The battle was raging high for many weeks in the half-dead city trapped under heaps of ashy snow.
Radioactive fallout was nesting in frozen ruins on both sides of the front line cutting the city through.
Amid a lull in exhausting house-to-house fighting, Ukrainian surveillance spotted new hostile machine gun foxholes in a 9-story administrative building in Captain Lazarev street. And the enemy also established a new strongpoint at a crossroad just down the street.
The decision has been made.
Cold and tired, Ukrainian National Guard troops backed by KORD special police are to go on the offensive. The mission is to smash the enemy back – and hopefully, regain another several dozen of meters from the enemy.
Fortunately, this doomsday scene was just an exercise script for Ukraine's action drills held last weekend. Amid the escalating Russian war threat, the country is bracing for a potential full-scale invasion aimed at seizing most of the country, including the capital city of Kyiv.
Ukrainian leadership still publicly claims the probability of a Russian attack as low, despite increasingly alarming messages from the West. Nonetheless, the country's National Guard and other power agencies are holding regular training, including in terms of sustaining a brutal war in the Ukrainian streets.
Last weekend, the training scene was exotic and unforgiving: Pripyat, the legendary ghost city of Chernobyl. Once a thriving settlement of 50,000, it was fully abandoned shortly following the ill-fated 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which is located just 3 kilometers to the east.
Ever since then, the city is the heart of the infamous 30-kilometer alienation zone, its empty buildings decaying and getting absorbed by nature. Now decades after the catastrophic event, it is still partly contaminated and not recommended for a long-term stay.
But for the Ukrainian military, those murky dead streets are an ideal ground depicting the grueling urban warfare.
Meanwhile, the simulated battle embraces for yet another offensive in Captain Lazarev Street.
Drones have seen enemy troops (not named directly, but obviously pointed out to as Russian military or Russian-led irregulars) partly isolated in their close quarters, and their supplies and reinforcements are scarce.
So now this might be a good moment to try and step in again.
But first things first: Ukrainian emergency service squads help evacuate the last surviving civilians from recently retaken buildings now behind the line. Hungry and exhausted, they crawl out of their basements they lurked in for days and weeks.
They are not in good hands.
The last breaths of silence suddenly end with sharp whistles rolling in the street: Ukrainian marksmen are taking down the enemy firing points revealed by drones in the building. A salvo of mortar rounds follows, striking the roadside strongpoint.
The Ukrainian onslaught begins.
The first strike is successful, and the enemy retreats from the strong point.
But, according to the exercise script, hostiles are getting back to their fortified positions in a 5-story building down the street.
Ukrainian forces develop the attack: a National Guard armored personnel carrier slowly rolls down the embattled street, spraying fire upon the ruins. An infantry squad follows behind the vehicle.
Slowly and steadily, Ukrainian forces suppress the last few resisting hostiles in nearby buildings to make it to the core entrenchment.
Another fierce, concentrated head-on push supported by armor – and Ukrainian KORD operators battle their way inside the building. Soon, fierce machine gun bursts die down and black smoke absorbs the damaged house.
It's all over for the enemy garrison.
Ukrainian troops regained just another small city block, but the tactical success comes at a price: a soldier is badly injured.
This simulated battle of Pripyat, according to the military, still gives a pretty mild picture of bloodletting urban warfare that is to be happening if Russia decides on a full-fledged military action and the occupation of Ukraine.
However, as Ukraine's defense minister Oleksii Reznikov asserted following the drills, Kyiv does not consider the famous Chernobyl Zone as a potential Russian target.
Against many speculations in media, the area is known for its dense forests and extensive swamps that effectively make a ground-borne armored blitz a very complicated action.
Illia Ponomarenko is a defense and security reporter with The Kyiv Independent in Ukraine.
