[35][36][37] After days of encirclement, Ukrainian forces rejected the DPR's proposal to open a humanitarian corridor on the condition that they abandon their armored vehicles and ammunition, and on the morning of 29 August 2014 began to leave Ilovaisk with their weapons.

[11][39] The Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Viktor Muzhenko, claimed on 26 August 2016 that the cause of the battle's outcome was the involvement of Russian troops, along with Ukrainian commanders' incompetence in the planning of the retreat.

[41] During the attack, the battalion lost 26 soldiers and passed the city from East traveling North conducting a raid towards villages of Petropavlivka and Orlovo-Ivanivka [uk; et].

[41] On 11 August, the Ukrainian mass media portrayed the manoeuvre as a successful raid behind enemy lines; however, the results and purpose of it remain unknown.

[41] It is possible that the activities of Ukrainian airborne troops near the MH-17 crash site triggered the use of the regular armed forces of the Russian Federation.

[41] On 6 August, the National Security and Defence of Ukraine announced that there was a possibility of a Russian military invasion and that Ukrainian army was prepared to stop it.

[34] As Ukrainian forces entered the city, Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko was wounded after being struck by mortar fire[45] and was evacuated for medical treatment.

Following the flag-raising, the Internal Affairs ministry said that Ukrainian military, including the Donbas, Dnipro and Azov brigades, were clearing the city of "terrorists", specifically mentioning that they killed "a great number" of insurgents from the Oplot Battalion of the Donbass People's Militia.

[34] The remaining Ukrainian forces in Ilovaisk became completely encircled by DPR insurgents and Russian reinforcements on 24–26 August, and the fighting continued to take its toll.

[2][51] On 24 August at around 12:15, a column of BMD-2s for the Russian 331st Airborne Regiment was hit by a Ukrainian anti-tank squad of the 51st Mechanized Brigade near Kuteinykove settlement.

[12] In response to commander Semenchenko's pleas, many Euromaidan activists in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv protested what they saw as the government's "abandonment" of the volunteers fighting against the insurgents.

The next morning it was completely defeated by Russian paratroopers, losing most vehicles but with relatively low troop casualties, with eight dead and several missing.

[51] DPR prime minister Alexander Zakharchenko said he had agreed to open a humanitarian corridor on the condition that the Ukrainian forces leave their armoured vehicles and ammunition behind.

[23] The southern column, led by Col. Oleksiy Hrachov [uk], was formed from forces of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade and Donbas Battalion; it had two tanks, including a captured Russian T-72B3, a couple of IFVs, and roughly 600 troops.

[23][63][64] Near the Krasnaya Polyana valley[d] Russian troops opened fire on the northern column with mortars and heavy machine guns, splitting it in two.

[23] During the withdrawal of the southern column, around 300 Ukrainian soldiers and Donbas Battalion fighters were able to take the village of Chervonosilske, losing several IFVs after being fired upon by Russian forces.

They made an agreement according to which Ukrainian forces would surrender their weapons and be evacuated under Red Cross supervision, releasing captured Russian POWs.

14 was used by the Donbas volunteer battalion as a detention facility where each day a number of suspected pro-Russian insurgents varying from 7 to 20 was subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

OHCHR also documented that members of volunteer battalions at the hand of the pro-Russian separatists were subjected to beatings, mock executions and threats of physical violence while in custody in the detention facilities in Snizhne and Donetsk.

[38] OHCHR lamented that four years after the events, limited steps had been taken by the parties to the conflict to investigate the allegations of human rights violations and abuses.

[9] On the same date, a temporary parliamentary commission (TSK) headed by Batkivshchyna politician Andriy Senchenko [uk] was created and approved by 226 (out of 446) members of the Ukrainian parliament.

[9] A BBC article from 2019, interviewing survivor Roman Zinenko, gives the official number of dead in the Ilovaisk battle as 366, possibly a bit over 400 when including missing or unidentified bodies.

[78] Defence Minister Valeriy Heletey was forced to resign on 14 October, in part because of his responsibility for the failure of military coordination during the battle.