The next task was to secure the town with only 600 poorly equipped volunteers from an impending land attack. He ordered a fleet of yellow mining trucks, weighing 250 tons and standing nearly three stories high, to be dragged out of a nearby iron ore pit to block the roads. Meanwhile, heavy explosives were used to demolish bridges and tunnels leading into the city, creating a trail of machinery and rubble. The convoy of about 50 Russian tanks and more artillery guns approaching from Crimea didn’t stand a chance, he explained. “God helped us, because the rain washed away the fields and the tanks could only move along the asphalt road,” he said. Pinned outside the city, the Ukrainian army saw their opportunity to go on the offensive. Helicopters soon moved in, destroying the first and last tanks to leave the enemy pinned down and forced to flee on foot. Then virtual videos surfaced online of local farmers using their tractors to haul pieces of abandoned Russian kit around town. The next time Russian troops arrived at the gates of Kryvyi Rih in early March, they were met by a hail of their own weapons before finally retreating. “We were lucky because one of the workers in our military department was once an artilleryman,” said Mr. Vilkul.
Dangerous neighbor
Unable to capture the city, Moscow resorted to using its more advanced Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles to attack a nearby dam, which at one point threatened to flood 150,000 homes. The former pro-Russian politician admits he got his stance on Vladimir Putin wrong. Ties with Russia, at least as long as Putin or his allies remain in charge of the Kremlin, will never be the same again, he said. “I can’t say that Putin betrayed Ukraine because Russia has always been a dangerous neighbor, but I didn’t expect the invasion, I didn’t expect Russia to actually do it,” Mr Vilkul said. In the months leading up to the war, he used his industrial connections to help where he could, fashioning anti-tank hedgehogs from railway parts, making bulletproof vests from local steel and even converting trucks into mobile rocket launchers. As the former head of the northern Kryvyi Rih iron ore beneficiation plant, he also ordered diggers from local mines to begin helping Ukrainian troops dig nearly 200 miles of trenches around the city. Mr Vilkul is, however, modest about his role in the war. “Everyone is a hero in Kryvyi Rih,” he declared.
