Junior Lieutenant Pyotr Nagulin escaped from the Umansk pocket, but his problems only multiplied. General Muzichenko—whose help he had been counting on—is taken to Moscow by plane to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of two armies, and Pyotr himself becomes the focus of close attention from the NKVD.
Meanwhile, a new catastrophe is looming on the front—one compared to which the defeat near Uman is only a prelude. Guderian’s and Kleist’s tanks are trying to close the gigantic pincers around the troops of the Southwestern Front, defending the capital of Soviet Ukraine…