Have a little hair, and they would have escaped! Fortunately, others are more determined than you are ...

Guderian, travelling with 3rd Panzer Division at the head of II Panzergruppe, met Kleist's tanks near the school at Lokhvitsa on September 15. Four Soviet Armies (5th, 21st, 26th and 37th) were trapped. South-west front was falling apart and communications in such a state of chaos that Timoshenko the next day ordered his forces east of the German cordon to hold open the corridor unaware that there was no corridor left. On the night of the 17th Kirponos ordered all his Armies to fight their way out of the cauldron while the 2nd Cavalry Corps forced an opening at Romny. But the breakout was doomed from the start, 37th Army defending Kiev didn't receive the order and fought for 2 more days before surrendering. Scattered groups of 50 here and 100 there made their way to the east but the Russians had lost 665,000 men, 3718 guns and 884 tanks captured. It was the biggest catastrophe in Russian history, maybe in all history though it's strategic consequences were not to prove as fatal as those of many a smaller battle. 
