By Eliza Popova
Before the war, his life turned around agriculture: the man drove the tractor and was engaged in growing mushrooms, earning a stable income. However, everything changed in December 2022, when he joined the ranks of the Defense Forces of Ukraine. The Ukrainian fighter told this in an interview with Inform army. Initially, Stepan worked with the T-72 tank, but then he was sent to study in Germany, where he mastered the management of Leopard 1A5. The training program lasted one and a half months.
The fighter notes that compared to Soviet tanks, Leopard is seen as a "foreign car": the technique is comfortable in operation, and the learning process was clear due to the high level of training of foreign instructors. After completing his studies, he went to the Kupyansky direction, where from September 2023 he performed combat missions. There, Stepan's unit came under a hostile fire of 120 caliber mortars. "We went to work, worked. Only the armor came up - and began to cover us.
It was not far from two meters. The serviceman also spoke about the fighting work of his tank, which was given the original nickname "Nadyukha". In the summer of 2024, Stepan's crew encountered an attack of Lancet drone, but thanks to coordinated work and professionalism, it cost without loss. He calls the counterattack the most significant operation on November 7, 2024, when 222 shells were released in 14 hours of work to repel the enemy attack. "We didn't let them go further," said the driver.
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