Upon arriving at his headquarters, Fedyuninskiy found the dedicated military telephone line not functioning. He managed to reach Potapov by a civilian telephone line. Potapov ordered him to sound an alert, keep ammunition at hand, but not to issue it to the men yet, and not to fall for any provocations. Soon communications with Potapov were completely lost.
Sounds of explosions from the border grew into a constant roar. A flight of aircraft with black crosses appeared over Kovel and dropped bombs. Half-dressed, panicked people were running aimlessly through the streets. Needing no more convincing that the real shooting war was upon them, Colonel Fedyuninskiy ordered his divisions to the border. In some places, units from the 45th and 62nd Rifle Divisions were located within seven miles of the border, and by 0500 hours Fedyuninskiy’s men were able to reinforce the hard-pressed border guards. (Note: There were both Soviet and German divisions numbered “62nd” operating in the same sector.)
As everywhere else, the Soviet airfields around Kovel were being hammered by German aviation. When the bombs began to fall, the airfields were still on a peace footing, with only one or two aircraft per unit on standby. Dodging explosions and bomb craters, some of Soviet pilots managed to get into the air. In the few first minutes of the war, one of these duty pilots from the 17th Fighter Regiment, a senior lieutenant with the quintessential Russian name Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, rammed his I-153 fighter into a German bomber, plunging both of them to their deaths.
On the ground, resistance was stubborn, if disorganized at first. Soviet border guards in their bunkers along the Bug River near Volchiy-Perevoz, south of Vlodava, fought to the last man.[11] Advancing German units became intermixed with the Soviet ones. Two battalions of the German 192nd Infantry Regiment from the 56th Infantry Division became cut off and were able to reestablish contact only during the night.[12]
Commanding the Soviet 45th Rifle Division deployed north of the Chelm-Lutsk railroad was Maj. Gen. G. I. Sherstyuk. Already in his fifties, able and reliable, Sherstyuk still maintained the stiff-backed bearing of the former Russian Imperial Army officer that he was. Disputing every meter of swampy ground, the right flank of Sherstyuk’s division tenaciously defended defiles among the lakes around Shatsk.
During the late morning, Sherstyuk’s headquarters received unconfirmed rumors of a German mechanized attack in the area southwest of Shatsk. Sherstyuk immediately cobbled together a makeshift task force and rushed it to block the perceived threat. Comprised of an armored car company from the 45th Rifle Division’s reconnaissance battalion, one artillery battery, one mortar battery, and one infantry company mounted on trucks, this task force easily blocked the German scout detachments from probing closer to Kovel.
While insignificant tactically, this minor German probe proved very important in other ways. Soviet command could not ignore possibility of German outflanking thrust to Lutsk via Kovel, and for the following several days, strong elements from the Soviet XV Rifle Corps remained in static defense guarding against such eventuality.
A more intense battle was developing to the south, along the road from Chelm to Kovel, near the town of Lyuboml. Around 0800 hours, a regiment from the Soviet 45th Rifle Division under Col. G. S. Antonov ran head-on into the advance elements of the German 56th Infantry Division. A stubborn fight ensued, with the Red Army regiment tenaciously holding its own against stronger enemy forces. Additional help came from the already mentioned 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment belonging to the XXII Mechanized Corps.
The second division from Fedyuninskiy’s corps, the 62nd Rifle commanded by Col. M. P. Timoshenko and deployed south of the Chelm-Lutsk railroad, found itself in an extremely difficult situation.[13] One of its regiments, the 104th, was detached as the corps’ reserves. Another, the 306th Rifle Regiment, had only its 1st Battalion available for defending the border, with another employed on construction works over ten miles away and the third serving as garrison of Lutsk. The third regiment, the full three-battalion 123rd, reinforced with both divisional artillery regiments, was positioned to guard the approaches to Vladimir-Volynskiy from the northwest, south of Mosyr village.[14] And, naturally, this strong three-regiment group sat idle as fierce fighting raged to its north and south, practically within rifle shot.
From the opening shots of the invasion, the lone battalion of the 306th Rifle Regiment was fighting for the area immediately south of the railroad. Outnumbered and outgunned, it was being cut to shreds and pushed southeast from the road. Only the timely arrival of the 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment temporarily shored up the situation along the railroad and reestablished contact with Colonel Sherstyuk’s division.
As the day wore on, the 62nd Rifle Division became completely fractured. The survivors of the 1st Battalion/306th Rifle Regiment, along with the left flank of the 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment, were pushed east. This created a twelve-mile gap between it and the group south of Mosyr, the 123rd Rifle and two artillery regiments. Furthermore, as Vladimir-Volynskiy was lost in the evening of June 22, the Mosyr group became surrounded on three sides. Being out of communications and instructions from the 62nd Rifle Division, the two artillery regiments of the Mosyr group sat silent throughout the day, without providing desperately needed fire support, neither north nor south of them.
While XV and XXVII Rifle corps were fighting for their lives, command staffs of their parent Fifth Army and the Kiev Special Military District were scrambling for information about events at the border. From the very start, these senior command echelons operated in a virtual information vacuum.
In the last hour of the last day of peace, June 21, Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, the People’s Commissar for Defense (Defense Minister), and Gen. Georgiy K. Zhukov, Chief of General Staff, finally managed to convince Josef Stalin of the necessity of immediate actions. This was a difficult task, relentlessly carried out in low key by the two most senior Soviet commanders over a period of two weeks. It was not that Stalin was blind to the looming German danger. Desperately realizing his military’s unpreparedness for a difficult and protracted campaign with such dangerous foe as Germany, Stalin was playing for time.
Despite numerous indications otherwise, Stalin believed that there still was a cushion of time remaining before full mobilization would be needed. During previous instigated conflicts, Adolf Hitler demonstrated his modus operandi of getting his way by following a process over time of applying political pressures and demands, backed up by show of force. Stalin was quite possibly interpreting the massing of German troops as just such saber-rattling. In keeping with Hitler’s past pattern of behavior, it appeared that the Soviet Union still should have had several weeks before the guns would sound. Therefore, Stalin was pursuing a policy of appeasing Hitler for as long as possible.
In line with the above thinking, the Soviet military leadership developed series of plans based on assumption that there would be approximately four weeks of increased political tension, eventually leading to full mobilization. Each military border district, army, corps, and division had their own prepared plans, tailored to their particular theater of operations, outlining specific steps that would be taken once mobilization was announced.
Kiev Special Military District had its own version of such plan, code-named KOVO-41 (KOVO is the Russian acronym for Kievskiy Osobiy Voyenniy Okrug, meaning Kiev Special Military District). Under this mobilization plan, the forward Soviet units would be brought up to full alert and deployed in a prepared, or, in most cases, partially prepared network of fortified regions. Forces of the second echelon would be positioned to contain possible enemy breakthroughs and to take the fight into enemy territory. Reservists would be called up and units brought up to full strength. Vital equipment, especially tractors and prime movers for artillery units and communication equipment, would be received from civilian economy, and number of specialist support and service units would be unfolded.