It may not seem obvious that the mountain axe makes an excellent thrusting weapon due to the blade profile, the fact remains that anytime you thrust a length of lumber with metal at the end at some one, it is going to do some damage.
Add to this the fact that many of the ciupaga or Rusyn sokyra have a pronounced thrusting tip right behind the eye of the axe on the poll end of the top of the blade such as the one pictured below and it is clear that thusts are not only possible but downright effectve techniques in the arsenal of the mountain axe.
This makes much of the period bayonet material useful when working against thrusts or even performing them with the mountain axe. A rifle equiped with a bayonet was a common weapon that the axe was used against. It only makes sense to look here for ways to deal with such attacks.
Such texts as the 1834 Imperial Russian bayonet manual I ran across on the web have proved invauable in the restoration of period thrusting techniques for the mountain axe.
I made a short video clip demonstrating the singlehanded thrust:
We can see the thrust as being a standard attack with not only the bayonet (obviously) but also the engineers shovel:
