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Assault on Hostomel-Antonov Airport. February 24, 2022. Historical Scenario.
A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for EC2003 Battle for the Mediterranean Battleset and the HCDB2-170909 (or later) 1980-2025 era Platform Database. This scenario is designed with Advanced Scenario Editor Build 2017.013 and to be run with HCE 2015.008+ or later.
This scenario is designed to be played from the Blue/Ukrainian side or from the Red/Russian side. You should play a few times first the Blue side to avoid spoilers, and only later play the Red side.
Image: The only one An-225 Mriya (Dream) destroyed in the Hostomel-Antonov airport aside many other destroyed aircrafts, photo took fifty days after the Russian invasion, and released for enhancing the idea of resistance. The largest and most powerful transport aircraft on the planet had set 240 world records, but for the Ukrainians Dream will never die. Photo by KCSA, Oleksii Samsonov, and this file comes from the website of the Kyiv City Council and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. and took from Wikipedia Commons.
From the eventful year of 2014 (Mainly from the Russian invasion of Crimea) the world was beginning clearly the so-called Second Cold War, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin (ex-KGB lieutenant colonel) was showing clearly his plan to recover the Russian Empire including previous Soviet territories for reinstitute the greatness of "his" Russia, and to guarantee his passage on the History as saviour of the Rodina.
After the massive Russian build-up of forces from late 2021 in Russia and Belarus near the Ukrainian border, NATO forces were forced to an increased and constant deployment near Ukraine and the Eastern Mediterranean, to deterrent Putin's ambition.
The probably original plan was to avoid an intervention by NATO ground forces but preventing the Russian main forces to enter Ukrainian territory, and to get this target to establish an air and sea exclusion zone around and over Ukraine.
But at last, on February 24, 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine against most forecast, sinking the world in a new state of international relations, as consequence of a long and failed campaign of unexpected outcomes.
One of the first military actions was a Russian heliborne assault (From the theoretically “neutral” Belarus! Also Russian armoured columns came from Belarus) on the Hostomel-Antonov international cargo airport and testing facility, some 20 nautical miles from the Ukrainian capital city, Kyiv. The original Russian idea was the late arrival of airborne troops on Hostomel-Antonov via Il-76 Candid, but the runway was very damaged after the initial battle.
The surprise of improvised defence by very small Ukrainian forces turn the Russians away from the airport grounds in the evening of the same February 24 and very possibly preventing the occupation of Kyiv by Russia. But the next day a second wave heliborne and armoured force took the airport for the invader Russians. But the airport was abandoned on April 2 by the Russian forces when them “strategically” retired from the Kyiv Oblast.
The forces available to both sides are very small in this scenario, to reflect the chaos and surprise of the Russian invaders in face of the opposition of the Ukranian forces, and the improvised defence by the Ukranian side.
Another legend born those days was the MIG-29 “Ghost of Kyiv”, some of it is also reflected in the scenario.
A very simple and easy scenario, at least apparently, and perhaps surprisingly balanced.
Could you do better than Russian or Ukrainian historical forces on this scenario?
Enrique Mas, July 26, 2026.