Battle of Sokolovo
The Battle of Sokolovo took place on 8 and 9 March 1943, near the town of Sokolovo (, "Sokolove") near Kharkiv in Ukraine when the ongoing attack of the Wehrmacht was delayed by joint Soviet and Czechoslovak forces. It was the first time that a foreign military unit, the First Czechoslovak Independent Field Battalion, fought together with the Red Army. Under the command of Ludvík Svoboda, later President of Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak soldiers delayed the advance of Germans to the Mzha river. On 13 March the position was abandoned as untenable due to the complete German encirclement of Kharkov.