The documentary 146 Days at the East Gate: The Defence of Luhansk Airport, written and narrated by Valentyna Troyan, the Institute of Mass Information’s (IMI) representative in Luhansk oblast, has aired on Ukrainian Radio.
The project is dedicated to the 146-day battle for the airport in 2014 and tells the story through human perspectives, both those of soldiers and of civilians. It features the recollections of an air traffic controller and of army medics who performed surgeries and amputations in the total darkness of underground bunkers, as well as stories about the delivery of supplies by air to the besieged airport.
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The documentary also focuses on the civilians living in the surrounding towns and villages, some of whom took risks and gave their own lives to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“Memories of the airport are like memories of a first love…,” say those for whom the peacetime Luhansk airfield used to be an eastern gateway to the sky. “But within a few months in 2014, this space became the arena of a hellish struggle,” reads the project description.
Valentyna Troyan said that the key goal of the project was to preserve the historical memory of the heroism and strong spirit of the airport’s defenders.
“The defence of Luhansk Airport is one of the hardest and, at the same time, least covered episodes of early Russian aggression of 2014. Making this documentary was an important step towards documenting first-hand eyewitness accounts, showing the courage of our defenders, and giving listeners an objective picture of how the Russians destroyed infrastructure and occupied the region,” said IMI’s regional representative.
A recording of the radio documentary 146 Days at the East Gate: The Defence of Luhansk Airport is available on Ukrainian Radio’s official website.