in the campaign “The Battle of Kruty and the Killing of Prisoners (January 1918)”
In January 1918 the troops of Bolshevik Russia were advancing on Kyiv. At Kruty station the Ukrainian defense barred their way. From late December 1917 the yunkers - cadets of the 1st Kyiv Youth Military School named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky, four companies of 150 cadets each with 20 officers and 18 machine guns - under the command of Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko held Bakhmach, a railway junction on the border of the UNR and the RSFSR[1]. On January 27 the first company of the student volunteer battalion under Sotnyk Omelchenko arrived from Kyiv to join them - 115-130 volunteers: students and senior-grade gymnasium pupils, teenagers, many of them 17 years old[1][2]. Together with the company the Ukrainian command also sent out a demolition team; the volunteers dug in on both sides of the railway line between the stations of Kruty and Plisky[3]. The battle began on the morning of January 29, 1918. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences write: it took place "during the offensive on the city of Kyiv by the troops of Bolshevik Russia", with the positions attacked by the forces of "a 6-thousand-strong Bolshevik detachment of Petrograd and Moscow Red Guards" led by Yegorov[1]. The fighting lasted until evening, the defenders repelled several attacks; historians put the defenders' losses at "up to 300 killed, wounded, captured"[1]. Toward evening Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko ordered a withdrawal to their echelon - the detachment's train waiting two kilometers away; during the retreat part of the student company was encircled, and one platoon lost its bearings at dusk and came out at the station already held by the Red Guards - 27 captured teenagers and students were shot[1]. The defenders delayed the Red Guards' advance on Kyiv: explaining the heavy losses and the delay, Muravyov claimed in his report that the Ukrainian forces had been commanded by "S. Petliura himself" - as the compilers of the collection of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory note[3].