kalashnikov as Mikola accelerated towards home.
The comrade he was with joined him and he used a PKM machine gun, until they were out of the range of retaliatory fire.
Later, the team had to race and hide the boat away from the artillery.
However, they are unable to defend Kherson in the way they would wish.
A mortar struck an operating room last week, killing a physician.
Central Recorder witnessed a burning cathedral.
The next day, a grocery store and morgue were both attacked.
Ihor, however, insisted that his soldiers would not give up.
He said: “We are fighting for our country, I am fighting for my city.”
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