A criminal case against a group of natives of the Caucasus accused of attacking a military town and servicemen of the 81st motorized rifle regiment of the Volga-Ural Military District has been transferred to the Kuibyshevsky District Court of Samara.
The emergency happened on January 20 last year in the village of Kryazh, where the regiment's units are stationed. On that day, several Dagestanis living in Samara, unidentified by the investigation, decided to visit a compatriot who was doing military service. On the territory of the military camp, they tried to go through checkpoint No. 2. Private Sazhin, duty officer at the checkpoint, tried to block their path. A scuffle ensued. The reconnaissance platoon commander, senior lieutenant Zinoviev, who happened to be nearby, intervened in it. As a result, the uninvited guests were escorted out.
However, at about 19:00 the same day, a crowd of about two dozen natives of Dagestan drove up to the checkpoint. The investigation was able to establish only the most active of them - Sadullaev, Shogenov and Abdurakhmanov. Moreover, as it turned out, Abdurakhmanov first served first in the reconnaissance company, and then in the anti-aircraft missile battalion of the 81st regiment. For a military crime by a military court, the Dagestani was sent to a disciplinary battalion. And only recently he was transferred to the reserve.
Judging by the cries, the Caucasians intended to settle scores with Senior Lieutenant Zinoviev. The outfit on duty at the checkpoint was blocked by the attackers, threatening with knives. The telephone connection with the regiment officer on duty, Captain Belov, was cut off. And the reconnaissance company broke into the barracks without hindrance.
From the testimony of the company officer on duty, Sergeant Antsifrov: “I heard the shout of the orderly Sultanov:“ Duty officer, get out! ”I went out into the corridor and saw about 20 Caucasian people entering the company’s location, who pushed senior lieutenant Rachmanin and the orderly away from the door. An intercom telephone was lying on the bedside table, the receiver of which had been torn off. The Caucasians were looking for senior lieutenant Zinoviev, beating everyone who came across them. "
A group of raiders also raided the repair company. There they also beat soldiers, fumbled in their pockets, took away money, cell phones, and other valuable things. In total, 18 servicemen were injured.
The raid lasted no more than half an hour. After that, the Dagestanis quietly left the location of the regiment.
Sadullaev, Shogenov and Abdurakhmanov were prosecuted under articles of the Criminal Code, which lasted for about a year. Russian Federation 213 (hooliganism), 161 (robbery) and 116 (beatings).
Opinions
Alexander Sharavin, reserve colonel, director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis:
If in "hot spots" military units are seriously fortified and officers on duty there in bulletproof vests, helmets and do not part with machine guns for a minute, then ordinary military camps, unfortunately, are poorly protected from attack. Of all the means of notification - the antediluvian telephone. I think it is high time to equip all checkpoints of military units with alarm buttons, as is done in banks. And illegal entry into a military facility, especially with aggressive intentions, should be regarded as a particularly grave crime.
Alexander Samodelov, lieutenant colonel:
In principle, it is not difficult to get into many of our military units. Though with good, even with evil intentions. Unless in Chechnya, the 42nd Division reliably guards itself. In the late 90s, I served in Dagestan. So in the 136th motorized rifle brigade, stationed in Buinaksk, in the dark even the militants entered through the gaps in the fence as if they were at their home. Sometimes with weapons. The soldier was kidnapped. I remember that in 1998 bandits in camouflage took privates Stepanov, Yerzhanov and Aleev straight from the military town of the brigade. They were transported to Chechnya, and then returned for a ransom. Now there is no such a mess and there is still a hot spot. But in the depths of Russia, military camps are not guarded so carefully.
“Grachev said that we are mercenaries, right? Why don't we serve in the army ?! Padla! We were just following the order! " - Nikolay Potekhin from the Guards Kantemirovskaya tank division tried in vain to hide the tears on his burnt face with bandaged hands. He, the driver of the T-72 tank, was betrayed not only by his own Minister of Defense: when the tank was knocked out, he, wounded, was thrown there to burn alive by the officer - the vehicle commander. Chechens pulled the warrant out of the burning tank, it was on November 26, 1994. Formally, the military was sent on an adventure by the Chekists: people were recruited by special departments. Then the names of Colonel-General Aleksey Molyakov - the head of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate of the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation (FSK, as the FSB was called from 1993 to 1995) - and a certain Lieutenant Colonel with a sonorous surname Dubin - the head of the special department of the 18th separate motorized rifle brigade. Ensign Potekhin was immediately given a million rubles - at the rate of that month, about $ 300. They promised two or three more ...
“We were told that we need to protect the Russian-speaking population,” said the ensign. - We took them by plane from Chkalovsky to Mozdok, where we began to prepare tanks. And on the morning of November 26, we received the order: to move to Grozny. " There was no clearly defined task: you will enter, they say, the Dudayevites themselves and will scatter. And the militants of Labazanov, who went over to the opposition to Dudayev, worked as infantry escort. As the participants in that "operation" said, the militants did not know how to handle weapons, and in general they quickly dispersed to rob the nearby stalls. And then grenade launchers suddenly hit the sides ... Out of about 80 Russian servicemen, about 50 were taken prisoner then, six were killed.
On December 9, 1994, Nikolai Potekhin and Alexei Chikin, among other prisoners, were returned to the Russian side. Then it seemed to many that these were the last prisoners of that war. The State Duma was repeating about the coming peace, and at the Beslan airport in Vladikavkaz, I watched the troops arrive plane after plane, the airborne battalions deployed near the airfield, setting up outfits, sentries, digging in and settling in right in the snow. And this deployment - from the side in the field - said better than any words that a real war would just begin, and just about, since the paratroopers could not and will not stand for a long time in the snowy field, no matter what the minister said. Then he will say that his boy soldiers "died with a smile on their lips." But this will be after the "winter" assault.
"Mom, take me out of captivity"
The very beginning of January 1995. The assault is in full swing, and a person who has wandered into Grozny for business or for stupidity is greeted by dozens of gas torches: communications have been interrupted, and now almost every house in the battle area can boast of its own "eternal flame." In the evenings, bluish-red tongues of flame give the sky an unprecedented crimson hue, but it is better to stay away from these places: they are well targeted by Russian artillery. And at night it is a landmark, if not a target, for a missile and bomb "point" air strike. The closer to the center, the more the residential quarters look like a monument to a long-gone civilization: a dead city, what looks like life - underground, in basements. The square in front of the Reskom (as the Dudayev Palace is called) resembles a dump: stone chips, broken glass, torn apart cars, heaps of shell casings, unexploded tank shells, tail stabilizers of mines and aircraft missiles. From time to time, the militants jump out of the shelters and ruins of the Council of Ministers building and dash, one at a time, dodging like hares, rushing across the square to the palace ... And here and back the boy rushes with empty cans; behind him three more. And so all the time. This is how the fighters change, they deliver water and ammunition. The wounded are taken out by "stalkers" - these usually break through the bridge and the square at full speed in their "Zhiguli" or "Muscovites". Although more often they are evacuated at night by an armored personnel carrier, on which federal troops beat from all possible barrels. A phantasmagoric spectacle, I watched: an armored vehicle rushes from the palace along Lenin Avenue, and behind its stern, five meters away, mines are torn, accompanying it in a chain. One of the mines intended for the armored car hit the fence of the Orthodox Church ...With my colleague Sasha Kolpakov, I make my way into the ruins of the Council of Ministers building, in the basement we stumble upon a room: prisoners again,
19 guys. Mostly soldiers from the 131st separate Maykop motorized rifle brigade: blocked at the railway station on January 1, left without support and ammunition, they were forced to surrender. We peer into the grimy faces of the guys in army jackets: Lord, these are children, not warriors! "Mom, come quickly, take me out of captivity ..." - this is how almost all the letters that they passed on to their parents through journalists began. To paraphrase the title of the famous film, "only boys go to battle." In the barracks, they were taught to scrub the toilet with a toothbrush, paint green lawns and march on the parade ground. The guys honestly admitted: rarely did any of them shoot from a machine gun more than twice at the range. The guys are mostly from the Russian hinterland, many have no fathers, only single mothers. Perfect cannon fodder ... But the militants did not give them a proper talk, they demanded permission from Dudayev himself.
Combat vehicle crew
The sites of New Year's battles are marked by the skeletons of burned-out armored vehicles, around which the bodies of Russian soldiers are lying around, although time was already coming to Orthodox Christmas. Birds pecked out their eyes, dogs ate many corpses to the bone ...
I stumbled upon this group of damaged armored vehicles in early January 1995, when I was making my way to the bridge across the Sunzha, behind which were the buildings of the Council of Ministers and the Reskom. A terrifying sight: the sides pierced with cumulative grenades, torn tracks, red, even rusty from fire towers. On the aft hatch of one BMP, the side number - 684 is clearly visible, and from the upper hatch, the charred remains of what was recently a living person, a split skull, hang from the upper hatch like a twisted mannequin ... Lord, how hellish was this flame that swallowed human life! In the rear of the vehicle, one can see burnt ammunition: a heap of calcined machine-gun belts, burst cartridges, charred cartridges, blackened bullets with leaked lead ...
Near this padded infantry fighting vehicle - another one, through the open aft hatch I see a thick layer of gray ash, and there is something small and charred in it. Looked closer - like a baby curled up in a ball. Also a man! Not far away, near some garages, the bodies of three very young guys in oily army quilted jackets, and all have their hands behind their backs, as if tied. And on the walls of the garages - traces of bullets. Surely these were the soldiers who managed to jump out of the wrecked cars, and theirs - against the wall ... As in a dream, I raise the camera with cotton hands, take a few pictures. A series of mines that dashed near makes us dive behind the knocked out infantry fighting vehicle. Unable to protect her crew, she still shielded me from the fragments.
Who knew that fate would later again confront me with the victims of that drama - the crew of the damaged armored vehicle: alive, dead and missing. “Three tankmen, three cheerful friends, the crew of a combat vehicle,” was sung in a Soviet song of the 1930s. And it was not a tank - an infantry fighting vehicle: BMP-2 hull number 684 from the second motorized rifle battalion of the 81st motorized rifle regiment. Crew - four people: Major Artur Valentinovich Belov - chief of staff of the battalion, his deputy captain Viktor Vyacheslavovich Mychko, driver-mechanic private Dmitry Gennadievich Kazakov and communications officer senior sergeant Andrey Anatolyevich Mikhailov. You can say, my fellow countrymen, Samara: after the withdrawal from Germany, the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Petrakuvsky twice Red Banner, the orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the regiment was stationed in the Samara region, in Chernorechye. Shortly before the Chechen war, according to the order of the Minister of Defense, the regiment began to be called the Volga Cossack Guards, but the new name did not take root.
This BMP was knocked out in the afternoon on December 31, 1994, and I learned about those who were in it only later, when, after the first publication of the pictures, the parents of a soldier from Togliatti found me. Nadezhda and Anatoly Mikhailovs were looking for their missing son Andrei: on December 31, 1994, he was in this car ... What could I say then to the soldier's parents, what hope to give them? We called over and over again, I tried to accurately describe everything that I saw with my own eyes, and only later, when we met, I passed on the pictures. From Andrey's parents I learned that there were four people in the car, only one survived - Captain Mychko. I accidentally ran into the captain in the summer of 1995 in Samara in the district military hospital. I talked to the wounded man, began to show pictures, and he literally stuck into one of them: “This is my car! And this is Major Belov, there is no one else ... "
15 years have passed since then, but I know for certain the fate of only two, Belov and Mychko. Major Artur Belov is that charred man on the armor. Fought in Afghanistan awarded the order... Not so long ago I read the words of the commander of the 2nd battalion Ivan Shilovsky about him: Major Belov perfectly fired any weapon, neat - even in Mozdok on the eve of the campaign to Grozny he always walked with a white collar and arrows on his trousers made with a coin, a beard, which is why he ran into the comment of the commander of the 90th Panzer Division, Major General Nikolai Suryadny, although the charter allows you to wear a beard during hostilities. The division commander was not too lazy to call Samara by satellite phone to give the order: to deprive Major Belov of his thirteenth salary ...
How Artur Belov died is not known for certain. It looks like when the car was hit, the major tried to jump out through the top hatch and was killed. Yes, and remained on the armor. At least, this is what Viktor Mychko says: “Nobody has given us any combat mission, only an order over the radio: to enter the city. Kazakov was sitting at the levers, Mikhailov in the stern, next to the radio station - providing communication. Well, I am with Belov. At twelve o'clock in the afternoon ... We didn’t really understand anything, we didn’t even have time to fire a single shot - neither from a cannon, nor from a machine gun, nor from machine guns. It was sheer hell. We did not see anything or anyone, the side of the car was shaking from the hits. Everything was shooting from everywhere, we no longer had any other thoughts, except for one - to get out. The radio was disabled by the first hits. We were just shot like a range target. We didn’t even try to shoot back: where to shoot if you don’t see the enemy, but you can see it yourself? Everything was like a nightmare, when it seems that eternity lasts, but only a few minutes have passed. We are hit, the car is on fire. Belov rushed into the upper hatch, and blood immediately gushed at me - he was cut off by a bullet, and he hovered on the tower. I jumped out of the car myself ... "
However, some colleagues - but not eyewitnesses! - later they began to claim that the major burned to death: he fired from a machine gun until he was wounded, tried to get out of the hatch, but the militants poured gasoline on him and set it on fire, and the BMP itself, they say, did not burn at all and its ammunition did not explode. Others agreed to the point that Captain Mychko abandoned Belov and the soldiers, even "handed over" them to the Afghan mercenaries. And the Afghans, they say, to the veteran afghan war and took revenge. But there were no Afghan mercenaries in Grozny - the origins of this legend, like the myth of "white tights", must apparently be sought in the basements of the Lubyaninformburo. And the investigators were able to inspect BMP # 684 not earlier than February 1995, when the damaged equipment was evacuated from the streets of Grozny. Arthur Belov was identified first by the watch on his arm and his waist belt (it was some kind of special one, bought back in Germany), then by his teeth and a plate in the spine. The Order of Courage posthumously, as Shilovsky argued, was knocked out of the bureaucrats only on the third attempt.
Tomb of an unidentified soldier
A shrapnel pierced Captain Viktor Mychko's chest, damaging a lung, there were still wounds in the arm and leg: "I stuck out to the waist - and suddenly the pain fell back, I don't remember anything else, I woke up in the bunker." The unconscious captain was pulled out of the wrecked car, as many say, by the Ukrainians who fought on the side of the Chechens. They, apparently, knocked out this BMP. About one of the Ukrainians who captured the captain, something is now known: Alexander Muzychko, nicknamed Sashko Bily, seems to be from Kharkov, but lived in Rovno. In general, Viktor Mychko woke up in captivity - in the basement of the Dudayev palace. Then there was an operation in the same basement, release, hospitals and a host of problems. But more on that below.
Soldier Dmitry Kazakov and Andrei Mikhailov were not among those who survived, their names were not among the identified dead, for a long time they were both listed as missing. Now they are officially recognized as dead. However, in 1995, Andrei Mikhailov's parents, in a conversation with me, said: yes, we received a coffin with the body, we buried it, but it was not our son.
The story is as follows. In February, when the fighting in the city subsided and the wrecked cars were removed from the streets, it was time for identification. Of the entire crew, only Belov was officially identified. Although, as Nadezhda Mikhailova told me, he had a tag with the number of a completely different BMP. And there were two more bodies with tags of the 684th BMP. More precisely, not even bodies - shapeless charred remains. The saga with identification lasted four months and on May 8, 1995, the one whom the examination identified as Andrei Mikhailov, the guard of the senior sergeant of the communications company of the 81st regiment, found his peace in the cemetery. But for the parents of the soldier, the identification technology remained a mystery: the military refused to talk to them about this then outright, genetic tests were definitely not carried out. Maybe it would be worth to spare the nerves of the reader, but still it is impossible to do without details: the soldier was without a head, without arms, without legs, everything was burnt. There was nothing with him - no documents, no personal belongings, no suicide medallion. Military doctors from a hospital in Rostov-on-Don told the parents that they had allegedly carried out the examination using an X-ray of the chest. But then they suddenly changed the version: the blood group was determined by the bone marrow and by the method of elimination it was calculated that one was Kazakov. The other means Mikhailov ... Blood type - and nothing else? But the soldiers could have been not only from another BMP, but also from another unit! The blood group is another proof: four groups and two rhesus, eight variants per thousand corpses ...
It is clear that the parents did not believe also because it is impossible for a mother's heart to come to terms with the loss of a son. However, there were good reasons for their doubts. In Togliatti, not only the Mikhailovs received a funeral and a zinc coffin, in January 1995 the messengers of death knocked on many. Then came the coffins. And one family, having mourned and buried their deceased son, in the same May 1995 received a second coffin! The mistake came out, they said in the military registration and enlistment office, the first time we sent the wrong one, but this time it was definitely yours. Who was buried first? How was it to believe after that?
In 1995, Andrei Mikhailov's parents traveled to Chechnya several times, hoping for a miracle: suddenly in captivity? They ransacked the cellars of Grozny. There were also in Rostov-on-Don - in the infamous 124th medico-forensic laboratory of the Ministry of Defense. They told how boorish, drunken "guardians of bodies" met them there. Several times Andrei's mother examined the remains of those killed in the carriages, but she did not find her son. And I was amazed that in six months no one even tried to identify these several hundred killed: “Everything is perfectly preserved, facial features are clear, everyone can be identified. Why can't the Ministry of Defense take pictures by sending them out to the districts, checking them with photographs from personal files? Why should we mothers ourselves, at our own expense, travel thousands and thousands of kilometers to find, identify and take our children - again at our own pittance? The state took them into the army, it threw them into the war, and then there it forgot - the living and the dead ... Why can't the army, humanly, at least pay its last debt to the fallen boys? "
"Nobody set the task"
Then I learned a lot about my fellow countryman. Andrey Mikhailov was drafted in March 1994. They sent to serve not far, to Chernorechye, where the 81st regiment withdrawn from Germany was based. It is a stone's throw from Togliatti to Chernorechye, so his parents visited Andrei often. Service as service, there was hazing. But the parents are firmly convinced that no one was engaged in combat training in the regiment. Because from March to December 1994, Andrei held an assault rifle in his hands only three times: on the oath and twice more at the shooting range - the fathers-commanders became generous by as much as nine rounds. And in the sergeant's training, in fact, they did not teach him anything, although they gave him stripes. The son honestly told his parents what he was doing in Chernorechye: from morning till night he built summer cottages and garages for gentlemen officers, nothing more. He described in detail how they set up some kind of dacha, a general's or a colonel's: the boards were polished with a plane to a mirror shine, and they were adjusted to one another until they were sweaty. After that, I met with Andrey's colleagues in Chernorechye: they confirm that it was so, all the "combat" training - the construction of summer cottages and the maintenance of officer families. A week before being sent to Chechnya, the radio was turned off in the barracks, and televisions were taken out. Parents, who managed to attend the dispatch of their children, claimed: the soldiers had their military cards taken away. The last time the parents saw Andrei was just before the regiment was sent to Chechnya. Everyone already knew that they were going to war, but they drove dark thoughts away from themselves. The parents filmed the last evening with their son on a video camera. They convinced me that when they look at the film, they see that even then the stamp of tragedy lay on Andrei's face: he was gloomy, did not eat anything, he gave the pies to his colleagues ...
By the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the once elite regiment was a pitiful sight. Almost none of the regular officers who served in Germany remained, and 66 officers of the regiment were not regular officers at all - "two-year students" from civilian universities with military departments! For example, Lieutenant Valery Gubarev, commander of a motorized rifle platoon, a graduate of the Novosibirsk Metallurgical Institute: he was drafted into the army in the spring of 1994. He was already in the hospital telling how grenade launchers and a sniper were sent to him at the last moment before the battle. "The sniper says: 'Show me how to shoot.' And the grenade launchers - about the same ... Already in the column to line up, and I train all the grenade launchers ... "Commander
Of the 81st regiment, Alexander Yaroslavtsev later admitted: “People, to be honest, were poorly trained, some of them drove little BMP, some fired little. And from such specific types of weapons as a grenade launcher and a flamethrower, the soldiers did not shoot at all. "
Lieutenant Sergei Terekhin, the commander of a tank platoon, wounded during the assault, claimed that only two weeks before the first (and last) battle, his platoon was manned. And in the 81st regiment itself, half of the personnel was missing. This was confirmed by the chief of staff of the regiment Semyon Burlakov: “We concentrated in Mozdok. We were given two days to reorganize, after which we marched off to Grozny. At all levels, we reported that a regiment with such a composition was not ready to conduct hostilities. We were considered a mobile unit, but we were staffed in peacetime: we had only 50 percent of the personnel. But most importantly, there was no infantry in the motorized rifle squads, only the crews of combat vehicles. There were no shooters directly, those who were supposed to ensure the safety of combat vehicles. Therefore, we walked with what is called “bare armor”. And, again, the overwhelming majority of the platoon officers are two-year-olds who had no idea about the conduct of hostilities. The driver-mechanics only knew how to start the car and get under way. Operator gunners could not shoot from combat vehicles at all. "
Neither battalion commanders, nor company and platoon commanders had maps of Grozny: they did not know how to navigate in a strange city! The commander of the regiment's communications company (Andrey Mikhailov served in this company), Captain Stanislav Spiridonov, said in an interview to Samara journalists: “Maps? There were maps, but all of them were different, of different years, they did not fit together, even the names of the streets are different. " However, platoon-two-year-olds didn't know how to read maps at all. “Here the chief of staff of the division got in touch with us,” Gubarev recalled, “and personally set the task: the 5th company along Chekhov - to the left, and to us, the 6th company - to the right. So he said - to the right. Just right. "
When the offensive began combat mission the shelf changed every three hours, so we can safely assume that it was not there. Later, the regiment commander, giving numerous interviews in the hospital, was unable to intelligibly explain who set him the task and what. First they had to take the airport, moved out - a new order, turned around - again the order to go to the airport, then another introductory one. And on the morning of December 31, 1995, about 200 combat vehicles of the 81st regiment (according to other sources - about 150) moved to Grozny: tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles ...
They did not know anything about the enemy: no one provided the regiment with intelligence, and they themselves did not conduct reconnaissance. The 1st battalion, which was marching in the first echelon, entered the city at 6 am, and the 2nd battalion entered the city with a gap of five o'clock - at 11 am! By this time, little remained of the first battalion, the second was on its way to its death. BMP number 684 was in the second echelon.
They also say that a day or two before the battle, many soldiers were given medals - so to speak, in advance, as an incentive. It was the same in other units. In early January 1995, a Chechen militia showed me a certificate for the medal "For Distinction in Military Service", 2nd degree, which was found on a deceased soldier. The document read: Private Asvan Zazatdinovich Ragiev was awarded by order of the Minister of Defense No. 603 dated December 26, 1994. The medal was awarded to the soldier on December 29, and he died on December 31 - later I will find this name in the list of the dead soldiers of the 131st Maykop motorized rifle brigade.
The regiment commander later argued that when setting a combat mission, “special attention was paid to the inadmissibility of destroying people, buildings, and objects. We had the right to open only return fire. " But the driver-mechanic of the T-80 tank, junior sergeant Andrei Yurin, when he was in the Samara hospital, recalled: “No, no one set the task, they just stood in a column and went. True, the company commander warned: “If anything - shoot! A child on the road - push. " That's the whole task.
Control over the regiment was lost in the first hours. The Yaroslavtsev regiment commander was wounded and out of action, he was replaced by Burlakov - he was also wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Aydarov was the next to take over the reins. Survivors almost unanimously spoke of him very unflattering. The softest of all is Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Shilovsky, the commander of the 2nd battalion: "Aydarov showed obvious cowardice during the hostilities." According to the battalion commander, having entered Grozny, this "regiment commander" placed his BMP in the arch of the building near Ordzhonikidze Square, set up guards and sat there all the time of the battle, having lost control of the people entrusted to him. And the zamkomdiv, trying to regain control, winged on the air: “Aydarov [pip-pip-pip]! And you, coward, where are you hiding ?! " Lieutenant Colonel Shilovsky claimed: Aidarov "later got out of the city at the first opportunity, leaving people behind." And then, when the remnants of the regiment were taken to rest and put in order, “the regiment was ordered to re-enter the city to support the units already entrenched there. Aydarov discouraged the officers from continuing fighting... He tried to persuade them not to enter the city: “You will get nothing for this, motivate it by the fact that you do not know people, there are not enough soldiers. And they'll demote me for that, so you'd better ... "
The regiment's losses were terrible, the number of those killed was not made public and is reliably unknown to this day. According to the data of the former chief of staff of the regiment, posted on one of the websites, they died
56 people and 146 were injured. However, according to another authoritative, although far from complete list of losses, the 81st regiment then lost at least 87 people killed. There is also evidence that immediately after the New Year's battles, about 150 units of "cargo 200" were delivered to the Kurumoch airfield in Samara. According to the commander of the communications company, out of 200 people of the 1st battalion of the 81st regiment, 18 survived! And of the 200 combat vehicles in the ranks, 17 remained - the rest burned down on the streets of Grozny. (The chief of staff of the regiment admitted the loss of 103 units of military equipment.) Moreover, the losses were borne not only from the Chechens, but also from their artillery, which had been nailing Grozny completely aimlessly since the evening of December 31, but no longer regretted the shells.
When the wounded Colonel Yaroslavtsev was in the hospital, one of the Samara journalists asked him: how would the regiment commander act if he knew what he knows now about the enemy and the city? He replied: "I would report on command and act in accordance with the given order."
The Russian army, as a military formation inheriting the traditions of the Soviet Army, has many heroes, both among people and among entire units. One of these units is the 81st Motorized Rifle Regiment (MSR), called Petrakuvsky. The full name of the regiment consists of a listing of many military awards, which are real evidence of its valor and glory, and it looks like this - the 81st Guards Petrakuvsky twice Red Banner Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky motorized rifle regiment.
The history of the Petrakuvsky regiment can be divided into several stages, which, smoothly flowing into one another, stretch back to our days. In this article, we will try to consider the combat path of the regiment, focusing on the last heroic and at the same time inglorious battle, which is still fresh in people's memory - the storming of Grozny in the first Chechen campaign of 1994-95.
BEGINNING: THE PRE-WAR YEARS
The time before World War II was a period of high-profile political transformations in Europe, saber rattling by two European predators - Nazi Germany and Soviet Union... Be that as it may, either the Union was preparing for aggression, or preparing to repel aggression from other countries (read Germany), but in any case, the army was urgently reorganized. This reorganization affected both the equipping of existing units with new types of weapons, and the creation of new units, formations and even armies.
Against the background of such a process in the army, the 81st Petrakuvsky motorized rifle regiment was created. True, at the time of its creation, it had a different serial number. It was the 210th Infantry Regiment as part of the 82nd Division. The regiment was formed in the late spring of 1939, the place of registration of the regiment was the Ural Military District. This year for the Soviet Union was characterized by military operations in Manchuria, therefore, the 81st Petrakuvsky regiment (we will call it by that more familiar name) was hastily transferred to Khalkhin Gol, together with its native 82nd rifle division.
Here the Petrakuvsky regiment received its first baptism of fire, while receiving gratitude from the command. Tension in the region did not subside even after the end of hostilities, and it was decided to leave the units that fought in Manchuria in a new place. So the 81st Petrakuvsky regiment was relocated from the Urals to Mongolia, to the city of Choibalsan.
START: WAR
The 81st (210th) motorized rifle regiment met the beginning of the Great Patriotic War at the place of permanent deployment in Mongolia. And only in the fall of 1941, when the situation was Western front was very tense, the 81st regiment, as part of its own division, was ordered to go into the thick of things - into the battle for Moscow. The 81st motorized rifle regiment fought its first battle with the German invaders on October 25, 1941, near the station village of Dorokhovo. The battles for Moscow were long and bloody, only in the spring of 1942 significant successes were achieved. Many units have received government awards. Among these units was the 210th Motorized Rifle Regiment, which received the right to be called the Guards Regiment for courage and heroism in the battles for Moscow. At the same time, the regiment received a new serial number, from March 18, 1942, it was called the 6th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment. A little later, the regiment was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
On June 17, 1942, the 6th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment was reorganized into the 17th Guards Mechanized Brigade. The brigade was part of the 6th Mechanized Corps of the 4th Panzer Army. The further combat path was no less glorious than its beginning in this bloody war. The brigade took part in many landmark battles of the Great Patriotic War. The end of the war was partly found in Czechoslovakia. For special bravery in battles, the brigade was awarded the Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky. And for the capture of the town of Petraków, the brigade received the title of Petraków, this happened in January 1945.
THE MATURE YEARS: POST-WAR
IN post-war time The 17th Mechanized Brigade was again reorganized into a mechanized regiment, which received all the rights to the awards of its predecessors, and the 17th Guards Mechanized Petrakuvsky Regiment was renamed twice Red Banner Orders of Kutuzov, Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky. At some point, the regiment was even turned into a separate mechanized battalion, this happened against the backdrop of the post-war reduction of the army.
However, with the beginning of the Cold War, the battalion was again transformed into a mechanized regiment, and in 1957 it received a modern serial number and began to bear the name 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment. The regiment was in the Western Group of Forces in the town of Karlhost. The 81st regiment managed to take part in the so-called liberation campaign in Czechoslovakia, it was in 1968.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 81st regiment was part of the Western Group of Forces in Germany. During this time, it was reorganized several times and transferred to new states. In 1993, the ZGV was liquidated, and the 81st regiment was withdrawn from Germany to a new deployment site, which was in the Samara region.
NEWEST STORY: BLOOD TIME
With the collapse of the Union centrifugal forceshaving severed ties between the once fraternal republics, they continued to tear apart the Russian Federation as well. These forces were strengthened many times over by separatist sentiments fueled from outside in some Caucasian republics. In addition, the country's leadership was worried about the fairly large oil reserves in the region, as well as about oil and gas communications. All together, this initially provoked a conflict with the Chechen Republic, which later grew into a full-scale war.
Serious hostilities on the territory of Chechnya began at the end of 1994. From the first days, the 81st regiment, which was part of the NORTH group, took part in this. While participating in the disarmament of illegal military formations (as this operation was officially called), the regiment was commanded by Colonel Yaroslavtsev (who was seriously wounded during the storming of Grozny), the chief of staff was Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov (also wounded in Grozny).
The most serious and significant event for the regiment's personnel in the post-war years is the military operation called the assault on the capital of the Chechen Republic, the city of Grozny. The purpose of the operation was to capture the capital of the rebellious republic, in which the main forces were located, as well as the leadership of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria. For this task, several groups were formed, one of which included the Petrakovsky regiment. At that time, the regiment consisted of more than 1,300 personnel, 96 infantry fighting vehicles, 31 tanks and more than 20 pieces of artillery pieces and mortars.
It is worth noting that in comparison, even with the times of 5 years ago, the regiment made a depressing impression. Many of the officers who served in Germany quit their jobs, they were replaced by graduate students of military departments. In addition, the personnel of the regiment's divisions were completely untrained. The soldiers had only records in military cards about their positions, there was no real knowledge and skills at all. Mechanics of infantry fighting vehicles and tanks had little experience in driving, the shooters practically did not perform live firing from small arms, not to mention grenade launchers and mortars. In addition, immediately before being sent to Chechnya, the most prepared and trained specialists left (transferred) the most trained and trained specialists, the lack of which subsequently cost the units dearly.
As such, there was no preparation for the introduction of troops into Chechnya, the personnel were simply loaded into a train and taken away. According to the surviving participants in those events, combat training classes were held even during the journey, right in the carriages. Upon arrival in Mozdok, the regiment received 2 days to prepare, and two days later made a march to Grozny. At that time, the 81st regiment was staffed according to the peacetime state, which was only 50% of the war state. Most importantly, motorized rifle units were not equipped with simple infantry, there were only BMP crews. This fact was one of the main factors in the death of the regiment's units that stormed Grozny. Roughly speaking, the equipment entered the city without infantry cover, which is tantamount to death. The commanders on the ground understood this, for example, the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov, spoke about this. But no one listened to the words of the command of the units sent to Chechnya.
STORM OF THE GROZNY
The decision to storm the city was made at a meeting of the Security Council on December 26, 1994. The assault on the city was preceded by artillery preparation. 8 days before the start of the operation, artillery units began a massive shelling of Grozny. As it turned out later, this was not enough, in general, as such, preparation for the military operation was not carried out, the troops went at random.
The Petrakuvsky regiment went along with the 131st Maykop motorized rifle brigade from the northern part, as part of the NORTH group. Contrary to the original plan, according to which the troops of the Russian army were to enter the city from three sides, two groups remained in place, and only the NORTH group entered the center.
It is worth noting that the forces for the assault were clearly not enough, according to some data around Grozny, the troops of the Russian Army numbered about 14 thousand people, without even having a two-fold advantage. This was clearly not enough for an attack, and even more so in a city, and even with understaffed units. In addition, there was an acute shortage of maps and clear management. The regiment's tasks changed every few hours; many did not know where to simply move. The Chechens easily wedged themselves into the radio communications of the Russian troops, disorienting them. Even elementary reconnaissance of the enemy forces was not carried out, so the battalion and company commanders did not know who was opposing them.
The beginning of the assault on the capital of the rebellious republic was scheduled for the last day of 1994. This, according to the plan of the command of the Joint Forces, was to play into the hands of the attackers. In principle, the surprise tactic worked 100%, subsequently playing a negative role. None of the defenders of Grozny simply expected an assault on New Year's Eve. That is why the units of the 81st regiment and the 131st brigade managed to quickly reach the city center and just as quickly ... perish there.
Later, some sources began to actively promote such an opinion, according to which the Chechens themselves allowed them to reach the city center without hindrance. russian troopsby luring them into a trap. However, such a statement is unlikely.
The first of the subdivisions of the Petrakovsky regiment was the advance detachment, which included a reconnaissance company, led by the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov. They had the task of seizing the airport and clearing bridges on the way to Grozny. The forward detachment coped with its task brilliantly and two motorized rifle battalions under the command of Lieutenant Colonels Perepelkin and Shilovsky entered the city after it.
The units marched in columns, there were tanks in front, the flanks of the columns covered the ZSU Tunguska. As the surviving participants in those events later said, the tanks did not even have cartridges for machine guns, which made them useless in the city.
The first clash took place at the advance detachment already at the entrance to the city, on Khmelnitsky Street. During the battle, they managed to inflict serious damage on the enemy, but they had to lose 1 BMP, and the first wounded appeared.
The divisions of the regiment were rapidly advancing towards the city center, practically meeting no resistance. Already at 12.00, after only 5 hours, the railway station was reached, which the regiment commander reported to the command. Further orders were received to advance to the palace of the government of the republic.
However, the fulfillment of this task was greatly hampered by the increased activity of the militants who came to their senses. In the area of \u200b\u200bthe government palace, a fierce battle ensued, during which Colonel Yaroslavtsev (regiment commander) was wounded. The command passed to the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov.
The swift offensive was quickly choked up by the fierce opposition of the defenders, who were firing grenade launchers at the equipment of the federal troops. Combat vehicles were knocked out one after another, the columns of the regiment's subunits were cut off from each other and dismembered into separate groups. A big obstacle was created by their own set on fire. The killed and wounded already numbered more than a hundred people, Burlakov was also among the wounded.
Only by nightfall did the divisions of the 81st regiment and the 131st brigade receive a long-awaited respite. However, immediately after the New Year, the intensity of fire from the militants increased. In agreement with the command of the NORTH group units, they left the station and began to break out of the city. The retreat was not coordinated, they broke through singly and in small groups. There were more chances ...
From the encirclement, the advanced units of the Maykop brigade and the Petrakuvsky regiment emerged significantly thinner, with huge losses in manpower and equipment. According to official information, the regiment lost 63 people killed during the assault, in addition there were 75 missing and about 150 wounded.
In addition to two motorized rifle battalions and an advance detachment, the remaining units of the 81st regiment were also in Grozny, brought together into one group under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Stankevich. They took up defensive positions on the streets of Mayakovsky and Khmelnitsky. Competently organized defense made it possible to create an island of resistance, which fought successfully for several days. This group served as a salvation for many of the vanguard soldiers breaking through from the encirclement.
Among other things, the 81st Petrakuvsky regiment took part not only in the storming of Grozny on New Year's Eve 1994. The whole January of the new, 1995, was spent in battles for the regiment. Thanks to the dedication of the guys, Dudayev's palace, an arms factory, a press house - an important center of resistance were taken.
For several more months the regiment was on the territory of Chechnya, and only in April 1995 the part was withdrawn to the place of permanent deployment.
Now one of the most famous regiments of our time is part of the motorized rifle brigade under the same number.
Time carries away from us the events of 13 years ago. New Year's assault on Grozny. The soldiers who found themselves at the forefront of the fighting were labeled almost "lambs thrown to the slaughter." The names of the units that suffered the greatest losses also became common nouns: the 131st brigade, the 81st regiment ...
Meanwhile, in those first days of the Grozny operation, the servicemen displayed unparalleled courage. The divisions that entered that "formidable" in every sense of the city, stood to the end, to death.
Chechen "abscess"
On November 30, 1994, the President signed a decree "On measures to restore constitutional legality and law and order on the territory of the Chechen Republic." It was decided to cut the Chechen "abscess" by force.
To carry out the operation, a Joint Group of Forces was created, including the forces and means of various ministries and departments.
Igor Stankevich (January 1995, Grozny)
In early December 1994, the commander of the regiment, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, and I arrived on official business at the headquarters of our 2nd Army, recalls Igor Stankevich, the former deputy commander of the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, who was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for the January battles in Grozny. - In the midst of the meeting at the chief of staff of the association, General Krotov, the bell rang. Some of the high-ranking military leaders called. “That's right,” the general replied to the subscriber to one of his questions, “I have the commander and deputy of the 81st regiment. I will bring the information to them right away. "
After the general hung up, he asked everyone present to come out. In a tete-a-tete situation, it was announced to us that the regiment would soon receive a combat mission, that "we need to prepare." Application region - North Caucasus. All the rest is later.
OUR REFERENCE. The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment - the successor to the 210th Rifle Regiment - was formed in 1939. He began his combat biography at Khalkhin Gol. During the Great Patriotic War participated in the defense of Moscow, liberated Oryol, Lvov, and the cities of Eastern Europe from the Nazis. 30 servicemen of the regiment became Heroes of the Soviet Union. On the military banner of the unit there are five orders - two of the Red Banner, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky. After the war, he was stationed on the territory of the GDR. Currently it is part of the 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Division of the Volga-Ural Military District, is part of the constant combat readiness.
In mid-1993, the 81st regiment, which was then part of the 90th Panzer Division of the 2nd Army, was withdrawn from the Western Group of Forces and deployed 40 kilometers from Samara, in the village of Chernorechye. Both the regiment, the division, and the army became part of the Volga Military District. Not a single soldier remained in the regiment at the time of arrival at the new deployment site. Many officers and warrant officers were also "confused" with the conclusion. Most of the issues, primarily organizational, had to be addressed by the remaining small backbone of the regiment.
By the fall of 1994, the 81st was staffed with the so-called mobile forces. Then the Armed Forces just started to create such units. It was assumed that, on the first command, they could be deployed to any region of the country to solve various tasks - from eliminating the consequences of natural disasters to repelling attacks by bandit formations (the word "terrorism" was not yet in use at that time).
With the granting of a special status to the regiment, combat training was noticeably intensified in it, and manning issues began to be dealt with more effectively. The officers began to be allocated the first apartments in a residential town in Chernorechye built at the expense of the FRG authorities. In the same 94th year, the regiment successfully passed the check of the Ministry of Defense. 81st for the first time after all the troubles associated with the withdrawal and arrangement in a new place, showed that he became a full-blooded part Russian army, combat-ready, capable of performing any tasks.
True, this inspection did the regiment a disservice.
A number of well-trained servicemen were eager to serve in hot spots, in the same peacekeeping forces. Trained specialists were taken there with pleasure. As a result, about two hundred servicemen were transferred from the regiment in a short period. Moreover, the most popular specialties are driver mechanics, gunners, snipers.
In 1981, it was believed that this was not a problem, the vacancies that had formed could be filled, trained new people ...
Echelons to the Caucasus
The 81st motorized rifle regiment of the PrivO, which was to go to war in December 94th, was quickly staffed with servicemen from 48 parts of the district. For all fees - a week. I also had to select commanders. A third of the officers of the primary level were "biennial", had only military departments of civilian universities behind them.
On December 14, military equipment began to be loaded onto the trains (in total, the regiment was transferred to Mozdok in five echelons). The mood of the people was not depressed. On the contrary, many were sure that it would be a short business trip, that they would be able to return by the New Year holidays.
Due to the lack of time, classes with the personnel were organized even on the train, along the route of the echelons. The material part, the order of aiming, the combat manual, especially the sections related to military operations in the city, were studied.
Another week was given to the regiment to prepare already upon arrival in Mozdok. Shooting, alignment of units. And now, years later, it is clear: the regiment was not ready for combat. There was a shortage of personnel, primarily in motorized rifle units.
About two hundred paratroopers were assigned to the regiment as a replenishment. The same young, unfired soldiers. I had to learn to fight under enemy fire ...
The enemy was not conditional ...
At the time of the start of the storming of Grozny, about 14,000 federal troops were concentrated around the Chechen capital. The city, blocked from the north-east, north, north-west and west, was ready to enter 164 tanks, 305 infantry fighting vehicles, 250 armored personnel carriers, 114 BMD. Fire support was provided by 208 guns and mortars.
In military equipment, the feds had an obvious superiority. However, in the personnel, the advantage was not even up to two to one. The classical theory of battle requires an advantage of the attackers about three times, and taking into account the urban development, this figure should be even higher.
And what did Dudayev have at that time? According to data that later fell into the hands of our security officials, the number of the Chechen army reached 15 thousand people in regular troops and up to 30-40 thousand armed militias. Regular army units of Chechnya consisted of a tank regiment, a mountain rifle brigade, an artillery regiment, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, a Muslim fighter regiment, and 2 training aviation regiments. The republic had its own divisions special purpose - National Guard (about 2,000 people), a separate special-purpose regiment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a regiment of the border and customs service of the State Security Department, as well as personal security detachments of the leaders of Chechnya.
Serious forces were represented by the formations of the so-called "confederation of the peoples of the Caucasus" - battalions "Borz" and "Warriors of the Righteous Caliphs" Aslan Maskhadov, battalion "Abd-el-Kader" Shamil Basayev, detachment "Party of Islamic Renaissance" Salman Raduev, detachment "Islamic Community" Khattaba. In addition, more than five thousand mercenaries from 14 states fought on the side of Dudaev.
According to documents seized in 1995, Dudayev, in addition to regular forces, had at least 300 thousand (!) Reservists. The law “On Defense of the Chechen Republic” adopted in the region of December 24, 1991 introduced compulsory military service for all male citizens from 19 to 26 years old. Naturally, the service took place in Chechnya, in local paramilitaries. A system of regular collection of storerooms was in place: during the period 1991-1994, six full-fledged mobilization exercises were held. Parts of the Chechen army were even replenished with deserters: on the basis of Dudaev's decree No. 29 of February 17, 1992, Chechen military personnel who voluntarily left military units on the territory of the USSR and expressed a desire to serve in the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic were rehabilitated, and the criminal cases initiated against them were terminated.
Another Dudayev decree No. 2 of November 8, 1991 established in Chechnya war department... All military formations on the territory of the republic passed to him, along with equipment and weapons. According to operational data, at the end of 1994, Chechnya had 2 launchers of operational-tactical missiles, 111 L-39 and 149 L-29 aircraft (training, but converted into light attack aircraft), 5 MiG-17 and MiG-15 fighters, 6 aircraft An-2, 243 air missiles, 7 thousand air shells.
Chechen " ground troops"Were armed with 42 T-72 and T-62 tanks, 34 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 armored personnel carriers and armored personnel carriers, 18 Grad MLRS and more than 1000 rounds for them, 139 artillery systems, including 30 122-mm D-ZO howitzers and 24 thousand shells for them. Dudayev's formations had 5 stationary and 88 portable air defense systems, as well as 25 anti-aircraft installations of various types, 590 anti-tank weapons, almost 50 thousand small arms and 150 thousand grenades.
For the defense of Grozny, the Chechen command created three defensive lines. The inner one had a radius of 1 to 1.5 km around the presidential palace. The defense here was based on the created solid nodes of resistance around the palace using capital stone structures. The lower and upper floors of the buildings were adapted for firing small arms and anti-tank weapons. Along the Ordzhonikidze and Pobeda avenues and Pervomayskaya streets, prepared positions were created for firing artillery and direct-fire tanks.
The middle line was located at a distance of up to 1 km from the boundaries of the inner line in the northwestern part of the city and up to 5 km in its southwestern and southeastern parts. The basis of this line was the strongholds at the beginning of the Staropromyslovskoye Highway, resistance nodes at the bridges over the Sunzha River, in the Minutka microdistrict, on Saykhanov Street. Oil fields, oil refineries named after Lenin and Sheripov, as well as a chemical plant were prepared for the explosion or arson.
The outer border ran mainly along the outskirts of the city and consisted of strong points on the highways Grozny-Mozdok, Dolinsky-Katayama-Tashkala, strong points Neftyanka, Khankala and Staraya Sunzha in the east and Chernorechye in the south of the city.
"Virtual" topography
The troops practically did not have clear data about the enemy at the beginning of the assault, and there was also no reliable intelligence and intelligence information. There were no maps either. The deputy regiment commander had a hand-drawn diagram of where he was supposed to go approximately with his units. Later, the map still appeared: it was removed from our killed captain-tanker.
Anatoly Kvashnin set the tasks for the commander of the groupings for actions in the city a few days before the assault. the main task fell just the 81st regiment, which was supposed to operate as part of the "North" grouping under the command of Major General Konstantin Pulikovsky.
The regiment, which partly concentrated on the southern slopes of the Tersk ridge, and partly (with one battalion) was located in the area of \u200b\u200ba dairy farm 5 km north of Alkhan-Churtsky, two tasks were determined: the nearest and the next. The nearest one was to occupy the airport "Severny" by 10 o'clock in the morning on December 31. The next one - by 16 o'clock, capture the intersection of Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets.
The outbreak of hostilities on December 31 was supposed to have become a factor of surprise. That is why the convoys of federals were able to almost freely reach the city center, and not, as it was stated later, fell into a prepared trap of bandits who intended to drag our convoys into a kind of "fire bag". Only by the end of the day the militants were able to organize resistance. The Dudayevites concentrated all their efforts on the units that found themselves in the center of the city. It was these troops that suffered the greatest losses ...
Surroundings, breakthrough ...
Chronology last day 1994 has been restored today, not only by the hour - by the minute. At 7 o'clock in the morning on December 31, the advance detachment of the 81st regiment, which included a reconnaissance company, attacked the Severny airport. With the advance detachment was the chief of staff of the 81st Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Burlakov. By 9 o'clock, his group completed the immediate task, seizing the airport and clearing two bridges across the Nefyanka River on the way to the city.
Following the advance detachment, the column was moved by the 1st MSB of Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Perepelkin. To the west, through the Rodina state farm, was the 2nd mdb. Combat vehicles moved in columns: tanks were in front, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were on the flanks.
From the airport "Severny" the 81st SME went to Khmelnitsky Street. At 9:17 am the motorized riflemen met the first enemy forces here: an ambush from a detachment of Dudayevites with an attached tank, an armored personnel carrier and two Urals. The reconnaissance company entered the battle. The militants managed to knock out a tank and one of the "Urals", however, the scouts also lost one BMP and several wounded. The regiment commander, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, decided to delay reconnaissance to the main forces and temporarily stop the advance.
Then the advance resumed. By 11.00 the columns of the 81st regiment reached Mayakovsky Street. Ahead of the previously approved schedule was almost 5 hours. Yaroslavtsev reported this to the command and received an order to move to blockade the presidential palace, to the city center. The regiment began its advance towards Dzerzhinsky Square. By 12.30, the forward units were already near the station, and the group's headquarters confirmed the earlier order given to surround the presidential palace. At 13.00, the main forces of the regiment passed the station and along Ordzhonikidze Street rushed to the complex of government buildings.
But the Dudayevites gradually came to their senses. From their side, the most powerful fire resistance began. A fierce battle broke out at the palace. Here, the leading aircraft controller, Captain Kiryanov, covered the regiment commander with himself. Colonel Yaroslavtsev was wounded and transferred command to the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov.
At 16.10 the chief of staff received confirmation of the task to blockade the palace. But the motorized riflemen faced the most severe fire resistance. The Dudayev grenade launchers, dispersed among the buildings in the city center, began to shoot our combat vehicles literally point-blank. The regiment's columns began to gradually split into separate groups. By 17 o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov was also wounded, about a hundred soldiers and sergeants were already out of action. The intensity of the fire effect can be judged by at least one fact: only from 18.30 to 18.40, that is, in just 10 minutes, the militants knocked out 3 tanks of the 81st regiment at once!
The units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade that broke into the city were surrounded. The Dudayevites unleashed a storm of fire on them. Soldiers under the cover of infantry fighting vehicles took up a perimeter defense. The bulk of the personnel and equipment was concentrated in the forecourt, in the station itself and in the surrounding buildings. The 1st mdb of the 81st regiment was located in the station building, the 2nd mdb - in the goods yard of the station.
The 1st MSR under the command of Captain Bezrutsky occupied the building of the road administration. The infantry fighting vehicles of the company were displayed in the courtyard, at the gates and on the exit tracks to the railway track. At dusk, the enemy's onslaught intensified. Losses have increased especially in the equipment, which was very tight, sometimes literally caterpillar to caterpillar. The initiative passed into the hands of the enemy.
The relative calm came only at 23.00. At night, the shootings continued, and in the morning the commander of the 131st Omsb Brigade, Colonel Savin, requested permission from the higher command to leave the station. A breakthrough was approved to the Lenin Park, where the units of the 693rd SMR of the "West" group defended. At 15:00 on January 1, the remnants of the units of the 131st Omsb Brigade and the 81st SME began to break through from the railway station and the freight station. Under the incessant fire of the Dudayevites, the columns suffered losses and gradually disintegrated.
28 people from the 1st MRR of the 81st MRR broke through on three BMPs along railroad... Having reached the House of Press, the motorized riflemen got lost in the dark unfamiliar streets and were ambushed by the militants. As a result, two BMPs were hit. Only one car, commanded by Captain Arkhangelov, made it to the location of the federal troops.
... As of today it is known that only a small part of the people left the encirclement from the units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade, which were at the forefront of the main attack. The personnel lost commanders, equipment (in just one day, December 31, the 81st regiment lost 13 tanks and 7 infantry fighting vehicles), scattered around the city and went out to their own on their own - one by one or in small groups. According to official data, as of January 10, 1995, the 81st MRP lost 63 servicemen in Grozny killed, 75 missing, 135 wounded ...
Let the enemy's mother cry first
The consolidated detachment of the 81st SME, formed from the units that remained outside the "station" ring, managed to gain a foothold at the intersection of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets. The command of the detachment was assumed by the deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Stankevich. For two days, his group, being in a semi-encirclement, remaining practically on a bare and shot through place - the intersection of two main city streets, held this strategically important area.
Stankevich competently placed 9 infantry fighting vehicles, organized the "binding" of the fire of the attached mortarmen in the most threatening areas. When organizing the defense, non-standard measures were taken. Steel gates were removed from the surrounding Grozny courtyards and they covered the combat vehicles on the sides and in front. The "know-how" turned out to be successful: the RPG shot "slipped" over the sheet of metal without touching the car. After the bloody New Year's Eve, people gradually began to come to their senses. The detachment gradually pulled together the fighters who had escaped from the encirclement. We set ourselves up as best we could, organized rest during the break between enemy attacks.
Neither December 31, nor January 1, nor in the following days, the 81st regiment left the city, remained on the front line and continued to participate in hostilities. The battles in Grozny were fought by Igor Stankevich's detachment, as well as the 4th motorized rifle company of Captain Yarovitsky, which was located in the hospital complex.
For the first two days, there were virtually no other organized forces in the center of Grozny. There was another small group from General Rokhlin's headquarters, it kept close. If the bandits knew this for sure, they would certainly have abandoned all their reserves to crush a handful of daredevils. The bandits would have destroyed them in the same way as those units that ended up in a ring of fire near the station.
But the detachment was not going to surrender to the mercy of the enemy. The surrounding courtyards were promptly cleared, and possible positions of enemy grenade launchers were eliminated. Here, the motorized riflemen began to discover the cruel truth about what the city they entered was in reality.
So, in the brick fences and walls of most houses at the intersection of Khmelnitsky-Mayakovsky, equipped openings were found, near which shots for grenade launchers were stored. In the courtyards there were carefully prepared bottles with Molotov cocktails - an incendiary mixture. And in one of the garages, dozens of empty crates from grenade launchers were found: here, apparently, was one of the supply points.
Already on January 3, checkpoints began to be set up along Lermontov Street in cooperation with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The posts allowed at least to slip along Lermontov Street, otherwise everything would be shot on the move.
The regiment survived. He survived in spite of those who tried to destroy him in Grozny. He rose from the ashes in spite of those who at that time "buried" in absentia both him and other Russian units that found themselves in the epicenter of the Grozny battles.
For almost the whole of January, the 81st Regiment, “shot” and “torn apart” by evil tongues, took part in the battles for Grozny. And again, very few people know about this. It was the tankers of the 81st who provided support to the marines storming Dudayev's palace. It was the infantry of the regiment that seized the Krasny Molot plant, which the Dudayevites turned from a peaceful Soviet enterprise into a full-scale weapons production. The engineering units of the unit cleared mines across the Sunzha bridge, through which fresh forces were then drawn into the city. Units of the 81st took part in the assault on the Press House, which was one of the strongholds of the separatist resistance.
I pay tribute to all comrades with whom we fought together in those days, - says Igor Stankevich. - These are the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were led by General Vorobyov, who later died heroically in Grozny. These are detachments of the internal troops and special forces groups of the GRU. These are the employees of the special services, about whose work, probably, even today it is impossible to say much. Courageous, heroic people, brilliant professionals that any country would be proud of. And I am proud to have been with them on that front line.
Heroes become
The author of these lines in the first days of January had a chance to visit the belligerent Grozny, just in the location of the 81st regiment, which had just relocated to the territory cannery, having strengthened the checkpoint at the intersection of Khmelnitsky - Mayakovsky. The journalistic notebook is dotted with entries: the names of people who heroically showed themselves in battles, numerous examples of courage and courage. For these soldiers and officers, it was just a job. None of them dared to call what happened on December 31 a tragedy.
Here are just some of the facts:
“... Senior Warrant Officer Grigory Kirichenko. Under enemy fire, he made several trips to the epicenter of the battle, taking out the wounded soldiers in the compartments of the BMP, at the levers of which he sat himself, to the evacuation center. " (Later awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation).
"... Senior Lieutenant Seldar Mamedorazov (" non-combat "chief of the club) broke through on one of the infantry fighting vehicles into the battle area, took out several wounded soldiers."
“... Major of the medical service Oleg Pastushenko. In battle, he helped the personnel. "
“... The commander of a tank battalion, Major Yuri Zakhryapin. He acted heroically in battle, personally hitting the enemy's firing points. "
And the names of the soldiers, officers, meetings with whom then, on that Grozny front line, remained at least a record in a field notebook. As a maximum - a memory for life. Major of the medical service Vladimir Sinkevich, Sergey Danilov, Viktor Minaev, Vyacheslav Antonov, captains Alexander Fomin, Vladimir Nazarenko, Igor Voznyuk, Lieutenant Vitaly Afanasyev, warrant officers of the medical service Lydia Andryukhina, Lyudmila Spivakova, junior sergeant Alexander Litvinov, privates Alik Salikhanov, privates Alik Salikhanov Vladimirov, Andrey Savchenko ... Where are you now, those young front-line soldiers of the 90s, soldiers and officers of the heroic, glorified regiment? Warriors scorched in battles, but not burnt to ashes, but surviving all deaths in this hellish flame in spite of the 81st Guards? ..
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The events of the New Year's assault on Grozny are drifting farther and farther away from us. The soldiers who found themselves at the forefront of the fighting were labeled almost "lambs thrown to the slaughter." The names of the units that suffered the greatest losses also became common nouns: the 81st regiment ...
Meanwhile, in those first days of the Grozny operation, the servicemen displayed unparalleled courage. The divisions that entered that "formidable" in every sense of the city, stood to the end, to death.
Chechen "abscess"
On November 30, 1994, the President signed a decree "On measures to restore constitutional legality and law and order on the territory of the Chechen Republic." It was decided to cut the Chechen "abscess" by force. To carry out the operation, a Joint Group of Forces was created, including the forces and means of various ministries and departments.
“In early December 1994, the regiment commander and I, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, and I arrived on official business at the headquarters of our 2nd Army,” recalls Igor Stankevich, the former deputy commander of the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, who was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for the January battles in Grozny ... - In the midst of the meeting at the chief of staff of the association, General Krotov, the bell rang. Some of the high-ranking military leaders called. “That's right,” the general replied to the subscriber to one of his questions, “I have the commander and deputy of the 81st regiment. I will bring the information to them right away. "
After the general hung up, he asked everyone present to come out. In a tete-a-tete situation, it was announced to us that the regiment would soon receive a combat mission, that "we need to prepare." Application region - North Caucasus. All the rest is later.
REFERENCE: The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment - the successor to the 210th Rifle Regiment - was formed in 1939. He began his combat biography at Khalkhin Gol. During the Great Patriotic War he took part in the defense of Moscow, liberated Oryol, Lvov, and the cities of Eastern Europe from the Nazis. 30 servicemen of the regiment became Heroes of the Soviet Union. On the military banner of the unit there are five orders - two of the Red Banner, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky. After the war, he was stationed on the territory of the GDR. Currently it is part of the 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Division of the Volga-Ural Military District, is part of the constant combat readiness.
In mid-1993, the 81st regiment, which was then part of the 90th Panzer Division of the 2nd Army, was withdrawn from the Western Group of Forces and deployed 40 kilometers from Samara, in the village of Chernorechye. Both the regiment, the division, and the army became part of the Volga Military District. Not a single soldier remained in the regiment at the time of arrival at the new deployment site. Many officers and warrant officers were also "confused" with the conclusion. Most of the issues, primarily organizational, had to be addressed by the remaining small backbone of the regiment.
By the fall of 1994, the 81st was staffed with the so-called mobile forces. Then the Armed Forces just started to create such units. It was assumed that at the first command they could be deployed to any region of the country to solve various tasks - from eliminating the consequences of natural disasters to repelling attacks by bandit formations (the word "terrorism" was not yet in use at that time).
With the granting of a special status to the regiment, combat training noticeably intensified in it, and manning issues began to be dealt with more efficiently. The officers began to allocate the first apartments in a residential town built with funds from the Federal Republic of Germany in Chernorechye.
In the same 94th year, the regiment successfully passed the check of the Ministry of Defense. The 81st, for the first time after all the troubles associated with the withdrawal and settlement in a new place, showed that he had become a full-fledged part of the Russian army, combat-ready, capable of performing any tasks. True, this inspection did the regiment a disservice.
A number of well-trained servicemen were eager to serve in hot spots, in the same peacekeeping forces. Trained specialists were taken there with pleasure. As a result, about two hundred servicemen were transferred from the regiment in a short period. Moreover, the most popular specialties are driver mechanics, gunners, snipers.
In 1981, it was believed that this was not a problem, the vacancies that had formed could be filled, trained new people ...
Echelons to the Caucasus
The 81st motorized rifle regiment of the PrivO, which was to go to war in December 94th, was quickly staffed with servicemen from 48 parts of the district. For all fees - a week. I also had to select commanders. A third of the officers of the primary level were "biennial", had only military departments of civilian universities behind them.
On December 14, military equipment began to be loaded onto the trains (in total, the regiment was transferred to Mozdok in five echelons). The mood of the people was not depressed. On the contrary, many were sure that it would be a short business trip, that they would be able to return by the New Year holidays.
Due to the lack of time, classes with the personnel were organized even on the train, along the route of the echelons. The material part of the weapon, the order of aiming, the combat manual, especially the sections concerning military operations in the city, were studied.
Another week was given to the regiment to prepare already upon arrival in Mozdok. Shooting, alignment of units. And now, years later, it is clear: the regiment was not ready for combat. There was a shortage of personnel, primarily in motorized rifle units.
About two hundred paratroopers were assigned to the regiment as a replenishment. The same young, unfired soldiers. I had to learn to fight under enemy fire ...
The enemy was not conditional ...
When the storming of Grozny began, about 14,000 federal troops were concentrated around the Chechen capital. The city, blocked from the north-east, north, north-west and west, was ready to enter 164 tanks, 305 infantry fighting vehicles, 250 armored personnel carriers, 114 BMD. Fire support was provided by 208 guns and mortars.
In military equipment, the feds had an obvious superiority. However, in the personnel, the advantage was not even up to two to one. The classical theory of battle requires an advantage of the attackers about three times, and taking into account the urban development, this figure should be even higher.
And what did you have at that moment? According to data that later fell into the hands of our security officials, the number of the Chechen army reached 15 thousand people in regular troops and up to 30-40 thousand armed militias. Regular army units of Chechnya consisted of a tank regiment, a mountain rifle brigade, an artillery regiment, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, a Muslim fighter regiment, and 2 training aviation regiments. The republic had its own special-purpose units - the National Guard (about 2,000 people), a separate special-purpose regiment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a regiment of the border and customs service of the State Security Department, as well as personal security detachments of the leaders of Chechnya.
Serious forces were represented by the formations of the so-called "Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus" - the Borz and Warriors of the Righteous Caliph battalions, the Abd-el-Kader battalion, the Islamic Renaissance Party detachment, and the Islamic Community detachment. In addition, more than five thousand mercenaries from 14 states fought on the side of Dudaev.
According to documents seized in 1995, Dudayev, in addition to regular forces, had at least 300 thousand (!) Reservists. The law “On Defense of the Chechen Republic” adopted in the region of December 24, 1991 introduced compulsory military service for all male citizens from 19 to 26 years old. Naturally, the service took place in Chechnya, in local paramilitaries. A system of regular collection of storerooms was in place: during the period 1991-1994, six full-fledged mobilization exercises were held.
Parts of the Chechen army were even replenished with deserters: on the basis of Dudaev's decree No. 29 of February 17, 1992, Chechen military personnel who voluntarily left military units on the territory of the USSR and expressed a desire to serve in the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic were rehabilitated, and the criminal cases initiated against them were terminated.
Another Dudayev decree No. 2 of November 8, 1991 established a Ministry of War in Chechnya. All military formations on the territory of the republic passed to him, along with equipment and weapons. According to operational data, at the end of 1994, Chechnya had 2 launchers of operational-tactical missiles, 111 L-39 and 149 L-29 aircraft (training, but converted into light attack aircraft), 5 MiG-17 and MiG-15 fighters, 6 aircraft An-2, 243 air missiles, 7 thousand air shells.
The Chechen "ground forces" were armed with 42 T-72 and T-62 tanks, 34 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 armored personnel carriers and armored personnel carriers, 18 Grad MLRS and more than 1000 rounds for them, 139 artillery systems, including 30 122-mm D-ZO howitzers and 24 thousand shells for them. Dudayev's formations had 5 stationary and 88 portable air defense systems, as well as 25 anti-aircraft installations of various types, 590 anti-tank weapons, almost 50 thousand small arms and 150 thousand grenades.
For the defense of Grozny, the Chechen command created three defensive lines. The inner one had a radius of 1 to 1.5 km around the presidential palace. The defense here was based on the created solid nodes of resistance around the palace using capital stone structures. The lower and upper floors of the buildings were adapted for firing small arms and anti-tank weapons. Along the Ordzhonikidze, Pobeda and Pervomayskaya avenues, prepared positions were created for firing artillery and direct-fire tanks.
The middle line was located at a distance of up to 1 km from the boundaries of the inner line in the northwestern part of the city and up to 5 km in its southwestern and southeastern parts. The basis of this line was the strongholds at the beginning of the Staropromyslovskoye Highway, resistance points at the bridges over the Sunzha River, in the Minutka microdistrict, on Saykhanov Street. Oil fields, oil refineries named after Lenin and Sheripov, as well as a chemical plant were prepared for the explosion or arson.
The outer border ran mainly along the outskirts of the city and consisted of strong points on the highways Grozny-Mozdok, Dolinsky-Katayama-Tashkala, strong points Neftyanka, Khankala and Staraya Sunzha in the east and Chernorechye in the south of the city.
"Virtual" topography
The troops practically did not have clear data about the enemy at the beginning of the assault, and there was also no reliable intelligence and intelligence information. There were no maps either. The deputy regiment commander had a hand-drawn diagram of where he was supposed to go approximately with his units. Later, the map still appeared: it was removed from our killed captain-tanker.
Anatoly Kvashnin set the tasks for the commander of the groupings for actions in the city a few days before the assault. The main task fell to the 81st regiment, which was supposed to operate as part of the "North" grouping under the command of Major General Konstantin Pulikovsky.
The regiment, which partly concentrated on the southern slopes of the Tersk ridge, and partly (with one battalion) was located in the area of \u200b\u200ba dairy farm 5 km north of Alkhan-Churtsky, two tasks were determined: the nearest and the next. The nearest one was to occupy the airport "Severny" by 10 am on December 31st. The next one - by 16 o'clock, capture the intersection of Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets.
The outbreak of hostilities on December 31 was supposed to have become a factor of surprise. That is why the convoys of federals were able to almost freely reach the city center, and not, as it was stated later, fell into a prepared trap of bandits who intended to drag our convoys into a kind of "fire bag". Only by the end of the day the militants were able to organize resistance. The Dudayevites concentrated all their efforts on the units that found themselves in the center of the city. It was these troops that suffered the greatest losses ...
Surroundings, breakthrough ...
The chronology of the last day of 1994 has been restored today, not only by the hour - by the minute. At 7 o'clock in the morning on December 31, the advance detachment of the 81st regiment, which included a reconnaissance company, attacked the Severny airport. With the advance detachment was the chief of staff of the 81st Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Burlakov. By 9 o'clock, his group completed the immediate task, seizing the airport and clearing two bridges across the Neftyanka River on the way to the city.
Following the advance detachment, the column was moved by the 1st MSB of Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Perepelkin. To the west, through the Rodina state farm, was the 2nd mdb. Combat vehicles moved in columns: tanks were in front, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were on the flanks.
From the airport "Severny" the 81st SME went to Khmelnitsky Street. At 9:17 am the motorized riflemen met the first enemy forces here: an ambush from a detachment of Dudayevites with an attached tank, an armored personnel carrier and two Urals. The reconnaissance company entered the battle. The militants managed to knock out the tank and one of the "Urals", however, the scouts also lost one BMP and several people wounded. The regiment commander, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, decided to delay reconnaissance to the main forces and temporarily stop the advance.
Then the advance resumed. By 11.00 the columns of the 81st regiment reached Mayakovsky Street. Ahead of the previously approved schedule was almost 5 hours. Yaroslavtsev reported this to the command and received an order to move to blockade the presidential palace, to the city center. The regiment began its advance towards Dzerzhinsky Square.
By 12.30, the forward units were already near the station, and the group's headquarters confirmed the earlier order given to surround the presidential palace. At 13.00, the main forces of the regiment passed the station and along Ordzhonikidze Street rushed to the complex of government buildings.
But the Dudayevites gradually came to their senses. From their side, the most powerful fire resistance began. A fierce battle broke out at the palace. Here, the leading aircraft controller, Captain Kiryanov, covered the regiment commander with himself. Colonel Yaroslavtsev was wounded and transferred command to the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov.
At 16.10 the chief of staff received confirmation of the task to blockade the palace. But the motorized riflemen faced the most severe fire resistance. The Dudayev grenade launchers, dispersed among the buildings in the center of the city, began to shoot our combat vehicles literally point-blank. The regiment's columns began to gradually split into separate groups. By 17 o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov was also wounded, about a hundred soldiers and sergeants were already out of action.
The intensity of the fire effect can be judged by at least one fact: only from 18.30 to 18.40, that is, in just 10 minutes, the militants knocked out 3 tanks of the 81st regiment at once!
The units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade that broke into the city were surrounded. The Dudayevites unleashed a storm of fire on them. The soldiers, under the cover of the BMP, took up a perimeter defense. The bulk of the personnel and equipment was concentrated in the forecourt, in the station itself and in the surrounding buildings. The 1st mdb of the 81st regiment was located in the station building, the 2nd mdb - at the station's goods yard.
The 1st MSR under the command of Captain Bezrutsky occupied the building of the road administration. The infantry fighting vehicles of the company were displayed in the courtyard, at the gates and on the exit tracks to the railroad bed. At dusk, the enemy's onslaught intensified. Losses have increased especially in the equipment, which was very tight, sometimes literally caterpillar to caterpillar. The initiative passed into the hands of the enemy.
The relative calm came only at 23.00. At night, the shootings continued, and in the morning the commander of the 131st Omsb Brigade, Colonel Savin, requested permission from the higher command to leave the station. A breakthrough was approved to the Lenin Park, where the units of the 693rd SME of the "West" group defended. At 15:00 on January 1, the remnants of the units of the 131st Omsb Brigade and the 81st SME began to break through from the railway station and the freight station. Under the incessant fire of the Dudayevites, the columns suffered losses and gradually disintegrated.
28 people from the 1st MRR of the 81st MRR broke through in three infantry fighting vehicles along the railway. Having reached the House of Press, the motorized riflemen got lost in the dark unfamiliar streets and were ambushed by the militants. As a result, two BMPs were hit. Only one car, commanded by Captain Arkhangelov, made it to the location of the federal troops.
... As of today, it is known that only a small part of the people left the encirclement from the units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade, which were at the forefront of the main attack. The personnel lost commanders, equipment (in just one day, December 31, the 81st regiment lost 13 tanks and 7 infantry fighting vehicles), scattered around the city and went out to their own on their own - one by one or in small groups. According to official data as of January 10, 1995, the 81st SME lost 63 servicemen in Grozny killed, 75 missing, 135 wounded ...
Let the enemy's mother cry first
The consolidated detachment of the 81st SMR, formed from the units that remained outside the "station" ring, managed to gain a foothold at the intersection of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets. The command of the detachment was assumed by the deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Stankevich. For two days, his group, being in a semi-encirclement, staying in fact on a bare and shot through place - the intersection of two main city streets, held this strategically important area.
Stankevich competently placed 9 infantry fighting vehicles, organized the "binding" of the fire of the attached mortarmen in the most threatening areas. When organizing the defense, non-standard measures were taken. Steel gates were removed from the surrounding Grozny courtyards and they covered the combat vehicles on the sides and in front. The "know-how" turned out to be successful: the RPG shot "slipped" over the sheet of metal without touching the car. After the bloody New Year's Eve, people gradually began to come to their senses. The detachment gradually pulled together the fighters who had escaped from the encirclement. We set ourselves up as best we could, organized rest during the break between enemy attacks.
Neither December 31, nor January 1, nor in the following days, the 81st regiment left the city, remained on the front line and continued to participate in hostilities. The battles in Grozny were fought by Igor Stankevich's detachment, as well as the 4th motorized rifle company of Captain Yarovitsky, which was located in the hospital complex.
For the first two days, there were virtually no other organized forces in the center of Grozny. There was another small group from General Rokhlin's headquarters, it kept close. If the bandits knew this for sure, they would certainly have abandoned all their reserves to crush a handful of daredevils. The bandits would destroy them in the same way as those units that were in the ring of fire near the station.
But the detachment was not going to surrender to the mercy of the enemy. The surrounding courtyards were promptly cleared, and possible positions of enemy grenade launchers were eliminated. Here, the motorized riflemen began to discover the cruel truth about what the city they entered was in reality.
So, in the brick fences and walls of most houses at the intersection of Khmelnitsky-Mayakovsky, equipped openings were found, near which shots for grenade launchers were stored. In the courtyards there were carefully prepared bottles with Molotov cocktails - an incendiary mixture. And in one of the garages, dozens of empty crates from grenade launchers were found: here, apparently, was one of the supply points.
Already on January 3, checkpoints began to be set up along Lermontov Street in cooperation with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The posts allowed at least to slip along Lermontov Street, otherwise everything would be shot on the move.
The regiment survived. He survived in spite of those who tried to destroy him in Grozny. He rose from the ashes in spite of those who at that time "buried" in absentia both him and other Russian units that found themselves in the epicenter of the Grozny battles.
For almost the whole of January, the 81st Regiment, “shot” and “torn apart” by evil tongues, took part in the battles for Grozny. And again, very few people know about this.
It was the tankers of the 81st who provided support to the marines storming. It was the infantry of the regiment that seized the Krasny Molot plant, which the Dudayevites turned from a peaceful Soviet enterprise into a full-scale weapons production. The engineering units of the unit cleared mines across the Sunzha bridge, through which fresh forces were then drawn into the city. Units of the 81st took part in the assault on the Press House, which was one of the strongholds of the separatist resistance.
- I pay tribute to all comrades with whom we fought in those days, - says Igor Stankevich. - These are the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were led by General Vorobyov, who later died heroically in Grozny. These are detachments of the internal troops and special forces groups of the GRU. These are the employees of the special services, about whose work, probably, even today it is impossible to say much. Courageous, heroic people, brilliant professionals that any country would be proud of. And I am proud to have been with them on that front line.
Heroes become
The author of these lines in the first days of January had a chance to visit the belligerent Grozny, just in the location of the 81st regiment, which had just relocated to the territory of the cannery, having fortified a checkpoint at the Khmelnitsky-Mayakovsky intersection. The journalistic notebook is dotted with entries: the names of people who heroically showed themselves in battles, numerous examples of courage and courage. For these soldiers and officers, it was just a job. None of them dared to call what happened on December 31 a tragedy.
Here are just some of the facts:
“... Senior Warrant Officer Grigory Kirichenko. Under enemy fire, he made several trips to the epicenter of the battle, taking out the wounded soldiers in the compartments of the BMP, at the levers of which he sat himself, to the evacuation center. " (Later awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation).
"... Senior Lieutenant Seldar Mamedorazov (" non-combat "chief of the club) broke through on one of the infantry fighting vehicles into the battle area, took out several wounded soldiers."
“... Major of the medical service Oleg Pastushenko. In battle, he helped the personnel. "
“... The commander of a tank battalion, Major Yuri Zakhryapin. He acted heroically in battle, personally hitting the enemy's firing points. "
And the names of the soldiers, officers, meetings with whom then, on that Grozny front line, remained at least a record in a field notebook. As a maximum - a memory for life. Major of the medical service Vladimir Sinkevich, Sergey Danilov, Viktor Minaev, Vyacheslav Antonov, captains Alexander Fomin, Vladimir Nazarenko, Igor Voznyuk, Lieutenant Vitaly Afanasyev, warrant officers of the medical service Lydia Andryukhina, Lyudmila Spivakova, junior sergeant Alexander Litvinov, privates Alik Salikhanov, privates Alik Salikhanov Vladimirov, Andrey Savchenko ...
Where are you now, those young front-line soldiers of the 90s, soldiers and officers of the heroic, glorified regiment? Warriors scorched in battles, but not burnt to ashes, but surviving all deaths in this hellish flame in spite of the 81st Guards? ..