The international delegation, headed by Ana Lucía Bueno, ICRC Public Health Coordinator, and Sujit Panda, Head of the Physical Rehabilitation…
Three border guards with callsigns Okey, Bilet, and Kasik held a position for 130 days near the border with the Russian Federation on the Kupiansk axis.
The information was published on February 25 by the State Border Guard Service.
44-year-old Oleksii (Okey), 50-year-old Viktor (Bilet), and their comrade Kasik serve in the rapid-response border commandant’s office of the Volyn Border Detachment.
Oleksii, who worked as a land surveyor before the war, was mobilized into the State Border Guard Service in March 2022 and joined a combat unit of the Sumy Border Detachment, where he fought for a year.
He then returned to guard the border with Belarus in Volyn.
Meanwhile, Viktor left for work in Germany at midnight on February 24, 2022. Learning about the full-scale invasion, he turned back halfway and returned to Ukraine to defend his homeland.
He immediately joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After serving a year and a half in the Zaporizhzhia sector, he was discharged for family reasons, but after a few months he returned to service — this time to the Volyn Border Detachment, to a unit on the Belarusian border.
Last summer, both border guards joined a combat unit of the Volyn Detachment and went to Kharkiv region, where their comrades had been holding back the enemy since May. Soon they reached a position which they held for more than four months until they were relieved by Armed Forces soldiers.
A video recounts what was the hardest part of the 130 days, how they supported each other, how they repelled assaults and left the position, and what the border guard soldiers dreamed about.
