Commander of the 1st Antitank Brigade, Major General Moskalenko, described these events in his memoirs:
Halfway between Lutsk and Vladimir-Volynskiy our advance element caught up to a small convoy of several armored cars and two tanks. It turned out that we met up with commander of the 22nd Mechanized Corps and command group of his headquarters. Introductions were quick. I informed Major-General S. M. Kondrusev and his corps Chief of Staff Major General V. S. Tamruchi about my assigned mission.
In his turn, Kondrusev confirmed that he received orders to attack the enemy in the area of Vladimir-Volynskiy…. We continued forward together, and I climbed into his tank.
We were close to Vladimir-Volynskiy when we heard rapid artillery fire. They were coming from somewhere up ahead of us. We left the tank and climbed to the top of a small hill near the highway, from where we saw that coming towards us, to the left and right of the highway, large number of tanks and motorized infantry were advancing in combat formation. The brigade’s advance guard, located a little ahead of us, was firing upon them.
“Please cease fire immediately,” Major General Kondrusev asked me worriedly. “It is possible they are from our 41st Tank [Division], retreating under enemy pressure.”
The distance between us and approaching tanks was approximately [one mile], and I could clearly see through my binoculars the crosses on their sides….
Conditions of our entry into the fight were extremely unfavorable. First of all, this was a meeting engagement of artillery units on the march against enemy’s superior combined arms forces.
In this first battle, the brigade’s gunners knocked out and burned almost seventy tanks and armored cars, many motorcycles, and other materiel of the 14th Panzer Division. Significant casualties were also inflicted upon the 298th Infantry Division. Our losses were heavy as well. The brigade lost four artillery batteries with all personnel and equipment. Major-General S. M. Kondrusev was mortally wounded by a shell fragment.”[24]
At the time of Kondrusev’s death, he was completely out of touch with his mechanized corps and did not realize that it was his 19th Tank Division, and not the 41st, that was being decimated.
The Soviet losses were not in vain. German units could not advance into the face of heavy fire from entrenched Soviet artillery. While it is highly unlikely that Germans lost seventy combat vehicles, as claimed by Moskalenko, their casualties were serious nonetheless. More significantly, they were unable to quickly break through to Lutsk along the highway and were forced to probe east along less-desirable roads.
Still, the ever-present German reconnaissance elements found suitable roads, and strong elements of the 13th and 14th Panzer Divisions began flanking Moskalenko’s positions. By nightfall, the Germans reached so far around Moskalenko’s southern flank that he had to abandon his positions, heavily paid for in blood, and pull back to the western outskirts of Zaturtsi. His men spent the night busily preparing new positions.
During the night, Moskalenko deployed his brigade in three lines astride the highway to Lutsk. His last defensive positions were in the immediate vicinity of Lutsk itself. He left his reserves in the city: two of the brigade’s own battalions plus several artillery batteries and battalions that became separated from their units.[25]
At the same time, a new threat developed north of Lutsk, in the vicinity of a small town of Rozhysche. At this location, German reconnaissance elements were spotted probing for fords across the Styr River. Fifth Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Potapov, ordered Moskalenko to shift part of his force there to prevent Germans from establishing a beachhead. Several other Soviet units from XXII Mechanized Corps and the 135th Rifle Division began pulling back there as well.
Throughout June 24, the 215th Motorized Rifle Division, completely out of contact with the higher echelons or engaging the enemy, slugged on foot through the poor terrain in the triangle between Kovel-Lutsk and Vladimir-Volynskiy–Lutsk highways.
Kovel Direction
While furious battle raged along the Vladimir-Volynskiy–Lutsk highway, the situation north of it was more stable. In morning of June 24, the XV Rifle Corps under Colonel I. I. Fedyuninskiy, after suffering heavy casualties the previous day, was maintaining its positions. By midafternoon, after German advance along the Lutsk highway exposed Fedyuninskiy’s left flank, commander of the Fifth Army, Major General Potapov, ordered Fedyuninskiy to pull his corps back to place it on line with Kovel. The Soviet troops began steadily giving ground, not allowing the Germans to achieve a breakthrough of these positions.
The 41st Tank Division from the XXII Mechanized Corps sat largely idle immediately north of Kovel, still protecting it from a rumored attack from northwest. In his memoirs, Fedyuninskiy bitterly claimed that the commander of the 41st Tank Division, Colonel Pavlov, was more concerned with preserving his combat vehicles than actively supporting actions of the XV Rifle Corps.[26]
Small reconnaissance elements of the 41st Tank Division probed almost thirty miles northwest to a town of Ratno, located along the Brest-Kovel highway. Not finding any German tanks advancing on Kovel, the Soviet patrol was fired upon by their German counterparts. Without engaging in a fight, this patrol blew up the only bridge across the Pripyat River north of Ratno capable of supporting tanks.[27]
While the command of the XV Rifle Corps was aware of lack of German armor presence north of Kovel, this information was not passed to headquarters of South-Western Front. Thus, even as late as 2000 hours on June 24, the South-Western Front was still reporting to Moscow the presence of large mechanized enemy formations in that area.[28]
Fedyuninskiy remembered that it cost his corps dearly to maintain their positions. At the end of June 24, one of his regiments from the 45th Rifle Division mustered less than one third of its men from just three days previous. Colonel Fedyuninskiy ordered that stragglers from other units be rounded up and absorbed into his corps. One such unit was the shuttered remains of the 75th Rifle Division, which retreated into Fedyuninskiy’s area of operations from the northwest. This particular division ended up far from home, belonging to a completely different group of forces, the Fourth Army of the Western Front located north of the Pripyat Marshes.[29] As the XV Rifle Corps began pulling back closer to Kovel, its rear echelon units began evacuating materiel and servicemen’s families.