Junior Lieutenant Pyotr Nagulin escaped from the Uman cauldron, but his problems only increased. General Muzychenko, whose help he was counting on, is taken by plane to Moscow to investigate the circumstances of the death of two armies, and Peter himself falls into the focus of close attention of the NKVD. Meanwhile, a new catastrophe is brewing at the front, compared to which the defeat at Uman is just a prelude. Tanks Guderian and Kleist seek to close giant ticks around the troops of the South-Western Front, defending the capital of Soviet Ukraine...