The mission of the helicopters was to attack the airfield and transport a hundred paratroopers there. This was part of the Russian capture of Kiev, the capital, at the start of the war and the breaching of Ukrainian defenses before they could organize them.
The paratroopers quickly gained a foothold at the airport, which is on the western bank of the Dnipro, about 10 km from the Kiev city limits and about 30 km from the city center. For the defense of the airport, there were only a few hundred lightly armed soldiers of the National Guard.
Later in the day, CNN showed footage of the paratroopers landing in and around the airport while exchanging fire with the Ukrainians.
The invasion had not long begun and now it was seen that with a bold and large-scale operation the Russians had succeeded in seizing the initiative and establishing themselves on the threshold of Kiev.
Russia’s next step was no secret as Western intelligence agencies had discovered the plan before the invasion and passed it on to the Ukrainians. The airport was supposed to become a fortress for the Russians, and they planned to transfer a large amount of military equipment and a large number of soldiers there. The soldiers were then to enter Kiev and reach as far as the city center.
“They were supposed to enter the center of Kiev as fast as they could and raise the Russian flag on a government building,” John Spencer, an American analyst, told the Los Angeles Times.
Members of the army’s elite forces were to find and capture or execute democratically elected Ukrainian leaders. At the same time, reinforcements, including military police, were to suppress opposition to the occupation. Military police were then en route to Kiev from the Ukraine-Belarus border and were expected to arrive in Kiev within the first 24 hours of the invasion.
Once there, the way would have been cleared to install a Russian puppet government and begin to suppress any opposition throughout the country.
The goal was to advance quickly and take control of the capital in a short time, essentially a localized version of what the Russians did in Crimea in 2014.
But soon after the Russians took over Antonov Airfield, it became clear that they had miscalculated. They somehow managed to take control of the airport, but the Ukrainians maintained constant attacks on the airport and this made it impossible to use it to receive reinforcements. The Russians held the airport for several weeks, but it was of no use as the Ukrainians had managed to cause so much damage to it that it was effectively useless.
But the Russians did not only target the airport, as they simultaneously attacked Kharkiv, Donbass and southern regions of the country. According to experts, this was a growing operation that the Russian military could not handle. They have stretched their supply lines and military support systems so much that they have reached their limits, Dara Massicot, of the Washington-based defense think tank Rand, told Foreign Affairs magazine.
Russia’s ambitious but poorly executed plan exposed the weakness of the Russian military and gave the Ukrainians an opportunity early in the war to disable many of Russia’s best troops as well as much of their military equipment .
