The Village That Outlasted Carthage: 1,500 Days of Defense in Mala Tokmachka

Russian Propaganda Has Been “Successfully Capturing” a Tiny Village in Zaporizhzhia for the Fifth Straight Year

When the so-called “special military operation” is proceeding so flawlessly “according to plan” that the battle for a single small village lasts longer than the siege of Carthage, a perfectly reasonable question arises: what kind of place is this? After more than 1,500 days of continuous assaults, the occupaying forces have achieved roughly one result — advancing a few scorched bushes somewhere beyond the village outskirts.

Mala Tokmachka, a tiny dot on the map of the Polohy district in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, has long since ceased to be merely a frontline position. It has become a place where three different wars unfold simultaneously: a tactical war — for heights and streets; an information war — between propaganda and reality; and a symbolic war — between what the Russian army imagines itself to be and what it actually is.

WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS?

Before the full-scale invasion, Mala Tokmachka was a relatively large and prosperous southern Ukrainian village with a population of around three thousand people. It had processing enterprises, basic social infrastructure, and one of the largest penitentiary institutions in the region.

Today, fewer than one hundred civilians remain in the village — mostly elderly residents who either could not or chose not to evacuate. Most of the infrastructure has been destroyed: on June 11, 2022, shelling burned down the village council building, and on July 18 of the same year the penal colony suffered extensive damage. Every surviving basement has become a shelter.

One additional detail is worth noting: the name “Mala Tokmachka” derives directly from the hydronym of the Mala Tokmachka River, which flows nearby and empties into the Kinska River east of the settlement. The river itself takes its name from the larger Tokmak region. Linguists and historians offer several theories regarding the origin of the toponym. According to one version, the name has deep Turkic roots: the Crimean Tatar word “toqmaq” translates as “hammer” or “club” — a tool used for pounding grain. In Karion Istomin’s 1691 primer, the word appears with the meaning “pestle.” In Ukrainian, “tokmachyty” means “to pound” or “to beat relentlessly.”

The symbolism is difficult to ignore. But let us leave it without further commentary.

The tradition of resistance here is not new either. During the Ukrainian War of Independence, the village hosted a rebel detachment of around 400 fighters under the command of Otaman Yakiv Ishchenko, operating as part of the 4th Insurgent Regiment named after Nestor Makhno.

WHY HAS MALA TOKMACHKA BECOME SUCH A HARD TARGET?

To understand why an occupying army with a numerical advantage has spent years unable to capture eight square kilometers, it is enough to look at the map. From Mala Tokmachka to Orikhiv is less than two kilometers. From Orikhiv to Zaporizhzhia is roughly 37 kilometers. A breakthrough here would open a direct route for increasing pressure on the provincial capital, beyond that, create broader operational opportunities.

But geography alone is only part of the explanation. Terrain plays the decisive role: the village is surrounded by commanding heights, and whoever controls them controls the battlefield. The former penal colony, with its concrete buildings, thick walls, and underground communications, has effectively become a natural fortress within the settlement itself.

In early March 2022, Mala Tokmachka briefly fell under occupation. By May of the same year, it had been liberated. Since then, the front line has stabilized roughly 1.5–2 kilometers from the village.

Today, the area is defended by the 118th Separate Mechanized Brigade as part of the 10th Army Corps under the command of Colonel Oleh Dmytryshyn. The Brigade’s press officer, known by the callsign “Fake,” refers to his troops as the “cyborgs of Mala Tokmachka,” drawing a parallel with the defenders of the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport.

According to a drone operator with the callsign “Mars,” even when poor flying conditions occasionally allow Russian troops to enter the eastern outskirts of the village, they are destroyed by drones and cleared out by assault units the very next day. He says operations in this sector have been refined almost to the point of automation. Apparently, the enemy has achieved a kind of automation there as well — only with the opposite outcome.

The largest assault took place on October 20, 2025, when enemy units from the 71st Motor Rifle Regiment attacked from the direction of Verbove and Novoprokopivka. The attack involved up to two motorized rifle companies supported by around 26 armored vehicles, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and Tigr armored vehicles. The result: 21 vehicles destroyed and more than 30 troops killed. Overall Russian losses in repeated attempts to capture Mala Tokmachka have long since exceeded two thousand personnel.

HOW MALA TOKMACHKA EXPOSED THE ABSURDITY OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

In the public discourse, this section of the front has acquired an almost comical significance of its own.

For nearly a year, so-called Russian war correspondents and official resources of the Russian Ministry of Defense regularly reported “successes” on the Orikhiv axis. The blogger “Deceived Russian” compiled these reports and identified a simple pattern: the same “captures” — first the eastern part of the village, then the southern sector, then the southeastern outskirts — were repeated with absurd regularity, almost every week.

The climax of this cycle came in November 2025, when Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov triumphantly announced the “complete liberation” of Mala Tokmachka, describing it as “a significant step toward achieving the goals of the special military operation.” The spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Defense Forces, Vladyslav Voloshyn, responded laconically: neither during the previous day nor the day before had any enemy assault operations been recorded that could indicate the capture of the settlement. A few days later, Russian sources themselves were once again reporting “heavy fighting,” effectively contradicting their own minister.

The internet reacted exactly as one would expect to absurdity. Hundreds of memes spread online: “Whoever controls Mala Tokmachka controls the world.” It even reached the point where students at some Russian universities were reportedly threatened with expulsion for publicly joking about the village. The fact itself is revealing: a tiny settlement in Zaporizhzhia Oblast became such a sensitive issue for the system that it began responding to satire with disciplinary measures. Even some Russian commentators acknowledged the area as “the most famous deadlock on the front” — a rather telling admission for an army that once claimed its “strategic operation” would last only a few weeks.

MALA TOKMACHKA ON THE SCALE OF MILITARY HISTORY

To grasp the scale of what is happening, it is worth comparing the numbers with some of history’s best-known sieges.

As of May 2026, the defense of Mala Tokmachka has lasted more than 1,500 days. The Siege of Carthage — involving a city of roughly 700,000 inhabitants protected by massive walls and a powerful fleet — lasted around 1,100 days. Mala Tokmachka has already surpassed that by roughly 400 days. The Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779–1783), the longest siege in British military history, lasted 1,320 days — also less. The Siege of La Rochelle during the era of Richelieu lasted around 430 days; for the defenders of this sector, that represents only about a quarter of the road already traveled.

Even some of those writing from the enemy’s side have taken notice. Russian propagandist Lev Vershinin wrote: “Mala Tokmachka is something like Troy — or, in more modern terms, Verdun.”

An army that once planned to “take Kyiv in three days” has now spent a fifth year unable to capture an area of just eight square kilometers. Perhaps that is the most concise and accurate description of the real state of affairs.

Mala Tokmachka has become a true graveyard of illusions for those who expected an easy march across the Ukrainian steppes. The small Ukrainian “hammer” continues methodically pounding away at the Russian war machine, proving a simple truth to the world: the size of an empire means nothing when it confronts a nation determined to endure at any cost.

Myroslav Liskovych, Kyiv