I visited the airfield which triggered the war in Ukraine

Foreign Editor David Pratt has gained access to the airfield and recounts the fight that scuttled the Kremlin’s attempt to take over Ukraine.

THE tell-tale signs of that fateful day are still visible everywhere. There are gigantic hangar walls pockmarked with bullet and shell holes still sooty black from the fires that engulfed them following explosions.

Not far from a deserted control tower and adjacent to the runway lie the now rusting carapaces of Russian armoured vehicles piled one on top of the other.

A Soviet-era Aeroflot twin-engine propeller aircraft (below) sits among the overgrown grass, its tail flap blowing forlornly in the wind with an eerie creaking sound, and the scattered wreckage of a Russian military helicopter serves as a macabre reminder of the invading airborne assault troops that were ferried into battle that day.

It was February 24, 2022 – two years ago today – that Russia’s high-risk high-reward strategy to take Hostomel airfield, 12 miles from the centre of Kyiv – sometimes known as Antonov Airport – got under way, marking the first decisive battle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and unleashing the biggest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

That afternoon around 3.30pm Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy would declare that “the enemy has been blocked, and [Ukrainian] troops have received an order to destroy them.”

But in fact the battle for the town of Hostomel itself, along with other satellite towns and villages such as Irpin, Bucha and Moschun, would ebb and flow for some time after that. In what is known in military parlance as a coup de main, or surprise attack, Russia’s primary objective was to take control of Hostomel, creating an airbridge from which it would launch an all-out attack on the capital, forcing Zelenskyy to flee or be killed by Russian special forces assigned to precisely that task.

To that end and prior to the invasion, Russian intelligence had moved infiltrators into both Kyiv and surrounding satellite towns and villages including Irpin and Bucha.

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It was still dark on the morning of February 24 when Ukrainian interior minister Denys Monastyrsky woke to the ringing of his mobile phone. On the line was Ukraine’s border guard chief, telling him his units were battling Russians across three of the country’s north-eastern regions. Monastyrsky hung up and dialled Zelenskyy.

“It has started,” Monastyrsky told the Ukrainian leader.

“What exactly?” Zelenskyy asked.

“Judging by the fact that there are attacks under way at different places all at once, this is it,” he said, telling Zelenskyy that it looked like a full-scale invasion bearing down on Kyiv.

At Hostomel airfield, with its 11,483ft-long runway capable of supporting the largest transport aircraft, Russia’s assault force of 30 or more helicopters and between 200-300 soldiers from the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade and 45th Separate Guards Spetsnaz Brigade were already battling the Ukrainian National Guards 4th Rapid Reaction force located to the south-east of the runways.

Today, as I walk around the apron of the airfield among the detritus of that battle, it’s not hard to imagine the ferocity of the fighting.

In what remains of one of two gigantic hangers, the burned-out shell of an Antonov An-225 Mriya (below), the world’s largest aircraft sits like some gigantic beached metallic whale, its undercarriage tyres blackened and charred and its fuselage ripped open to expose the giant interior once capable of carrying an enormous payload.

But it would be the terrible human cost of the battle for Hostomel and surrounding towns and villages such as Bucha and Moschun in the following weeks and months that would wake the world up to the horrors that have now unfolded across Ukraine for two long bloody years now.

After leaving Hostomel on Thursday, I returned to the neighbouring village of Moschun, which I have visited several times since the start of the Russian invasion.

With more than 80% of its buildings destroyed, Moschun today still has the feel of a ghost town even if some 700 or so of its residents have returned and there is a sense of repair and rebuilding under way.

I caught up with two villagers I have come to know, Vadym Zherdetsky, 54, and Valentina Pompenko, 70. Back during those first days of the invasion and battle for Hostomel, their nearby village of Moschun became a battlefield.

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Zherdetsky still recalls the terrifying moment when two Russian rockets slammed down and exploded next to his family home.

"It was very frightening – only a stupid person would not be afraid. I was especially afraid for my grandchildren,” Zherdetsky told me, before going on to describe how he swept one of them up into his arms as the whole family rushed to escape the house and battle that was about to consume Moschun.

It’s estimated that in the fighting that ensued some 30,000 Russians were pitched against a force of just over 3000 Ukrainians, a Ukrainian brigade and battalion, respectively.

Both Zherdetsky and Pompenko, speaking in the months following the battle for Hostomel, told of listening to the thump and rattle of shell and gunfire coming from the airfield before it grew ever closer to Moschun itself until the fighting eventually engulfed the village.

It has been almost a year just since I last spoke to Pompenko (below). Last March, she was living, often in sub-zero temperatures, in one of the 60 prefabricated homes that other returning residents to Moschun had to inhabit while waiting for repairs or rebuilding of their homes.

On Thursday, when we talked in the yard of her house, she recalled again of how she witnessed her neighbour burning to death in his home just yards from where we talked.

Today, Pompenko still draws her water supply from a hand-cranked well and reads the poetry she is prone to reciting spontaneously to emphasise a point in our conversation. Poetry, she says, helps her escape and cope with the darker thoughts about the war.

“My grandson is in the army on the frontline near Kherson, I’m very proud of him,” she tells me smiling, the expression on her face becoming more sombre as she admits she believes the war will continue for a long time yet.

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Zherdetsky also has a son on the frontline. “He is recovering after being exposed to some kind of gas that was fired at them in the trenches,” he explains as if he were recounting some experience from the First World War and not one now in 2024 that shows no signs of abating.

During the opening salvoes of Russia’s invasion that day two years ago at Hostomel airfield, few realised how Ukraine’s determined and stiff defence would prove pivotal in preventing the fall of Kyiv.

An Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft destroyed during fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, April 2022 Had Russian troops broken through there and in places such as Moschun then the gateway to the capital would have been open and the fate of Ukraine might have been very different.

As it is, this war continues to tear the country apart, and I’ve yet to meet a Ukrainian who does not believe that even more difficult times are looming.

Walking through the ruins of Hostomel airport is to be starkly reminded of that moment this current round of fighting between Russia and Ukraine started, even if it had already been ongoing for years before that day when Russian troops dropped from the sky in helicopters.

How it will all end, however, is still anybody’s guess.