A movement is taking shape across some Ukraine-aligned social media channels to get an upcoming game de-listed from major game license vendor Steam under a surprising claim: It’s Russian propaganda about an ongoing war.
And looking at the description, screenshots, and the history of the game developer, that’s an understandable position. But the game makers say they’re just a game studio interested in modern military tactical games and that they’re putting forth their own understanding of the battle, drawn from interviews with participants on both sides.
Also Read: The 5 biggest blunders in Russian military history
What’s really surprising is that the game focuses on a battle where an elite Russian unit overextended itself, multiple attempts to reinforce them got bogged down in street fighting, and the entire invasion force in the region had to pull back to Belarus. And then Ukraine took the objectives back anyway. It’s not an obvious choice of battle for a propaganda piece. But it’s also clear why Ukrainians protest the battle being turned into a game:
The game, “Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes,” is due to hit the Steam platform on March 24 and comes from the game developer Cats Who Play, based in Russia. And flak is coming from official Ukrainian media as well as other sites and social media users on Reddit and other platforms.
Vitaly Shutov, the creative director of Cats Who Play, says that the team was drawn to the battle for a few reasons.
“First, the operation itself perfectly aligned with our game mechanics — the actions of small units, including in dense urban environments,” he wrote in an email responding to questions. “Second, of course, was the desire to show historical truth as we see it. Surprisingly, we encountered resistance not only from the Ukrainian side but also from official Russian propaganda. Because the Ukrainian side officially claims that everyone was destroyed and they achieved total victory, while official Russian propaganda maintains that there were no significant battles at all — that everything went smoothly and without issue. We take a position somewhere in the middle — we show the battles as they were: uncompromising, brutal, with determination on both sides, often leaving local residents caught between a rock and a hard place. We have gathered a vast amount of information and facts. We spoke to participants on both sides. The game is the result of our study of the material.”
Author’s note: I don’t know of an official Ukrainian account claiming total victory at Hostomel. Even the 2025 retrospective by United 24, an official Ukrainian government outlet tied to the office of the president, acknowledges that Russia controlled the airfield for over a month, from February 25 to March 30. But the two sides do have very divergent accounts of casualties and other specifics, with Ukraine claiming it killed over 300 Russians and suffered mostly a few troops captured, while Russia claims it killed 200 Ukrainians and lost no troops after the initial wave.
Shutov says the team spoke with soldiers from the 45th Special Forces Brigade of the Airborne Forces as well as members of the Russian national guard, including unit commanders. From the Ukrainian side, they spoke to civilians in Hostomel and nearby Irpin, as well as an internet contact that they assessed as likely having fought at Hostomel and a confirmed Ukrainian soldier who was not present but knew people who were.
Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes
“Ukrainian Warfare’s” description page does editorialize the battle.
“We want to use this medium to show what happened in Ukraine at the beginning of this war, when it was supposed to end in a matter of days, but instead turned into a years-long slaughter,” the description reads.
“Ukraine has been covered in reports and documentary films,” it continues. “But we want to tell this story through the lens of a game. And don’t let the word ‘game’ mislead you. This is not a documentary, but it portrays the events of the first days of this war with full seriousness—from the moment of the brilliant Russian airborne assault on the outskirts of Kiev, to the time when the war seemed poised to end with the signing of a draft peace agreement in Istanbul in March 2022.”
Kiev is a common Russian spelling for the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
That spelling is actually one of the items that bothered some Ukrainian and Ukrainian-aligned social media users. Reddit user Particular-Award5225 was one of the people who learned about the protest and seeded posts about the Steam protest into a number of subreddits. They asked to be identified by just their Reddit user name after backlash from Russian users and supporters.
“I found it through the Telegram channel «Лачен пише»,” They wrote. “I have never done protests before, that’s why I may have made some mistakes. After deep research, that game made me feel very sick. There are a lot of red flags, including the wrong spelling of our capital (Kyiv is the correct one) to the fact that the only languages being supported are ruzzian, English, and Chinese (simplified).”
“ruzzian” is a common way for detractors of the Russian military to spell the word, an allusion to the Z graphics that military has used since the Ukrainian invasion.
“There’s nothing I can really do besides protesting here,” they continued. “Most likely this game will be unavailable in Ukraine. I’m not sure about other countries. In European subreddits, most people supported this decision. While in r/Steam I got the most negative responses. Like there are other games that have similar propaganda. I can partially agree on that one. The main difference is that this game is about an ONGOING conflict. And the fact that distorted facts make me angry.”
He says he received a better reception in subreddits like r/BuyFromEU, r/NAFO, and r/UkrainianConflict.
The real history of the Battle of Hostomel Airport
Since it’s now been four years, let’s do a quick refresher on the battle and that period of the war. You can skip to the next section if you remember Hostomel. But most observers outside of Russia do not consider the assault to be “brilliant.” As a former paratrooper, the author can promise you that this is not how forced entry is supposed to work. The failure to quickly reinforce and resupply the initial assault put the VDV soldiers in a terrible position.
First, Russian troops launched an overwhelming invasion into Ukraine across way too many axes of advance. The exact number depends on how you count them, but Russia tried to advance across about 30% of Ukraine’s borders at once on something like six axes. From February 22 and going into March, the 200,000 Russian forces previously staged on Ukraine’s borders rushed toward Kyiv. More units flowed from within Russia over the following days and weeks.
A force of Russian airborne, the Vozdushno-desantnye voyska Rossii, attacked Hostomel Airport in a large helicopter assault. Weirdly, since this was clearly Russia’s best chance to take a logistics hub right outside of Kyiv, the air assault started about 1:20, eight hours after the nighttime invasion started at about 5 in the morning. Putin announced the invasion an hour later, at 6.
That delay gave the Ukrainian defenders time to better occupy defensive positions and ready shoulder-fired missiles.
Those hours proved costly for the VDV, which brought between 30 and 40 helicopters and lost six in the air while another two were forced down by damage. The Ukrainian national guardsmen fought bitterly and delayed the VDV, but eventually ran low on ammo and retreated.
But they had bought enough time for Ukrainian artillery to move up and shell the airstrip into uselessness. Russia had to turn around planes loaded with reinforcements. The Russian paratroopers on the ground had to struggle against eventual counterattacks while under artillery bombardment. Ukrainian spotters infiltrated the airfield itself and nearby buildings to make the artillery fire more accurate.
An attempt to reinforce the VDV with ground forces from the east and south was bogged down by Ukrainian forces blowing bridges and flooding fields, channeling Russian attackers into kill zones and leaving the VDV cut off.
A large column of Russian vehicles crept close to Hostomel from the North before being stopped by its own logistics failures, broken equipment, and fuel shortages. The column famously became an almost 40-mile-long target for more than a week.
The VDV took heavy losses to hold a, by then, useless airfield for over a month before being forced to withdraw when Russia finally got the column moving again. Analysis by Western military observers at the time and since have pointed to it as one of Russia’s most devastating missteps in the invasion, though most point to a failure of military analysts and planners, not of the VDV.
“Propaganda” for a Historical Failure
Cats Who Play is right that the Battle of Hostomel Airport and the repeated Russian failures in the nearby areas were when the war “was supposed to end in a matter of days but instead turned into a years-long slaughter.” Even the official United24 retrospective agrees. But Russia was already slaughtering Ukrainians during the battle, including in the nearby Bucha Massacre.
The whole endeavor was so costly to Russia and so clearly a part of why the invasion failed that it is now discussed by the airborne community alongside Operation Market Garden as an example of how not to do vertical envelopment.
So it seemed odd that a game based on the Russian failure would be flagged as Russian propaganda. Shutov, again, says that the studio is experiencing the opposite push back from within Russia for challenging official accounts there.
“We have already received complaints several times from official figures stating that we are incorrectly depicting the actions of the army,” Shutov wrote. “As I wrote earlier, official Russian propaganda claims that there was no resistance in the Kyiv region, that the battles were local in nature, and so on. We show a different picture. Because of this, none of the official media have written anything about us, and we even know that one segment about the game that was planned for a news channel was pulled from the broadcast.”
While Russian channels may not like to admit it, outside military observers at the time quickly assessed that Hostomel Airport was a crucial target for the invasion and that the successful interruption of the initial air assault hurt the Russian attackers on the ground. Cats Who Play acknowledge that Russian forces flew into prepared enemy defenses, and that it’s part of why the battle was interesting from a gameplay perspective.
“The entire operation is unique from start to finish,” Shutov said. “From the moment of landing in a field that had already been prepared by the enemy for defense, fighting for several days in complete encirclement, to the subsequent active operations where a numerically smaller force, armed with inferior weapons, continuously advanced. It is precisely playing as the airborne troops that allows for a unique gameplay experience.”
And this isn’t Cats Who Play’s first game. They have previously released six games and expansions on the Steam store, and the four top-selling items are Syrian Warfare and its expansions. And the game is noted in reviews and discussion forums for its perceived Russian bias and its treatment of Syrians as either victims or terrorists. Shutov says that “Syrian Warfare” experienced similar pushback as “Ukrainian Warfare” now is.
“The thing is, using ‘Syrian Warfare’ as an example, if you merely question any version of events promoted by Western mass media, you immediately become a ‘Russian propagandist.’ In ‘Syrian Warfare,’ the story revolved around an ordinary Syrian — a policeman — who was drawn into the whirlwind of a civil war. The Russians appeared in the game later, just as they did in real life. We showed what happened in Hama, we showed what happened in Palmyra — and we were immediately labeled ‘propagandists’ simply because we presented events from a perspective different from the official Western media narrative. But if you look back now, and read, for example, the OPCW investigation into the events in Hama, you will find that what we showed in the game turned out to be the truth. So we believe the same will happen with Hostomel.”
A 2026 OPCW report says that the Syrian Arab Air Force, allied with Russia at the time, used chemical weapons against a cave system near the al-Maghara cave hospital in Hama province. The hospital was later destroyed by sophisticated bunker buster bombs in 2018.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian Warfare
While some screenshots, like the one below, seem to show players acting as Ukrainian forces, Steam discussions of the game said that players can only be the Russian force, and Shutov confirmed it.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media channels are all over the upcoming title. They are taking umbrage at the game with public broadcaster Suspilne (Ukrainian-language article) and United24 publishing stories on March 12 condemning the game for “glorifying 2022 Hostomel Assault.” Since most gamers identify with the characters they play as, and since the game only allows players to be Russian forces, it makes since for Ukrainians to cry foul here.
The earliest call for the game to be de-listed we can find is from players.com.ua, an English and Ukrainian-language gaming site that flagged the game on March 11.
Ironically, the one country where the game is currently not slated for release is… Russia. According to the United24 article, the game was banned on Steam there for “unclear” reasons.
Shutov says that Cats Who Play plans on releasing the game wherever they find players, even if the game is de-listed from Steam.
“We have no restrictions on selling the game in any territory. Roughly speaking, others may try to restrict us from the outside, but we ourselves are ready to distribute the game to anyone who wants it. For example, right now, despite such a wave of hate from official Ukrainian media, Ukraine ranks first in the number of wishlist additions.”
If you want to try the game, or want to report it, it’s still slated for a March 24 release on Steam as of March 14. In the meantime, here are some of the most pointed suggested achievements from Reddit users supporting the push to de-list the game.
u/AdiWrites: “Looted five toilets, Stole a dishwasher, Upgraded attack horse”
u/WeAmGroot: “ride donkeys and pigs into battle, get scared by a drone and forfeit, steal the equipment of our fallen comrads [sic]”
u/ice3: “Got an STD”
Other detractors are suggesting new Steam tags to the game, like u/BandBySocMed who suggest “Fascism,” “Genocide,” and “Propaganda.”
Shutov and his peers at Cats Who Play appear unperturbed by the flak they’re receiving and are planning additional games based on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“This is not our first game, and it won’t be our last. We will continue to develop the series — we have a lot to tell. Currently, we are actively working on a game about Mariupol, then there will be one about the events of 2023, and the final one in our plans for now is a game about the liberation of the Kursk region. We will keep developing and adding new mechanics.”
If Cats Who Play does release a game based on Mariupol, expect it to face a debate even stronger than the one over “Gostomel Heroes.” That battle featured the Azov Brigade, a popular target of Russian propaganda, holding out for three months during the 2022 invasion. The “Heroes of Mariupol” were denied U.S. weapons from aid packages for a few years because of reported neo-Nazi links that supporters of the unit, which is now fully incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine, said were either outdated or based in Russian propaganda.
Don’t Miss the Best of We Are The Mighty
• Putin says Russia tested a nuclear-capable ‘Doomsday Machine’
• Ukraine’s new, drone-delivered weapon is basically a phallic claymore
• A Russian fighting for Ukraine conned the Kremlin out of $500,000
