Batallions Ask for Fire (Season 1)

Battalions Ask for Fire (1985) is a Soviet war drama you can watch online on iFILM, based on Yuri Bondarev's 1957 novel and set during the Red Army's crossing of the Dnieper River in autumn 1943.

Two battalions are sent onto the German-held bank to pin down enemy forces while the main division prepares its assault. Then command reshuffles the plan — and the promised artillery support never arrives. The men are ordered to hold their position to the last. Aleksandr Zbruev, Oleg Yefremov, Nikolai Karachentsov, and Igor Sklyar play soldiers whom their own chain of command has quietly written off — still fighting, still radioing back the same request the title names.

Bondarev crossed the Dnieper himself at eighteen, and the novel he wrote from that experience pulls no punches about the cost of battlefield decisions made far from the front line. The series adaptation keeps that edge. Stream the full series on iFILM.