129th motorized rifle regiment. Fights near the Rossiya cinema and withdrawal from the city. Four stages of the Russian "storm"
November 1994
The troops openly express dissatisfaction with the policies of Boris Yeltsin. Uniforms, food, fuel and ammunition are being stolen from army warehouses. Cases of attacks on sentries in order to seize weapons have become more frequent. In many units and formations, officers stopped going out for service, preferring to earn a living from businessmen. The armored vehicles remained motionless, the planes took to the skies only on combat duty.
Under these conditions, in the 45th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, which was located in the village of Kamenka near St. Petersburg, on the basis of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment, the formation of a unit began to be sent to the future war in Chechnya. There are not enough human resources, the platoon-company link is being supplemented from other parts of the Leningrad Military District. With difficulty, only one trained full-time motorized rifle battalion is recruited. We need snipers, machine gunners, grenade launchers, drivers, but they are not there.
Finally, the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment with a separate tank battalion and an artillery battalion attached to it was formed. The drill review of a unit ready to be sent to war is personally conducted by the commander of the Leningrad Military District, Colonel General S.P. Seleznev, an experienced and talented military leader. He knows well what lies ahead for these soldiers and officers, does not utter loud words, only asks if everything was received according to wartime norms. Two days later, the regiment leaves for Chechnya. There is no longer time for combat coordination. They went to Afghanistan after training, and even during the Great Patriotic War, formed units were given a month to prepare for combat before being sent to the front line. And here... yesterday a cook - today a grenade launcher. There is an order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. It's disgusting...
KamAZ of the district song and dance ensemble of the Leningrad Military District by order of the administration educational work travels around small entrepreneurs, collecting donations to collect parcels to the Caucasus.
December 1994
An operational group of the combat control center for Leningrad Military District units located in the combat zone in Chechnya has been created at the headquarters. Composition of the group
12 people, divided into three shifts, daily. The combat control center is located next to the commander's office. Documents (with the exception of the working map of combat operations) are kept one day and are destroyed when handed over from one shift to another immediately after the report to Colonel General S.P. Seleznev.
Dudayev's army, without offering significant resistance, retreats
to Grozny. The set of parts of the Leningrad Military District is approaching New Year's Eve 1995.
Then the few surviving officers of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment will tell you that the regiment quickly entered the Chechen defense line on the outskirts of Grozny. The enemy offered no resistance and retreated to the city. Ours did not have ground spotters to communicate with aviation, and the pilots failed to report that the 129th infantry regiment reached the Chechen line ahead of the established time... As a result, aviation worked out the combat mission partially against its own troops, which, having withstood an air strike, were in armored combat formations entered Grozny. Our armored personnel carriers and tanks instantly burst into flames.
January 1995
All New Year's Eve 129 SMEs spent in street battles. At dawn, the commander (Colonel Borisov) decided to gather the remaining forces into a single fist and stop the offensive. On January 1, the Central Bureau of the Leningrad Military District was feverishly looking for contact with parts of the district in Chechnya. The map showed the situation without changes when the regiment was stationed at the walls of Grozny.
He no longer stood - he crawled through the streets, littering them with the bodies of the dead and wounded. It was possible to contact the regiment only in the middle of the next day. The captain responded in a hoarse voice. I introduced myself and asked to report on the situation. In response, a three-story curse sounded, the captain began shouting that he had never seen anything like this in Afghanistan... I abruptly cut him off, saying that it was not the time to find out who fought and where.
An hour later, the regiment commander got in touch and reported that he had been gathering those who were alive for 24 hours, and the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment was not combat-ready due to the complete absence of command personnel at the platoon-company level and the massive death of soldiers. Losses in killed and wounded amounted to more than 50 percent; those remaining in the ranks took up defensive positions and are fighting in street battles.
After the commander’s report to Moscow about the losses suffered, an order came from there no later than January 7 to supplement the regiment with wartime specialists and bring them into battle. To Colonel General Seleznev’s objections that there were no trained specialists in the district, Moscow replied: find them. And again they started recruiting cooks and plumbers, retraining them to be machine gunners and snipers within a day... They hired everyone...
Episodes
At the end of January 2005, the deputy commander of the Leningrad Military District summoned one of the staff colonels. “I can’t give orders,” the general began, “so I need to go on a business trip to Chechnya as a volunteer... Or find one of my other colleagues...” There were four colleagues, all of the same rank. Everyone, like the colonel himself, had either war experience behind them or liquidated the Chernobyl accident. Except for one officer who never traveled further than the outskirts of St. Petersburg and shone only on the headquarters floor.
It looked like he was going to Chechnya. But the “parquet” colonel balked, demanding that everyone draw lots. The one who was talking with the general took five pieces of paper, drew a cross on one and put it in his earflaps (hats were abolished at that time). Each of his colleagues drew his own fate. The cross went to the “parquet” guy, who changed his face and forced everyone to show their piece of paper: what if the Chechen mark was found somewhere else... Before going to the deputy commander, they advised him to ask for a “warm” position upon returning from a business trip.
“Parquetny” flew to Mozdok, and stayed there for three months, without going to Chechnya itself, and called his subordinates to report to him even a hundred kilometers away. And everything worked out wonderfully for him. And he received an order for his courage, and took up the position of deputy in one of the military schools. And when the time came to say goodbye to the army, the necessary page in the biography allowed the hero to take a high position as a civil servant. True, for some reason he avoids his former colleagues...
***
Major Yuri Saulyak died from a mine. It would seem that with his considerable combat experience, any tripwire is visible from afar. But I didn’t notice this one, I was very tired - from battle to battle. Only they took Grozny... And the mine did not tear off the major’s leg or arm, nor ripped open his stomach - it hit him right in the head. Therefore, when they brought his headless body to Rostov, they identified the major from the documents that were in his pocket. But this was not enough to send him home. We contacted the commander of Saulyak, saying that his wife needed to fly in: what if someone else with the major’s documents stepped on a mine...
Friends decided differently. Saulyak's relatives were carefully questioned about whether he had a scar or a tattoo on his body. It turned out that the major’s appendicitis was cut out long before he was sent to Chechnya. “Come on,” they answered on the phone from Rostov, “even if not the wife, but someone who knew the deceased well will fly in for identification, then we’ll process the cargo-200.” One of the officers had to go from St. Petersburg to document the scar from appendicitis... Only after that did Major Saulyak return to his homeland in a closed zinc. But I could have spent who knows how long in the morgue...
***
In January 1995, a teacher from the Omsk Tank School called the CBU. This happened a few days after the New Year's assault on Grozny. So, they say, and so. My son, a tank driver, is serving in Chechnya... And opposite the son’s last name at the headquarters it says “Missing in Action”... The officer on duty in distant Omsk answered that there is no accurate information about the fate of the tanker. We only know that he did not leave the battle. Maybe the wounded man is lying somewhere. Or he makes his way to his own people. If only he didn't get captured...
And a week and a half later the call rang again at headquarters. “Thank you,” the teacher from Omsk said to the same officer, “I found my son. You’ll have to transport him there, he’s dead...”
After the first conversation, the teacher took leave for family reasons and went to Grozny. In the thick of the street fighting, he managed to get to his son’s comrades, who reported that the tanker had burned down along with the tank. But my father crawled to that tank. In the house that was nearby, an old Chechen woman said that she pulled out a burnt guy and buried him in her garden... The tankman’s father dug him up and went home with him to Omsk, literally dragging him on himself. There he lowered his son into the ground for the second time. And the staff reports remained “Missing in action.”
***
On the second day after the storming of Grozny, January 2, 1995, the commander of the Leningrad Military District received an order from the Minister of Defense: together with the commander of the division stationed in Kamenka, personally report to each family of the officer and warrant officer who had just died and hand them over to the children New Year's gift- tangerines and sweets on behalf of the defense department...
Colonel General Sergei Seleznev, who was the deputy commander of the 40th Army in Afghanistan, shuddered at such blasphemy. He imagined how he would walk around Kamenka, completely dressed in mourning, and hand out tangerines “for the dead dad”... And for the first time, the general did not carry out the order. And instead of dozens of congratulatory packages, he ordered a memorial ceremony to be organized in the village. With all the necessary honors.
Soon, a commission was sent from the ministry to St. Petersburg, which confirmed not only the failure to comply with the order, but also the fact of misuse of money at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, where tangerines were replaced with a farewell ceremony for fallen officers and warrant officers.
They did not have time to impose penalties on Colonel General Sergei Seleznev; in December 1996, he and his wife died in a plane crash.
***
A month after the start of the first Chechen campaign, St. Petersburg journalists learned that a combat control center had been created at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, where all information about the course of hostilities was quickly flowed. And, accordingly, about the losses the army is suffering. After complex approvals, press representatives were allowed into the office, where journalists were shown a list of dead and wounded military personnel. On one sheet of paper.
“Are our losses really that small?” – correspondents doubted.
“So we fight well,” the senior officers answered instructively.
And the journalists had no idea that such reports were compiled periodically at headquarters and then destroyed. Previous data were not taken into account and were not summarized, so as not to sow panic.
No classification of secrecy was assigned to such lists. A report on the real state of affairs was sent every day to Moscow, where the final calculations were carried out. Those officers who were allowed to know about the dead and wounded were given their word of honor about non-disclosure, without any instructions or orders. The editors of Our Version on the Neva had at their disposal a miraculously preserved list for January 30, 1995.
It is now quite obvious that the first Chechen war (along with NATO aggression against Yugoslavia) is one of the largest military-political events of the late twentieth century. This unextinguished hotbed of separatism and banditry at the turn of the third millennium caused the fire of a new - the second Chechen war, which is still smoldering. And if in 1994-1996. Russia lost in combat more than 5.5 thousand killed, up to 52 thousand wounded and about 3 thousand missing its best sons from the United Group of Federal Forces, then today in the five years since August 1999 these losses are almost have become equal and, unfortunately, continue to grow.
And yet in Lately As a result of the measures taken by the military-political leadership of Russia, peaceful life is gradually being established in Chechnya. The republic is slowly but surely emerging from a protracted crisis. This means that the work started by Russian servicemen during the first Chechen war is bearing fruit...
FOUR STAGES OF THE RUSSIAN "STORM"
Since the summer of 1994, every day there have been more and more supporters of the policy of armed overthrow of the illegitimate regime of Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev in government circles of the country. Having become the head of the republic, this ambitious former commander of a heavy bomber aviation division, major general of the reserve of the Soviet Army, under pressure from local separatist-minded elements, in violation of the Russian Constitution, declared the state sovereignty of Chechnya (Ichkeria), in fact implementing the policy of its secession Russian Federation.
On November 29, a now historic meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation took place, at which the decision was finally made to begin military operations.
The very next day after the Security Council meeting, the country’s military machine began to move. On November 30, 1994, President Boris Yeltsin signed Decree No. 2137c “On measures to restore constitutional legality and order on the territory of the Chechen Republic.” In accordance with this document, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSK (since April 3, 1995 - federal Service security - FSB. - Author) the tasks were set - to stabilize the situation, disarm illegal armed groups (IAF) and restore law and order in accordance with the legislative acts of the Russian Federation.
The General Staff was simultaneously developing a plan for action to disarm illegal armed groups. The force operation was planned in four stages and was to be completed in three weeks.
The first stage (7 days, from November 29 to December 6) is to create a joint grouping of forces and assets of the Ministry of Defense and Internal Troops (VV) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and by December 5 occupy the starting areas for actions in three directions: Mozdok, Vladikavkaz and Kizlyar. Front-line aviation of the 4th Air Army and combat helicopters will be relocated to field airfields by December 1. Completely block the airspace over Chechnya. Prepare electronic warfare equipment.
The second stage (3 days, from December 7 to 9) is to advance to Grozny under the cover of front-line and army aviation along six routes and blockade the city. Create two blocking rings:
external - along the administrative border of the republic and internal - around Grozny. Open both rings in the south to allow civilians to exit. Part of the troops of the joint group will also block the militants' bases outside Grozny and disarm them.
The internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were entrusted with the protection of communications and routes for the advance of military groups. The FSK and the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were entrusted with the search, identification and detention of leading officials of the Dudayev regime who were capable of leading armed uprisings and sabotage behind the lines of the active troops.
In order to prevent the penetration of illegal armed groups, the supply of weapons and ammunition, the border troops were ordered to set up 13 temporary border posts on the borders with Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and North Ossetia. To organize border control and cover the border of Chechnya on the Chechen-Georgian section of the state border, create 5 border commandant's offices (on November 24, the 429th motorized rifle regiment will be assigned and deployed to the border with Chechnya in the regions of Muzhichi (Ingushetia) and Mozdok (North Ossetia) - MSD 19th Motorized Rifle Division - MSD 42nd Army Corps - ak).
The third stage (4 days, from December 10 to 13) is to clear illegal armed groups by forces of military groups operating from the north and south with the demarcation line along the river. Sunzha, presidential palace, government buildings, television, radio and other important objects. Disarm the illegal armed formations and confiscate military equipment.
The fourth stage (5-10 days, from December 14 to 21) is to stabilize the situation and transfer the army’s areas of responsibility to the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were ordered to identify and confiscate weapons from illegal armed groups and the population throughout the republic.
The idea of military operations was developed mainly to intimidate the Chechens. The operation was supposed to be of a demonstrative nature.
On December 5, 1994, in Mozdok, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev approved the decision on the operation of the commander of the North Caucasian Military District, who at that time was in charge of the Joint Group of Forces. In a hurry, the name of the operation was not given.
The creation of three groupings from army units, Internal Troops and special forces was ordered by Grachev to be finally completed by December 7. Readiness for the deployment of troops was scheduled for 5.00 on December 11, 1994. But everything was smooth only on paper, but in reality everything turned out differently.
On the eve of the entry of federal troops into the territory of Chechnya on December 10 at 23.30, Colonel General Mityukhin asked the Minister of Defense to postpone the start of the operation to 8.00 (December 11), citing the unpreparedness of one of the groups. As a result, the transfer of the deployment of units and subunits Russian army turned out to be for them serious problems. Having clarified their main routes, the militants had by this time managed to block most of the roads from Ingushetia and Dagestan for a period of from several hours to several days, gathering crowds of hostile population in the most vulnerable places. Under the guise of protest pickets, old men, women and children from local villages blocked, surrounded and stopped the columns of already understaffed, collected from the “pine forest”, in some places not even having full ammunition, military vehicles that had served their service life. Men with sharpened metal pins jumped out from behind the human shields and pierced the wheels, and used special hooks to cut off gas and brake pipes. Many places along the troop routes were mined. The militants who were often in the blockading crowd even disarmed soldiers and officers who did not have a clear order to use weapons and open lethal fire, and took them home as hostages. The confused commanders had no idea what to do or how to disarm the illegal gangs.
Columns of federal troops approached Grozny in various directions only two weeks later. In general, it took them 16 days to advance and blockade the city (from December 11 to 26) instead of the allotted 10. Already on the distant approaches to the Chechen capital, heavy battles broke out with illegal armed groups, which in some places turned into positional ones. As they advanced further, their intensity increased, as evidenced, for example, by the battle between Pskov paratroopers and militants near the village. October.
On the fourth day, while formations and units of the United Group of Federal Forces, bypassing Ingush and Chechen villages, stubbornly made their way to the target line near Grozny, the government of the Russian Federation issued an appeal, recalling that on December 15, the Decree of the President of Russia on amnesty expired to all members of illegal armed groups who voluntarily surrendered their weapons in the conflict zone. The next day, President Boris Yeltsin once again addressed the population of the republic.
The negotiation process did not work out, especially since the militants continued to carry out numerous attacks on federal troops all this time. In response, Russian attack aircraft began to strike at concentrations of military equipment of illegal armed groups and military-strategic targets of militants in the suburbs of the Chechen capital, including bridges across the river. Terek, airfield and village of Khankala.
The decision to send troops to Grozny was made on December 26, 1994 at a meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, where Pavel Grachev and Sergei Stepashin reported on the situation in the republic. Before this, no specific plans were developed to capture the capital of Chechnya.
On the eve of the Security Council meeting, Grachev came to the conclusion that it was necessary to replace the head of the operation. In conditions of open confrontation by the enemy, as emphasized in one of the General Staff documents, “the headquarters of the North Caucasus Military District and the commander personally were not ready to organize and plan combat operations. The commander led his subordinates very poorly, did not listen to their proposals, all his “instructions” turned into obscene cursing and swearing at their subordinates... The headquarters worked in a nervous atmosphere, which was whipped up by the command, personally by Colonel General A. Mityukhin.”
On December 21, the Minister of Defense brought to Mozdok from Moscow the first deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Anatoly Kvashnin (later Hero of Russia, Army General, Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces. - Author). Characteristically, even on the plane, Grachev did not say a word about his future position as commander of the OGV instead of the suspended General Mityukhin. The minister announced this only upon arrival at a meeting of the group’s leadership.
On December 23, the State Duma adopted a statement demanding an immediate moratorium on fighting in Chechnya and begin negotiations, as well as an address expressing condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
The Chechen opposition, which had gone into the shadows during the fighting, also intensified in a different capacity (on December 6, Grachev held a meeting with its leaders Avturkhanov, the former head of the Nadterechny district, Gantamirov, the former mayor of Grozny, and Khadzhiev, the former general director NPO "Grozneftekhim"). On December 26, 1994, it was announced the creation of a government of national revival of Chechnya headed by Salambek Khadzhiev, its readiness to discuss with Russia the issue of creating a confederation without demanding the withdrawal of troops. But, as everyone well knows, the good intentions of this government, which wanted to restore the republic, unfortunately, were not destined to come true.
On December 27, Pavel Grachev returned from the capital, having the broadest powers to carry out the operation to storm Grozny - on December 31, enter Grozny and by 12 o'clock in the morning report to the president on the completion of the second stage of the operation.
The plan to capture the city provided for the actions of federal troops in groups from four directions.
The first is “North” under the command of Major General Pulikovsky (a little later - the commander of the 67th Army Corps of the North Caucasus Military District, from August 1996 - the commander of the United States Military Forces; in April 1996, near Yaryshmardy, Khattab’s gang shot at a military column where his son died. - Auth.). It includes: a combined detachment of the 131st Omsbr, the 81st and 276th motorized rifle regiments (MSR) - a total of 4 thousand 100 people, 80 tanks, 210 infantry fighting vehicles and 65 guns and mortars. The second is "North-East" under the command of the commander of the 8th Guards. ak Lieutenant General Rokhlin consisting of: 255th Motorized Rifle Regiment, a combined detachment of the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment and the 68th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion (orb) - a total of 2 thousand 200 people, 7 tanks, 125 infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and 25 guns and mortars. The third group, “West,” is commanded by the deputy commander of the 42nd Army Corps, Major General Petruk. Subordinate to him are: the consolidated detachment of the 693rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, the consolidated airborne division of the 76th Guards. airborne division, battalion 21st and battalion 56th airborne brigade - a total of 6 thousand people, 63 tanks, 160 infantry fighting vehicles, 50 infantry fighting vehicles and 75 guns and mortars. The fourth group - "Vostok" - is commanded by the Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces for Peacekeeping Forces, Major General Staskov. Subordinate to him are: the consolidated detachment of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment, the consolidated airborne division of the 104th Guards. airborne division and combined battalion of the 98th Guards. airborne division - only 3 thousand people, 45 tanks, 70 infantry fighting vehicles and 35 guns and mortars. The total number of troops involved is 15 thousand 300 people, 195 tanks, over 500 infantry fighting vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 200 guns and mortars. Of these, more than 500 personnel, 50 tanks and 48 guns and mortars of the 131st Motorized Rifle Brigade and the 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment were allocated to the reserve (thus, the ratio of the attacking and defending groups was 1:1, instead of what was required according to the tactics of combat operations in the city 5 : 1. - Author).
The troops, in cooperation with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSK, advancing from the northern, western and eastern directions, were supposed to capture the presidential palace, government buildings, and the railway station...
As a result of blocking the city center, the Katayama region and the actions of troops in three converging directions, Dudayev’s main group would allow complete encirclement. The idea of the plan was designed for surprise. Troop losses are minimal. In addition, fire impact on residential and administrative buildings of the city was excluded. “December 31st is December 31st,” the OGV headquarters calculated. “Whether in Moscow or in Grozny. Everyone will be preparing to celebrate New Year"Grachev approved this plan.
But the Dudayevites were also preparing for the decisive battle. In Grozny, the final preparations for the active defense of the city were completed, the people's militia units and newly arrived mercenaries were being re-equipped, and additional firing points of strongholds on the defensive lines were being equipped.
At the same time, Dudayev’s regime actively relied on the support of certain interested circles in Moscow, which supplied the President of Ichkeria with operational information about the intentions and plans of the Center and the command of the federal troops. INVF agents also worked regularly in Mozdok.
Unlike the militants, the federal troops were noticeably less prepared. There was virtually no interaction between the hastily assembled units and subunits. This was a direct result of their vast understaffing in peacetime. A solution was found by creating consolidated detachments and regiments, and subsequently involving the Marine Corps in the operation. One of the generals of the Russian Army spoke well about such a vicious principle of troop formation to the Chairman of the State Duma Commission Govorukhin: “I don’t know such a military unit as a combined regiment... I only know a combined orchestra. And it takes time to work together!”
The coefficient of technical readiness of the material part was extremely low - outdated (2-3 overhauls each) and exhausted technical resources were used in battles Combat vehicles(helicopters, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, communications equipment, etc.).
As for the topographic maps for the command staff of the advancing units and units, they truly became the talk of the town. At the headquarters of the North Caucasus Military District there were a minimal number of maps of Grozny. They were compiled in 1972 and updated 14 years (?!) before the OGV operation. Their planned renewal in 1991 was not carried out, as a result of which they became seriously outdated. The urgently needed plans for the most fortified buildings of the Chechen capital were also not available.
In the days when the federal troops in Chechnya, suffering their first losses in clashes with Dudayev’s troops and drowning in impassable mud mixed with wet snow, tightened the ring around Grozny, the Russian political elite pompously prepared in Moscow for the New Year 1995.
"DO NOT TRUST THE QUIET, DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE QUIET"
Finally, on December 31, 1994, the OGV headquarters gave a combat order to the troops of the North, North-East, West and East groups to begin the operation to storm Grozny. According to some Russian generals, as Gennady Troshev writes in his memoirs, “the initiative for the “festive” New Year’s assault belonged to people from the inner circle of the Minister of Defense, who allegedly wanted to time the capture of the city to coincide with Pavel Sergeevich’s birthday. I don’t know how much truth there is here, but "The fact that the operation was really prepared hastily, without a real assessment of the enemy's forces and means, is a fact. They didn't even have time to come up with the name of the operation (once again - author).
The last December morning of 1994 greeted Russian soldiers and officers with heavy snow clouds. At dawn, aviation from the airfields of Yeisk, Krymsk, Budennovsk, Mozdok and artillery were the first to begin the assault on the city. Then, at 6.00, columns of federal troops entered Grozny from four sides. Dudayev's experienced fighters were in no hurry to open fire. “Don’t trust the quiet, don’t be afraid of the fast,” says the Chechen proverb. The militants, loyal to the tactics of the Afghan dushmans, allowed the “shuravi” (Russians - translation from Afghanistan - Author) to be drawn deeper into the city blocks, which at that moment resembled a cocked trap, ready to slam shut at any minute.
The first, seemingly rapid, “successes” achieved in the northern direction inspired the federals. Advancing in the zone allotted to them, two assault detachments of the “North” group of troops and one detachment of the “North-East” group had the task of blocking the northern part of the city center and the presidential palace from the north. By 13.00, practically without serious fire from the Chechens, the 1st battalion of the Samara 81st motorized rifle regiment occupied the railway station. By 15.00, the 2nd battalion of this regiment and a combined detachment of the 20th motorized rifle division blocked the presidential palace, taking up positions several hundred meters from it.
The motorized riflemen of the 276th regiment were less fortunate. While advancing to the northern outskirts of the city, his 1st battalion ran into a minefield of the Dudayevites. Having lost 7 infantry fighting vehicles, he was forced to retreat to the original area, where he began to restore combat effectiveness. Another battalion of the 276th Motorized Rifle Regiment took under guard the bridges across the river. Neftyanka on the eastern outskirts of the suburban state farm "Rodina". And only with the onset of darkness did his positions come under fire from gangs.
The military columns of the "North-East" group, acting, as when sending troops into Chechnya, in a roundabout maneuver and leaving aside the central streets fortified by the enemy, broke the resistance of the militants on their outer and middle defensive lines and by 14.00 reached the bridge over the river. Sunzhu, east of Ordzhonikidze Avenue. There was only one block left to the Dudayev Palace and the building of the Council of Ministers, where the buildings of the Institute of Oil and Gas were located. According to the commander of the group of troops, General Lev Rokhlin, he had only about 500 soldiers and officers in direct fire contact with the enemy.
The Vostok group of troops, led by General Staskov, failed to complete the assigned task. Its two assault detachments had the task of advancing along railway Gudermes - Grozny to Lenin Avenue and, without setting up roadblocks, go to the river. Sunzha, capturing the bridges across it. Next, joining forces with the troops of the “North” and “West” groups, blockade the central region of Grozny at the neck of the river. Sunzha from the east. But the vanguard of the group - the combined detachment of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment, according to General Anatoly Kvashnin, having entered the city and gone 3-4 blocks deep, was stopped by rubble and targeted fire from militants from small arms and grenade launchers. By the decision of the group commander, the direction of further advance of the Leningrad motorized rifles was changed. But in the area of the 2nd microdistrict, their detachment again ran into a well-equipped enemy stronghold and was blocked. During the night from December 31 to January 1, the regiment steadfastly repulsed attacks by militants, inflicted significant losses on them, and then, by order of the commander of the OGV, retreated to the previously occupied area.
The combined battalion of the 98th Ivanovo Guards Svir Red Banner Airborne Division was blocked by militants in the area of Minutka Square. A real tragedy befell their “Tula brothers” from the 104th Guards Red Banner Airborne Division. The five lead vehicles of its column upon entering the city, due to the low training of the flight personnel and lack of cooperation, were covered by their own aircraft (according to some information, as a result of an air strike by two Su-25 attack aircraft on January 1 at 9.15, about 50 people were killed and wounded. - Auth.).
As a result, almost until January 2, the Vostok group of troops did not support the actions of other groups, which, according to Kvashnin, “significantly influenced” the unfavorable course of development of the operation.
The troops of General Petruk’s “West” group, which also included the Pskovites, also met fierce resistance from the illegal armed formations. The task of its two assault troops was to capture the railway station and blockade the presidential palace from the south.
At 7.30, the vanguard of the 693rd Motorized Rifle Division of the 19th Motorized Rifle Division, Colonel Kandalin, entered the city and until 12.00 did not encounter any opposition from the Dudayevites. The introduction of motorized rifles into battle was ensured by paratroopers of the battalion of the 21st Airborne Brigade and the Pskov consolidated airborne division of the 76th Guards. vdd.
After noon, the militants already clearly knew the location of the Russian troops and began active hostilities. Due to a number of serious mistakes made by the division commander, in the market area the 693rd North Caucasian regiment was stopped and attacked by superior enemy forces.
By 18.00, during a bloody clash, the 693rd Vladikavkaz regiment was surrounded by Dudayevites in the area of the park named after. IN AND. Lenin. Contact with him was lost.
The “winged infantry” fought more successfully in the area of the Andreevskaya Valley. Having received from the commander of the 76th Guards. Airborne Guards Major General Ivan Babichev's combat mission to suppress militant firing points, Pskov paratroopers of Colonel Vyacheslav Sivko's guard battalion deployed combat formations and entered the fray. In an effort to take over part of the oil refinery named after. IN AND. Lenin (and it stretched over 10 sq. km) and a dairy farm, the “blue berets” intensified the onslaught hour after hour.
The fight with Dudayev’s “wolves” was short-lived: it began and ended in the afternoon. But if at the beginning the sun was shining, then at the end it was dusk - oil containers pierced by bullets and shells were burning, thick smoke was pouring out... The Pskovites lost 5 people killed and several wounded. After 13.00, together with the paratroopers of the 21st brigade, the survivors had to gain a foothold in the conquered positions.
Seeing that the group of troops of Major General Petruk was not fulfilling the assigned task, the command of the OGV ordered the deputy commander of the North Caucasus Military District for combat training, Lieutenant General Todorov, to personally lead the movement of another regiment of the 19th Motorized Rifle Division to reinforce the “West” grouping. However, his march was carried out much slower than the situation required.
The Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, allocated to strengthen the group of troops leading the battle, also failed to achieve success on December 31. Due to the lack of a clear front line (the militants attacked from the federal areas), some of the units intended to build up efforts were forced to set up roadblocks, guard corridors from the line of contact with the enemy to the exits from Grozny, etc.
What this led to can be seen in the published testimony of one of the lieutenants of the Russian army: “On December 30, our unit made a forced march along the Mozdok-Grozny route and on the night of January 1 reached the outskirts of the city. A battle ensued, lasting 40 minutes, for "In which two cars in the company burned down. Later it turned out that they were fighting with their own. Part of the Internal Troops, which controlled the exits from Grozny, also suffered "noticeable" losses: the advancing federal troops destroyed a large amount of equipment and personnel of the Internal Troops."
The militants' attacks on the positions of units of the "North" group of forces, which had successfully entrenched themselves in the city, began, as already noted, in the afternoon, light and clear. This is how one of the lieutenant colonels of the 81st Samara motorized rifle regiment, the first battalion of which was entrenched at the railway station, described it: “At 2 p.m., the first armored personnel carrier was hit by a grenade launcher, and an hour later a battle began that lasted a whole day. During this time, the Chechens knocked out 15 tanks, and by the evening of January 1, 60 people plus 45 wounded (30% of the payroll) remained from the reinforced battalion that entered the city the day before (30% of the payroll.) There were no orders from the command - whether to continue to defend the station - and no fresh ones were received reinforcements. Almost no one managed to get out alive."
The lieutenant colonel's story would have been more realistic if he had had access to all the information about what the OGV command did to change the situation in Grozny in its favor.
Thus, “to consolidate success and build up efforts” in order to “cut off the approach of militant reinforcements to the city center from the Katayama area” from the reserve, on the orders of the commander of the North group of troops, Major General Konstantin Pulikovsky, it was decided to advance the 131st Maikop separate the motorized rifle brigade of Colonel Ivan Savin, which consisted of 446 soldiers and officers (two motorized rifle battalions, one tank battalion and an anti-aircraft division). At that moment, the command of the federal forces did not know that the Dudayevites had already managed to secretly transfer their selected, regular units - the “Abkhazian” and “Muslim” battalions numbering over 1000 people - to the area of the railway station.
For a long time, what subsequently happened to the Maikopians was considered “a mystery shrouded in darkness.” In the press there were the most contradictory assessments, from those that supposedly the brigade was “destroyed in 4 hours” to that “almost all of it was shot by Dudayev’s militia within 24 hours.” In reality, everything was far from the case. The curtain on these tragic events was lifted by the special correspondent of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, Colonel Nikolai Astashkin, in his book “The Lone Wolf Leap. The Chronicles of Dzhokhar Dudayev - Notes of a Frontline Correspondent.” The author managed to find operational documents of the group of troops and compare them with eyewitness accounts. Among them were the political officer of the brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Valery Konopatsky, who was shell-shocked in the battle at the station, miraculously survived and emerged with a handful of soldiers from encirclement, and the head of the communications center of the radio engineering brigade, seconded during the assault on Grozny to brigade commander I. Savin as an aircraft controller from the combat group aviation department "Shark-1", senior warrant officer Vadim Shibkov.
The latter was also lucky - he managed to escape with several fighters from the tight circle of militants.
This is what Shibkov, a direct participant in the events, recalled: “On December 31, 1994, at 00.00 hours, General Pulikovsky assigned the following combat mission to the brigade: the 1st battalion under the command of brigade commander Colonel Savin to reach the line of the railway station and cut off the enemy’s retreat from the rear of the presidential palace; 2- The 1st battalion was supposed to capture the Grozny-tovarnaya station and hold it until the main forces arrived. These units were supposed to interact with the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 81st motorized rifle regiment, blocking the presidential palace from the front, as well as a complex of government buildings in city center.
We started moving out at 4.00 am from the area of the oil rig on the Kolodezny pass. Soon we reached the area of the village of Sadovy. Then we advanced into the city - to the Printing House, and then reached the station with virtually no losses. But when they turned onto the street that leads to the station square, a powerful barrage of fire fell on the column - and one after another, 3 infantry fighting vehicles flashed at once: a battalion commander and 2 command and staff vehicles. The armored personnel carrier I was on also received two holes.
The militants did everything professionally: they immediately disabled communications, and, since control of the units was lost, panic arose. The fulfillment of the combat mission was in jeopardy."
Here it is appropriate to interrupt the aircraft controller’s story in order to give a competent explanation from General Gennady Troshev: “The combined detachment of the brigade, without encountering resistance, passed the desired intersection, lost orientation and went to the railway station, where the battalion of the 81st regiment was already concentrated. And here the colonel made a fatal mistake Savin, considering that there was no longer an enemy in the area of the station. The battalions, standing in columns along the streets, did not bother to organize defense, did not set up roadblocks along the route (although this task was assigned to the units of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation), did not conduct proper reconnaissance... Shelling of the station began on the evening of December 31. The militants attacked from three sides, did not come close, but fired from grenade launchers, mortars and guns┘"
According to the data cited in their book by the former commander of the OGV in Chechnya (since February 1, 1995 instead of Kvashnin. - Author) General of the Army Anatoly Kulikov and former Colonel of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Sergei Lembik "The Chechen Knot. Chronicle of the Armed Conflict 1994 -1996,” the Dudayevites concentrated in this direction not 1 thousand, but up to 3.5 thousand personnel, 50 guns and tanks, over 300 grenade launchers. However, the authors made an inaccuracy here, indicating that the 131st Omsbr went to the station on the evening of December 31st. In fact, as Vadim Shibkov testified, the Maykop residents ended up here only on the morning of January 1st. By this time, the 1st battalion of the Samara 81st regiment was desperately fighting with the superior forces of the “spirits” from 19.00 the previous day and all night long. But the building, which had huge windows and many exits, was of little use for defense. The losses of the defenders were enormous (let us remember the previous story of one of the colonels of this regiment. - Author). Apparently, when the Maikop brigade approached the station, everything was already over. And the 131st became another victim of illegal armed groups.
“We were thoroughly squeezed at the station,” senior warrant officer Shibkov continued his sad story. “The militants’ tactics were well-thought-out. Well-armed, they acted in groups of 10-15 people - and shot, shot, shot, often replacing each other, and we fought back in the same composition. In addition, the armored vehicles in the brigade were old, had served all their terms - the turret did not rotate, the cannon jammed, and the tanks had no active armor protection at all, and the personnel, to be honest, were not ready to conduct battle in the city. Maybe in the field, under the cover of aviation, artillery and armor, we are a force, but here, in this stone jungle of an unfamiliar and hostile city, when from every floor, from every window of the house adjacent to the station square , a hail of lead is flying at you - you are just cannon fodder. I still believe that then, in January 1995, we were simply betrayed (according to some reports, out of the 26 tanks of the brigade that entered Grozny, 20 vehicles were hit. Of the 120 infantry fighting vehicles, only 18 survived. In addition to them, 6 Tunguska anti-aircraft battalion anti-aircraft divisions, dispersed among units moving in marching formations, also burned down. - Auth.)┘
And then, by the end of the day on January 1, brigade commander Ivan Alekseevich Savin made the decision to make a breakthrough. Making our way through the dense wall of fire, we began to retreat along a familiar road - towards the Tersky Range, towards the village of Sadovy. In the area of the station, Ivan Alekseevich received two through bullet wounds, but continued to command the remnants of the brigade. In my heart he will forever remain a commander with a capital C. He put specific tasks and required specific implementation.
We retreated further and along the way we met our burnt vehicles, from which the militants were already carrying ammunition and food, and the corpses of our fighters lay right there. Finally the Printing House appeared. We look, out of nowhere, two "bampashes" of the 81st motorized rifle regiment are approaching us. The brigade commander, the brigade artillery chief, and the officers of the Akula-1 aviation combat control group sat in them... And immediately they took both infantry fighting vehicles right off the bat, but, not having driven even a hundred meters, they suddenly stopped. And seconds later it flashed. The "spirits" shot them from grenade launchers and machine guns - point-blank. The brigade commander was wounded for the third time.
At that time heavy fire was opened in our direction. I don’t know what would have happened to us if it weren’t for the car depot located nearby. She became a saving island in this sea of fire. Having dropped into the cluttered courtyard of the motor depot, we threw grenades at the windows of the premises, just in case. We went to bed. Then the main group arrived - with the brigade commander. However, only one name remained from the group: while they were running across the open area, almost everyone died under machine-gun fire from the militants.
I approach the wounded Colonel Savin and say:
Commander, what are we going to do?
Thinking about something of his own, he looked to the side, then, as if waking up, he said:
We need to assess the situation.
By that time, dusk had fallen over the city. We crawled around the corner with him and saw how 5 or 6 militia fighters were secretly approaching us. I say to Ivan Alekseevich:
Commander, grenade.
He hardly took the RGD-5 grenade out of his pouch.
Light it up,” I say, “I’ll put them down with an efka.”
And so they did. The soldiers who were in the courtyard of the motor depot - about 10-15 people - crawled after us. I will never forget their eyes. For one, such a small and frail boy, horror was mixed with hopelessness. The other, tall and slender, clearly had fear for his own life in his soul. In general, as they say, people are completely morally and psychologically unprepared for combat operations. And where could it come from if we weren’t prepared for war, they didn’t really explain what and why. Then, during short respites between shelling, the first thing that came to mind was that we had been set up again. It was all so offensive and unpleasant.
So, we threw grenades. But it was not possible to go further. The militia fighters, who had settled in the fire boxes, opened fire in unison. I was caught in the shoulder. One of the privates was hit in the head by a bullet and remained there forever. I had to crawl around the corner again. Well, I think that's all - we can't get out of here. He sat down on the foundation of the building and leaned against the bullet-scarred wall. The brigade commander sat down next to me, resting his head on my shoulder. He was very weak. Cursing, he said: “If I survive, I’ll tell these bastards everything I think about them...” These were his last words. From around the corner I heard: “Happy New Year! Get a present┘” - and┘ a grenade flew in. Spinning and rustling on the rubble, it rolled up close to us. Explosion! I felt almost nothing - only my neck burned. And the brigade commander wheezed and dropped his head. When I raised his head, I saw that instead of his left eye there was a hole. The fragment entered the brain.
After some time, the remnants of one of the platoons of the 3rd company, led by the brigade artillery chief, Colonel Savchenko, made their way to us. They brought a Volga with them, into the trunk of which they loaded dead body brigade commander I stayed with a group of fighters to cover their retreat.
In the Volga's cabin, the passengers were like sardines in a barrel. She slowly moved towards the Printing House. About a hundred meters later I stopped and the tire burst. And then the militants did not allow anyone alive to get out of the car (the body of the brigade commander with traces of numerous wounds and a scalp taken by the Chechens was found in the ruins of one of the houses only in mid-January. - Author)┘
I made my way to the Printing House, where the 2nd battalion of the 81st regiment held the defense, with several soldiers in the dead of night. And, finding himself among his own people, he felt such wild fatigue that, having found a secluded place, he immediately fell asleep...
Thus, 187 soldiers and officers of the 131st Maikop brigade, led by its commander, Colonel Ivan Alekseevich Savin, heroically died (as of February 9, 1995, the fate of more than 120 soldiers of the brigade remained unknown, later - 75 people. For almost 3 months, the remnants of the 131st The Omsbr was still on the territory of Chechnya. Its combined battalion took part in the protection of the Severny airport, and then in the capture of Gudermes, and only by the end of April the unit was redeployed to Maykop. - Author). Colonel Savin was nominated for the title of Hero of Russia, but the award documents were lost in the Kremlin corridors.
The wounded head of the Operations Department of the brigade headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Kloptsov, as mentioned above, was picked up and captured by militants. It is known that they later used him as a living intimidator for Russian troops when trying to negotiate with them. For example, according to the testimony of the commander of the 3rd battalion of the 137th infantry division of the 106th Guards. Airborne Division Lieutenant Colonel Svyatoslav Golubyatnikov (the title of Hero of Russia awarded in April 1995) in early January to his unit defending the station area (the railway station was taken by paratroopers again at 22.30 on January 1 and since then has been constantly under their control. - Author. ), a group of “parliamentarians” arrived from the Chechen side with a white flag. Among them, in addition to Kloptsov, were two Russian priests from Moscow, two civilians and a “human rights activist”, a deputy State Duma RF Sergey Kovalev. The meaning of the latter’s appeal to the “blue berets” boiled down to the following: surrender, and you will help the release of your comrades from captivity... In case of surrender of weapons, he promised to organize the transfer of two companies to Mozdok, to protect the officers from persecution by the command, while retaining their positions, military ranks and the opportunity to continue serving.
During the negotiations, a shot was fired from the enemy and Sergeant Major Mordvintsev was mortally wounded in the head. After this, the “peacekeeping” mission abruptly left.
In another case, Kovalev tried to convince another unit of the “winged infantry” that was surrounded by Dudayev’s men to lay down their arms and stop the bloodshed. However, the paratroopers responded to this with heavy fire and held out until their main forces arrived.
Nonsense, but it was this figure, who was silent for four long years - during the period of lawlessness of Dudayev’s power, when real genocide was happening against the Russian people in Chechnya, who was soon nominated in Europe for an award Nobel Prize peace.
Having learned about the difficult situation in which the 81st Regiment and the 131st Brigade found themselves, the command of the OGV made a number of attempts to release them and send reinforcements. One of the tank battalions tried to get through to the dying motorized rifles, but only reached the freight yard of the railway station, where all its combat vehicles were burned by a sea of “spirits” fire. The former head of the rocket and artillery service of the 8th Guards wanted to break through to the station with a column of cars loaded with shells and cartridges. aka Major General Alexander Volkov. But all his attempts were in vain: “The militants’ fire was so dense that, having lost several vehicles with ammunition, we returned back.”
Already at the final stage on January 1, the withdrawal of the remnants of the 131st Motorized Rifle Brigade was covered by a reconnaissance group from one of the Siberian GRU special forces brigades that approached them. For almost two hours, the Siberian special forces held back the onslaught of the superior forces of the Dudayevites. But their strengths were unequal. Almost the entire group led by the commander died. As a result of the two-day battle at the station, the militants also suffered significant losses: over 300 killed.
The surprise effect of the attack by federal troops was lost. A catastrophe was approaching. In fact, only units of the “North” and “North-East” groups were able to break into the city. But they also fought against numerous groups of illegal armed groups, almost all of them surrounded.
“Twice the command of the OGV,” recalls Gennady Troshev, “tried to force the commander of the 19th motorized rifle division, Colonel G. Kandalin, to advance, but neither requests nor orders acted. The motorized riflemen continued to stand, and at this time they were completely surrounded at the railway station, choking in blood, units of the 131st brigade and the 81st motorized rifle regiment fought to the death.The lack of close cooperation with the motorized rifles and the indecisiveness of Major General V. Petruk seemed to paralyze the activity of the paratroopers.
On the morning of January 1, P. Grachev received an order from the commander of groupings of troops in the western and eastern directions to break through to the blocked units in the areas of the railway station and the presidential palace and try to save our guys┘"
To strengthen the lost North-East group of Lieutenant General Rokhlin, who competently organized the defense in the area of the city hospital and cannery, a combined airborne special forces battalion was successfully introduced into Grozny on the morning of January 1.
And at the forefront of the “West” grouping of troops were the Pskov paratroopers of the Guard of Major General Babichev and the battalion of the Guard of Colonel Sivko (in the spring of 1995 he became a Hero of Russia. - Author).
The country celebrated the New Year peacefully, and soldiers and officers of the Russian army died on the streets of the burning Grozny. Fifteen thousand souls met eternity.
STARS LIGHT ON EARTH
But on January 1, the tormented vanguard of the combined regiment of the 76th Pskov Guards Airborne Division, ambushed by militants and the battalion of Tula paratroopers following it, despite the heroic efforts of the personnel, their task was to get through to those who died in an unequal battle with illegal armed groups, in full surrounded by motorized rifles of the 81st Samara Regiment and the 131st Maikop Brigade did not comply. Both of them drank the cups of their destinies in full.
Meanwhile, in his staff car at the railway control point in Mozdok, the drunken Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev celebrated his birthday. When the command of the OGV realized that the units and units of General Rokhlin’s group were almost face to face with the main forces of Dudayev’s mini-army, personnel changes followed.
It is probably fair to say that the exploits of Russian military personnel in the first “Chechen” months were massive. Because within means mass media At that time, there were descriptions of cases of stunning meanness, and frank examples of cowardice and betrayal. It is a known fact that one artillery captain, for “Dudaev’s” money, directed militant fire at federal troops from his positions. There were also those who abandoned their wounded comrades on the battlefield and deserted. According to Pavel Grachev, 500-600 conscripts succumbed to the persuasion of representatives of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers and left the front line, of which about 400 people were put on the wanted list by the federal command.
And yet, despite suffering heavy losses, Russian troops were not “defeated” in the first days of the new year of 1995 in Grozny, as the same “human rights activist” Deputy Kovalev loudly declared. This became possible, in addition to the Pskov guards-paratroopers, and thanks to such warriors as, for example, tanker Lieutenant Grigorashchenko - the prototype of the hero of Alexander Nevzorov’s film “Purgatory”. Crucified by his enemies on the cross, he will forever remain a model of a true officer for current and future defenders of the Motherland. “Then in Grozny,” recalls Gennady Troshev, “the Dudayevites sincerely admired the officers from the special forces brigade of the North Caucasian Military District, who single-handedly held back the enemy’s onslaught (according to some reports, it was a lieutenant who occupied a dominant position. For him to leave his positions, “the spirits "They offered him 100 thousand dollars in vain. - Author). "That's it! Enough! Well done! - they shouted to the surrounded and wounded Russian soldier. - Leave! We won't touch you! We will take you to your people!" the Chechens promised. "Okay," he said. - Agree. Come here!" When they approached, the officer blew himself up and the militants with a grenade. No, those who claim that as a result of the "New Year's" assault the federal troops were defeated were mistaken. Yes, we washed ourselves in blood, but we showed that in the current time is a time of blurred ideals, the heroic spirit of our ancestors is alive in us."
In addition to the Pskov Guard Captain Sergei Vlasov, who became a Hero of Russia, there are several other known cases of Russian military personnel calling “fire on themselves,” when artillery spotters called fire from their units and units on nearby houses or positions of Dudayev’s men (although, according to instructions, the safe zone should not be less than 400 m. - Author). Are these not examples of the manifestation of boundless courage and the highest power of the military spirit!
For the exploits shown during the liquidation of illegal armed groups during the first military campaign in Chechnya in 1994-1996, in total, the title of Hero of the Russian Federation was awarded to more than 120 military personnel of the Ministry of Defense. Among those who became the first Heroes of Russia for the battles on the outskirts and in Grozny itself, in addition to the already mentioned soldiers, were senior warrant officer Viktor Ponomarev, senior lieutenants Andrei Pribytkov and Andrei Shevelev, captains Oleg Zobov, Alexander Kiryanov, Sergei Kurnosenko and others.
The assault on “Dudaev’s lair” on December 31, 1994 and January 1, 1995 came at a heavy price. During the first days of the operation, entire units, companies and battalions of federal troops were completely destroyed. In total, in these two days on the streets of Grozny, according to published data, more than 1.5 thousand soldiers and officers died or went missing (including more than 300 missing people; these figures are approximately equivalent to the annual irretrievable losses of the 40th army in Afghanistan in 1979-1989 - Author). The number of wounded was approaching 2.5 thousand. No one knows how many of them later died, like Oleg Zobov. Unfortunately, such sad statistics do not exist in the country.
It is known that only in the combined regiment of the 76th Pskov Guards. Airborne Forces On January 1, 1995, 10 soldiers and sergeants were killed in Grozny and 1 went missing (in total, Pskov lost 121 servicemen in the first Chechen military campaign and 135 in the second).
As a result of the measures taken, and according to the words of Grachev, spoken on February 28, 1995 at a meeting of the leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the grouping of federal forces in the operation to capture the Chechen capital was increased to 38 thousand people (February 20 of the same year at the scientific practical conference at the Kubinka training ground near Moscow, the Minister of Defense initially announced the figure that only about 6 thousand military personnel were involved in the capture of Grozny. - Author), up to 230 tanks, 454 infantry fighting vehicles and 388 guns and mortars, already on January 19, Russian troops set up state flag above the presidential palace. By February 21, they had completely blocked Grozny from all directions, and five days later they broke the resistance of the illegal armed groups in it. In total, it took them 38 days to master the “wolf’s lair.”
According to official statistics, the heaviest of them were December 31 and January 1. According to the General Staff, from December 31 to April 1, 1995, 1,426 people were killed in the United Armed Forces, 4,630 military personnel were wounded, 96 soldiers and officers were captured by illegal armed groups, and more than 500 were missing.
From December 11, 1994 to April 8, illegal armed groups lost 6,690 people killed and 471 militants captured. They destroyed 64 tanks (another 14 were seized), 71 infantry fighting vehicles (another 61 infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers were seized), 108 guns (and 145 were seized), 16 Grad installations, 11 ammunition warehouses were captured.
The wounded Russian soldiers themselves, and even more so the killed ones, did not give a damn about these disastrous statistics, which were interrupted two years later by the vindictive Khasavyurt agreements. Some of them, having fulfilled their military duty, some to the end, some partially, and some, without having managed to fire a single shot at the enemy, have already gone into eternity. The other - moaning and screaming, gnashing teeth, lying in bloody bandages on hospital beds, continued to cling to life in every possible way...
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Commander of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment Colonel A. Borisov |
December 11 - units of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs entered the territory of Chechnya on the basis of the decree of the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin “On measures to suppress the activities of illegal armed groups on the territory of the Chechen Republic and in the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict.” Late in the evening of December 14, the Russian Air Force carried out bombing attacks on three airfields in the Chechen Republic - Kalinovskaya, Grozny-Severny and Khankala. According to intelligence data, D. Dudayev had more than 250 aircraft of various classes and purposes at his disposal, which could be used as bomber aircraft. Chronology of events
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November 1994
I am a colonel, serving the Fatherland, surviving on food rations and doing private driving on a “penny”, bought for $200 from a colleague who was in the Western Group of Forces. Every evening, after the service - from 22.00 to 03.00. I am in the position of senior officer of the educational work department of the Leningrad Military District, due to my official duties, dealing with personnel issues and studying the mood in the troops.
I have just returned from the Caucasus, where I was on a business trip as part of the Russian peacekeeping forces to maintain peace and law and order in South Ossetia. The armed conflict had already subsided; our units suffered virtually no losses. Apparently, the combat training of the Soviet army had an effect; the actions were of a well-coordinated, organized nature, and platoons, companies and battalions were commanded by officers who had served in Afghanistan.
The troops openly express dissatisfaction with the policies of Boris Yeltsin. Uniforms, food, fuel and ammunition are being stolen from army warehouses. Cases of attacks on sentries in order to seize weapons have become more frequent. In many units and formations, officers stopped going out for service, preferring to earn a living from businessmen. The armored vehicles remained motionless, the planes took to the skies only on combat duty.
Under these conditions, in the 45th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, which was located in the village of Kamenka near St. Petersburg, on the basis of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment, the formation of a unit began to be sent to the future war in Chechnya. There are not enough human resources, the platoon-company link is being supplemented from other parts of the Leningrad Military District. With difficulty, only one trained full-time motorized rifle battalion is recruited. We need snipers, machine gunners, grenade launchers, drivers, but they are not there.
Finally, the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment with a separate tank battalion and an artillery battalion attached to it was formed. The drill review of a unit ready to be sent to war is personally conducted by the commander of the Leningrad Military District, Colonel General S.P. Seleznev, an experienced and talented military leader. He knows well what lies ahead for these soldiers and officers, does not utter loud words, only asks if everything was received according to wartime norms. Two days later, the regiment leaves for Chechnya. There is no longer time for combat coordination. They went to Afghanistan after training, and even during the Great Patriotic War, formed units were given a month to prepare for combat before being sent to the front line. And here... yesterday a cook - today a grenade launcher. There is an order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. It's disgusting...
KamAZ of the district song and dance ensemble of the Leningrad Military District, by order of the educational work department, travels around small entrepreneurs, collecting donations to collect parcels to the Caucasus.
December 1994
An operational group of the combat control center for Leningrad Military District units located in the combat zone in Chechnya has been created at the headquarters. Composition of the group
12 people, divided into three shifts, daily. The combat control center is located next to the commander's office. Documents (with the exception of the working map of combat operations) are kept one day and are destroyed when handed over from one shift to another immediately after the report to Colonel General S.P. Seleznev.
Dudayev's army, without offering significant resistance, retreats
to Grozny. The set of parts of the Leningrad Military District is approaching New Year's Eve 1995.
Then the few surviving officers of the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment will tell you that the regiment quickly entered the Chechen defense line on the outskirts of Grozny. The enemy offered no resistance and retreated to the city. Ours did not have ground spotters to communicate with aviation, and the pilots failed to report that the 129th infantry regiment reached the Chechen line ahead of the established time... As a result, aviation worked out the combat mission partially against its own troops, which, having withstood an air strike, were in armored combat formations entered Grozny. Our armored personnel carriers and tanks instantly burst into flames.
January 1995
The 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment spent the entire New Year's Eve in street battles. At dawn, the commander (Colonel Borisov) decided to gather the remaining forces into a single fist and stop the offensive. On January 1, the Central Bureau of the Leningrad Military District was feverishly looking for contact with parts of the district in Chechnya. The map showed the situation without changes when the regiment was stationed at the walls of Grozny.
He no longer stood - he crawled through the streets, littering them with the bodies of the dead and wounded. It was possible to contact the regiment only in the middle of the next day. The captain responded in a hoarse voice. I introduced myself and asked to report on the situation. In response, a three-story curse sounded, the captain began shouting that he had never seen anything like this in Afghanistan... I abruptly cut him off, saying that it was not the time to find out who fought and where.
An hour later, the regiment commander got in touch and reported that he had been gathering those who were alive for 24 hours, and the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment was not combat-ready due to the complete absence of command personnel at the platoon-company level and the massive death of soldiers. Losses in killed and wounded amounted to more than 50 percent; those remaining in the ranks took up defensive positions and are fighting in street battles.
After the commander’s report to Moscow about the losses suffered, an order came from there no later than January 7 to supplement the regiment with wartime specialists and bring them into battle. To Colonel General Seleznev’s objections that there were no trained specialists in the district, Moscow replied: find them. And again they started recruiting cooks and plumbers, retraining them to be machine gunners and snipers within a day... They hired everyone...
I decided to retire from the Armed Forces after 25 years of service. I wrote a report and began a different, non-military life. Were behind best years life and bitter regret for what they turned my army into. And unbearable pain for the 129th Motorized Rifle Regiment, which has gone into eternity.
Episodes
At the end of January 2005, the deputy commander of the Leningrad Military District summoned one of the staff colonels. “I can’t give orders,” the general began, “so I need to go on a business trip to Chechnya as a volunteer... Or find one of my other colleagues...” There were four colleagues, all of the same rank. Everyone, like the colonel himself, had either war experience behind them or liquidated the Chernobyl accident. Except for one officer who never traveled further than the outskirts of St. Petersburg and shone only on the headquarters floor.
It looked like he was going to Chechnya. But the “parquet” colonel balked, demanding that everyone draw lots. The one who was talking with the general took five pieces of paper, drew a cross on one and put it in his earflaps (hats were abolished at that time). Each of his colleagues drew his own fate. The cross went to the “parquet” guy, who changed his face and forced everyone to show their piece of paper: what if the Chechen mark was found somewhere else... Before going to the deputy commander, they advised him to ask for a “warm” position upon returning from a business trip.
“Parquetny” flew to Mozdok, and stayed there for three months, without going to Chechnya itself, and called his subordinates to report to him even a hundred kilometers away. And everything worked out wonderfully for him. And he received an order for his courage, and took up the position of deputy in one of the military schools. And when the time came to say goodbye to the army, the necessary page in the biography allowed the hero to take a high position as a civil servant. True, for some reason he avoids his former colleagues...
Major Yuri Saulyak died from a mine. It would seem that with his considerable combat experience, any tripwire is visible from afar. But I didn’t notice this one, I was very tired - from battle to battle. Only they took Grozny... And the mine did not tear off the major’s leg or arm, nor ripped open his stomach - it hit him right in the head. Therefore, when they brought his headless body to Rostov, they identified the major from the documents that were in his pocket. But this was not enough to send him home. We contacted the commander of Saulyak, saying that his wife needed to fly in: what if someone else with the major’s documents stepped on a mine...
Friends decided differently. Saulyak's relatives were carefully questioned about whether he had a scar or a tattoo on his body. It turned out that the major’s appendicitis was cut out long before he was sent to Chechnya. “Come on,” they answered on the phone from Rostov, “even if not the wife, but someone who knew the deceased well will fly in for identification, then we’ll register the cargo-200.” One of the officers had to go from St. Petersburg to document the scar from appendicitis... Only after that did Major Saulyak return to his homeland in a closed zinc. But I could have spent who knows how long in the morgue...
In January 1995, a teacher from the Omsk Tank School called the CBU. This happened a few days after the New Year's assault on Grozny. So, they say, and so. My son, a tank driver, is serving in Chechnya... And opposite the son’s last name at the headquarters it says “Missing in Action”... The officer on duty in distant Omsk answered that there is no accurate information about the fate of the tanker. We only know that he did not leave the battle. Maybe the wounded man is lying somewhere. Or he makes his way to his own people. If only he didn't get captured...
And a week and a half later the call rang again at headquarters. “Thank you,” the teacher from Omsk said to the same officer, “I found my son. You’ll have to transport him there, he’s dead...”
After the first conversation, the teacher took leave for family reasons and went to Grozny. In the thick of the street fighting, he managed to get to his son’s comrades, who reported that the tanker had burned down along with the tank. But my father crawled to that tank. In the house that was nearby, an old Chechen woman said that she pulled out a burnt guy and buried him in her garden... The tankman’s father dug him up and went home with him to Omsk, literally dragging him on himself. There he lowered his son into the ground for the second time. And the staff reports remained “Missing in action.”
On the second day after the storming of Grozny, January 2, 1995, the commander of the Leningrad Military District received an order from the Minister of Defense: together with the commander of the division stationed in Kamenka, personally appear at each family of the officer and warrant officer who had just died, and give the children a New Year's gift - tangerines and sweets on behalf of the defense department...
Colonel General Sergei Seleznev, who was the deputy commander of the 40th Army in Afghanistan, shuddered at such blasphemy. He imagined how he would walk around Kamenka, completely dressed in mourning, and hand out tangerines “for the dead dad”... And for the first time, the general did not carry out the order. And instead of dozens of congratulatory packages, he ordered a memorial ceremony to be organized in the village. With all the necessary honors.
Soon, a commission was sent from the ministry to St. Petersburg, which confirmed not only the failure to comply with the order, but also the fact of misuse of money at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, where tangerines were replaced with a farewell ceremony for fallen officers and warrant officers.
They did not have time to impose penalties on Colonel General Sergei Seleznev; in December 1996, he and his wife died in a plane crash.
A month after the start of the first Chechen campaign, St. Petersburg journalists learned that a combat control center had been created at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, where all information about the course of hostilities was quickly flowed. And, accordingly, about the losses the army is suffering. After complex approvals, press representatives were allowed into the office, where journalists were shown a list of dead and wounded military personnel. On one sheet of paper.
Are our losses really that small?” - correspondents doubted.
“That’s how we fight well,” the senior officers answered instructively.
And the journalists had no idea that such reports were compiled periodically at headquarters and then destroyed. Previous data were not taken into account and were not summarized, so as not to sow panic.
No classification of secrecy was assigned to such lists. A report on the real state of affairs was sent every day to Moscow, where the final calculations were carried out. Those officers who were allowed to know about the dead and wounded were given their word of honor about non-disclosure, without any instructions or orders. The editors of Our Version on the Neva had at their disposal a miraculously preserved list for January 30, 1995.
Mironov Andrey Anatolyevich, born in 1975, native of the city of Opochka. Russian. Before the army, he worked in the limited liability partnership “1000 little things” in Opochka as a laborer. He was drafted into the army on December 14, 1993 by the Opochetsky United District Military Commissariat. He took part in hostilities in Chechnya, being a deputy platoon commander in military unit 67636 129 MRR. Lance Sergeant. Died on January 3, 1995. He was buried in the city of Opochka at the Maslovskoye cemetery. There is an obelisk on the grave.
Everyone with whom I managed to meet and talk about Andrei involuntarily stumbled over the word “was”. And Olga Nikolaeva, his classmate, managed to express in one phrase the thoughts of all Andrei’s relatives, friends and acquaintances: “People like that shouldn’t die!”
In the photograph of the 1992 graduates of school No. 4, Andrei immediately attracts attention - a very handsome guy. He was taciturn and very reserved, but somehow he attracted people to him. He knew how to make friends and valued true friendship. He drew well. He knew how to cook and, without waiting for a holiday, he could please his parents who came home from work with delicious baked goods. Naturally clean, neat, always smart, helpful, respectful, cheerful - this is how Andrey’s teachers, classmates, and everyone who knew him remembered him.
There were fewer boys in the class than girls, so the girls considered it an honor to sit at the same desk with a guy like Andrei Mironov. In grades 8 and 9, Olga Nikolaeva received this honor.
“I was really lucky,” she says. - Many were not indifferent to Andrey. I wasn't in love with him, but I liked him very much. At times he was simply amazing with his accuracy. The suit and shirt were perfectly ironed, but he, like everyone else, did not walk the line, and was also naughty. In his life, he would never throw a textbook on his desk or throw away a notebook. And my mother always set him as an example for me. On the other hand, he is an athlete, very well read, and this was also attractive. And in class we used to play tic-tac-toe
were playing. Although he is the only son of his parents, he is his mother's
was not a son. Once, on the cover of my diary, Andrei used a razor to cut out my name. I felt sorry for the cover and had to throw it away. I saved the letters and pasted them into an album. Classmates often compared Andrei with the actor A. Mironov and, probably, not only because of the name, but because he had a certain artistry...
Valentina Vasilyevna Markova, Andrey’s class teacher:
You feel terrible injustice when yesterday’s students of yours pass away... How do you remember Andrei? Always collected and extremely neat. He was very respectful of his parents, especially his mother. In relation to girls he was always on top. I didn’t allow myself any vulgarities. It was natural for him to let the girl through the door first. He was not a leader, but he enjoyed the well-deserved respect of his classmates. Always had my own opinion. Sometimes little things remain in the memory. I remember how the kids in the 7th grade were preparing a play for the New Year. Andrey played Vodyanoy. He did great. As it is now before my eyes...
Viktor Valentinovich Alexandrov, Andrey’s coach at the sports school:
In terms of sports, Andrei grew up before my eyes. And as a person, I got to know him quite well over four years. Respectful, responsive, fair. He was distinguished by his ability to work independently and enviable perseverance. He was involved in athletics in a training group. He had the third adult rank. We traveled a lot in those years. More than fifty starts a year took place. It was necessary to combine training, study, and competitions. Only composure, endurance and a clear daily routine made it possible to achieve good results. There was no time to relax. In the morning, training began early. After school there are two more hours of training. Such loads strengthened not only physically, but also mentally.
The group was very strong: multiple regional champions, winners of various competitions. There was someone to look up to and someone to follow. Andrey also became a prize-winner of regional competitions and city match meetings several times Soviet Union. I often compare today's boys with those, and the comparison, believe me, is not in favor of today's boys. Times change, people change, but it’s a pity that because of money problems Traditions are lost, ideals are erased, and there is no longer the former enthusiasm when it really is “one for all and all for one”...
Boys grow up and choose their own path in life. And sometimes this choice is very difficult. Few could imagine that Andrei Mironov would enter the pedagogical institute, and even study physics and mathematics. According to class teacher, in high school he preferred the humanities. Friends gathered in all sorts of places: military schools, polytechnic and pedagogical institutes... Andrei, it would seem, had made up his mind, but soon realized that pedagogy was not his calling. Returned home, worked... And then the army...
What can a mother do when she loses her only son? As it is accurately said in the poems of Alexandra Frolova:
What does the mother have left of her son?
There is a boy's portrait on the table,
Lectures on physics, reisshina,
Bought a moped on the cheap.
A formal tie, a fashionable shirt.
From childhood he was a guy with taste.
Yes, that line of official paper.
The military commissar handed it to me.
It seems that this is said about Andrey. But the last lines do not correspond to the truth, because the parents did not receive a funeral for their son. The result of a long and painful search for the truth was a short letter from the unit commander, consisting of standard phrases appropriate to the situation, a more detailed letter from the political officer and explanatory notes Andrei's colleagues who participated in the identification. Several versions of the death have been put forward, and the parents still don’t know what to believe. Not a single personal item from Andrei was brought to his grief-stricken parents. Andrei was awarded the medal "For Distinction", as is known from the above sources. A. Mironov was awarded the Order of Courage posthumously.