Komsomol Chechnya. Horror Komsomolsky

Unfinished war. History of the armed conflict in Chechnya Grodnensky Nikolai

Fights for Komsomolskoye

On March 1, a detachment of Chechen fighters from the formation of field commander Ruslan Gelaev occupied the village of Komsomolskoye, 10 km southeast of Urus-Martan. According to the Chechen side, the formations that escaped from Shatoi "managed to retreat to prepared bases." (By the way, so far none of the officials has explained how in the already many times "cleansed" village there were excellent fortified areas, pillboxes and bunkers connected to each other by underground passages.) The first time the bandits tried to descend from the mountains to Komsomolskoye on February 29 in the hours along the bed of a dry river lying in a deep gorge. A group of 13 people was discovered and fired upon. The infantry sitting on top immediately destroyed five militants. One of the prisoners managed to "talk". He said that a gang of 500 people migrated from Shatoi to these mountains, that "the Arabs, together with Khattab, went somewhere to the east" and that all field commanders are "goats", and "especially Nuratdin", who disappeared during fight with a bunch of their common bucks. At about four o'clock on March 5, Gelayev led an already large gang of hundreds of bayonets to Komsomolskoye. One group of militants, having shot down a grenade launcher platoon standing on the wooded slopes of the gorge, immediately went to the village. And the other was heading to shoot down another motorized rifle platoon from a different height. Gathering into a fist, the militants used their usual tactics - a large detachment to lean on any one platoon stronghold. A hundred or even more bandits, standing up, continuously poured fire on the FS trenches, not allowing them to raise their heads. And another 50 people crawled uphill under this cover. “A lot, a lot,” were the last words of the platoon commander who died on the mountain. The reconnaissance group and the tank, which were going to help the infantry, were ambushed. The tank was hit by an RPG and lost its course, and the reconnaissance, which immediately lost five wounded, was pushed back by the militants. For four hours, the bandits tried by all means, up to shooting with "flies", to persuade the tank crew to surrender. Failed. But it was not possible, unfortunately, to save the crew. Mortar fire only temporarily drove the bandits away from the tank. Another T-72 rushing to the rescue and a reconnaissance group led by company captain Alexander P-vy also fell into an ambush. The "box" was blown up by a landmine, and the scouts, having entered into battle with superior enemy forces, could not free the tank. When, nevertheless, the infantry made its way to the tank, it was too late. Lieutenant Alexander Lutsenko called for artillery fire, but the militants still managed to get close to the tank, blow up and open the hatches. Alexander and his gunner-operator were brutally killed, the driver-mechanic was taken away with him. On the afternoon of March 5, in order to block the militants in Komsomolskoye, troops rushed to the village from everywhere. Grabbing their belongings, civilians hurriedly left. The environment became denser for the next two days. A participant in the battles, the commander of a motorized rifle regiment, recalls:

“Since October, when we were brought into Chechnya, I had thirty-five casualties, and I lost another thirty-two soldiers in Komsomolskoye. At the very beginning, the "Czechs" broke through the paratroopers and shot at point blank range my platoon of grenade launchers. And then I lost two tank crews. My hair is still standing on end... We were standing upstairs, in the foothills, trying not to let the reinforcements of the "spirits" into the village. First, I sent one crew to help, they set it on fire, the second went - it also burned out like a candle. The boys set fire to themselves. And that's all ... In the last war they were less evil, or something, but now they were pearling in waves, as if they were going on a psychic attack! We hit them with direct fire, and they go and go. When they fought back with difficulty, one hundred and fifty of their corpses were found. In the meantime, Basayev and Khattab's gangs, trapped in the Argun Gorge, were making desperate efforts to break through the blockade ring. The federal forces had to repel attacks by militants in the direction of the villages of Komsomolskoye and Goyskoye. According to Lieutenant-General V. Bulgakov, Commander of the Central Grouping of the FS, the Basayev and Khattab detachments lost their most tactically advantageous defensive positions. “They are encircled, and our main task is to finish them off,” Bulgakov said. On March 7-8, in the Urus-Martan district, detachments of militants attempted to break out of the encirclement near the settlements of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen. This time, too, aviation and artillery were the main effective means of deterring the militants. During the day, aviation made 89 sorties. An air strike in the Vedeno region destroyed the runway and a sports plane on which "prominent" Chechen leaders planned to leave the territory of the republic. On March 8, 22 militants of the "elite" unit "Borz" ("Wolf") under the command of Kh. Islamov were neutralized. This detachment was known for its cruelty and hatred towards Russian servicemen. Near the village of Selmentauzen, 73 militants from the Khat-taba detachment surrendered with weapons in their hands. According to the commander of the Eastern Group, Major General S. Makarov, 30 militants were brought to the FS location by their field commander M. Adaev. He also said where more than 40 seriously wounded of his subordinates are still, who are unable to come on their own. In addition to machine guns, 3 KamAZ vehicles with anti-aircraft guns and an army tractor were confiscated from the militants. According to the Minister of Defense of Russia I. Sergeev, the number of bandits who made a breakthrough from the encirclement ranged from 2 to 3 and a half thousand people. According to and.about. commander of the OGV in the North Caucasus, Colonel-General G. Troshev, in the course of fierce battles with the bandits trapped in the Argun Gorge, "in principle, they managed to break the gang of Basayev and Khattab." However, part of the militants still managed to break through the defenses and get out of the encirclement once again. During the military operation in Chechnya, during the first weeks of March 2000, the FS suffered significant losses (272 killed). The First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces published data as of March 10 on the losses of the military service in the North Caucasus - both in Chechnya and in Dagestan. In total, from August 2, 1999 to March 10, 2000, the federal forces lost 1,836 servicemen killed and 4,984 were wounded. Losses of the Ministry of Defense - 1244 killed and 3031 wounded. Losses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - 552 killed and 1953 wounded. Immediately during the operation on the territory of Chechnya, that is, from October 1, 1999, the losses of the Federal Service amounted to 1556 killed and 3997 wounded. On March 9, the command of the federal troops in Chechnya announced that the army and internal troops "established full control over the Argun Gorge, starting from the village of Komsomolskoye and up to the Georgian border." Nevertheless, on March 12, fighting continued both for the village of Komsomolskoye, Urus-Martan District (at the entrance to the Argun Gorge), and near the settlements of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen. Despite significant losses, Gelayev decided to keep the defense to the end. On March 11, units of the internal troops, supported by army artillery, tanks and helicopters, advanced deep into Komsomolskoye. Two Chinese mercenaries surrendered, saying that they "came to work in Chechnya as cooks - to join the Caucasian cuisine." By this time, fierce battles for Komsomolskoye were already in their second week. All this time, the FS command almost daily assured the press that the village would be taken in the coming days, or even hours, that the main forces had already been exterminated and some dozens of bandits remained in the fire cauldron. And then it suddenly turned out that there were already hundreds of them in the village and they were trying to counterattack ... A similar situation took place with the breakthrough of the Shatoi grouping of Khattab into the Vedeno district. C) according to military reports, she was also "blocked", "destroyed and dispersed." Nevertheless, she found an opportunity to regroup and strike at the positions of the tragically killed sixth company.

On March 15, Gelayev's militants in Komsomolskoye continued to resist desperately. The tension of the street beys reached its apogee. With the onset of darkness, the federal units entrenched themselves in the occupied houses and attacked again at dawn. During the battle, an Indian was taken prisoner, who, when asked how he ended up in the ranks of the militants, said that "bandits approached him in Delhi and demanded money," but he "did not have it." On March 16, a controlled minefield was placed on the southern outskirts of the Komsomolsk FS. The statement of the command followed that "the militants were so pressed in the center of the village that they could even begin to break through the armada of equipment standing here." The following interview, taken at the same time from one of them, testifies to how “tightly they blocked” and “pressed down” the militants:

How could you get out of Komsomolskoye if the troops formed a human shield around the village? Lema: At night, of course. The soldier stands at his post, shelling is going on - this is their own shooting at the soldier. The soldier stands and is afraid of everything: he wants to live. In our case, the soldier was sitting under a tree, because the shelling was very strong. We walked ten meters away from him.

Are you sure the soldier saw you? The night is still...

Lema: I'm sure I saw it. He silently jerked the shutter, and we, too, in response. We exchanged "greetings" and dispersed. I understand it this way: the soldier knew that if he fired, we would immediately kill him. And the soldier does not need this war as such - he needs to survive.

Specify: did you leave Komsomolskoye with weapons? Lema: Of course, with weapons. There were cases when they walked in a detachment and 50 people each - past the soldiers who saw us.

What was happening in Komsomolskoye when you were there?

Lema: They hit the village with all kinds of heavy weapons. Civilians became hostages, many died. Sometimes - assaults. Our main forces are in the mountains, and in Komsomolsk - a small detachment. The situation is this: there is a detachment in the village, then a ring of federals, and around the federals are our fighters.

But didn’t your detachment consider such a plan: since people are not allowed out of the village because of you, including boys from 10 years old, then take and leave Komsomolskoye? And thereby save the village from destruction?

Lema: We wanted to at first, but then there was no such possibility -

Why? Were you able to get out? They didn't take people with them...

Lema: People don't come with us, they are afraid of death. We're moving at night, no guarantees.

Well, we got out of Komsomolskoye. What next?

Lema: Pass the posts at night - no problem. But I won't talk about the details.

On March 16, in the southern regions of Chechnya, hostilities moved to Sharo-Argun. The fighting was for control over strategic heights in the Sharoi region. On March 17, a center of resistance arose 2 km from the village of Sharo-Argun, where a gang of militants numbering about 500 people (part of the Khattab detachment) occupied several dominant heights and fired on federal forces. The militants used pre-prepared positions and ammunition. From the side of the FS, the positions of the bandits were subjected to air and artillery strikes. On March 18, in Komsomolskoye, the Novosibirsk special forces detachment "Lynx", led by Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Shirokostup, stormed the hospital, or rather, its foundation, in which the militants settled. The next day, March 19, internal troops occupy house after house. The militants, who no longer have anything to hope for - only two dozen houses in the center of the village remain in their hands - nevertheless continued to fight; trying not to reveal themselves, they fired until the smoke from the explosion of tank shots cleared, and constantly changed positions. Dozens of corpses of militants were found in the houses passed by the FS, and there was no one to bury them. On March 20, federal troops leave the hill in the south of the village. Although shots are still heard in Komsomolskoye - the VVs finished off the last bandits in the basements, the operation is almost completed. Gelaev's gang has been destroyed. During the operation, about 400 militants were killed, 56 were taken prisoner or surrendered themselves. Among the killed and captured bandits there are many foreign mercenaries - Arabs, Ukrainians, Chinese. R. Gelaev and members of his family could not be captured. And here is how G. Troshev describes the assault on Komsomolsky: “On March 4, one of such attempts (breaking through from the encirclement. - Approx. Aut.) was made by a detachment of field commander Ruslan Gelaev, blocked in the areas of Dachu-Borzoi and Ulus-Kert. The bandits used the tactics of infiltrating in small groups, including along the bed of the Goitan River, waist-deep in water. As a result, a significant part of the bandit groups managed to bypass the battle formations of the 503rd regiment and break through to the village of Komsomolskoye. As it turned out, the ultimate goal was to unite scattered bandit groups in Komsomolskoye and capture the regional center of Urus-Martan. Gelayev believed that he would be able to raise here against the federal forces all the Chechens who sympathized with him and then dictate his terms to the command of the United Group. Already on March 5, the village was in our dense ring. And a day later, units of the special forces detachment entered it. Almost immediately, the commandos came under heavy fire and were forced to retreat to the northern outskirts of the village. I instructed Major General V. Gerasimov, then acting commander of the Zapad grouping, to carry out the general management of the operation. My deputy for internal troops, Colonel-General M. Labunets, was directly in charge of the operation. On March 7, the operation began. Subdivisions of the Ministry of Defense, internal troops, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as a special detachment of the Ministry of Justice were involved in the conduct of hostilities directly in the settlement. The total number of "ours" was 816 people. At the same time, as it turned out later, more than 1000 (!) bandits opposed the federal forces. The village turned out to be well fortified in terms of engineering. There were many fortifications equipped according to all the rules of military science. The cellars were turned into pillboxes and withstood a direct hit from a tank shell. In addition, most of the cellars were connected by communication passages blocked by steel doors. In fact, almost every house was turned into a fortress, designed to withstand a long siege. Lalaev, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, continuously requested reinforcements. A gang of field commander Seifulla hurried to help him - about 300 people. But she did not have time to reach Komsomolsky. The gang was defeated by artillery and air strikes. Seifulla himself was seriously wounded and barely escaped. In particular, the fact that the place for the field control post (PPU) of the head of the operation was initially chosen unsuccessfully affected the management of units and subunits. From it, only the northern part of the settlement was visible. Great difficulties also arose due to the unsatisfactory condition and lack of communications equipment for both small units and the operational level. This was aggravated by the almost complete lack of communication discipline. Most of the information, regardless of their degree of importance, was transmitted in clear text. This allowed the militants to intercept information and respond in a timely manner to the actions of the troops, and in many cases pre-empt them ... The militants suffered significant losses, had many wounded, but under fear of captivity they continued to stubbornly resist, to the extent that even the wounded remained in positions. But, in spite of everything, on March 14, that is, a week after the start, the military part of the operation was completed. All attempts by the Gelayevites to break through from Komsomolskoye in the southeast and southwest directions were thwarted by the actions of units of the federal forces. This was evidenced by the large number of those killed in the breakthrough areas. The control of the militant detachments was completely disrupted, only small scattered groups remained, which were destroyed by fire from tanks, flamethrowers and small arms. And the next day, units of the Ministry of Defense, internal troops, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice began a thorough “cleansing” of the village. I had to literally uproot the remnants of bandit groups from the basements and shelters. They were looking for R. Gelaev. About him all this time received the most conflicting information. It was reported that he was wounded and was in a field hospital on March 16–17. The hospital was destroyed, but Gelaev was not found there, he was not found among the dead either. The information that periodically appeared that the bandit had left the village was refuted by the interception data. The special forces of R. Gelaev - the Borz detachment - made an attempt to pull out their commander, even managed to break through in a narrow area into the forest belt adjacent to the village. But the bandits were discovered in time and delivered a powerful fire strike. As a result, Borz ceased to exist. On the night of March 19-20, the remnants of bandit groups made a desperate attempt to break through already in a northerly direction. Caught in the crossfire of our units. In this night battle, 46 bandits were destroyed. Among them is the so-called assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ichkeria, Bilan Murzabekov” (14).

From the book It was forever until it ended. The last Soviet generation the author Yurchak Alexey

Komsomol heteroglossia Andrei (b. 1954), secretary of the Komsomol committee of one of the Leningrad research institutes discussed in Chapter 3, like thousands of his peers, became interested in Anglo-American rock music back in his school years, in the late 1960s . A small fragment of an imaginary world,

The scope of the campaign launched by the Western press is evidenced by the editorial of the Vienna “Kurier”, which speaks of the “Russian Ivan” in this way: “Cynicism from the arsenal of a non-human, to which there is only one answer: sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.” In this regard, in order not to “insult” Hitler in Russia, it should be recalled that Hitler considered the Russians “only” “inferior people.” But the “democrats” consider them to be of a similar kind in general “non-humans”. In Chechnya itself, A. Maskhadov formed a special detachment of ideological indoctrination and propaganda, "armed" with false documents, false film, photo, and video materials. The detachment was created as part of the special operation "Lift" to serve the so-called "free journalists" working in the areas of deployment of gangs. At the same time, according to informed sources close to the financial circles who participated in the Davos forum, it became known that about $1.5 billion had been transferred to Russia to provide "humanitarian aid to the population of Chechnya." According to the same source, the money was intended to lobby the interests of Chechen fighters in the Russian media. The organizers of the action were especially interested in state-owned and Kremlin-loyal media.

Fights for Komsomolskoye

Let's remember the fallen comrades... Komsomolskoye, March 2000

To the soldiers who were at the forefront in the Chechen war, the orders of the command often seemed reckless. Often they were. But orders are not discussed, but carried out. Our story is about the soldiers of the St. Petersburg special forces detachment of the Ministry of Justice "Typhoon".

The Typhoon detachment liberated Dagestan in the fall of 1999, worked in the mountains near Kharsenoi in early 2000. However, the most important test awaited the special forces in March 2000. It fell to them to be in the thick of it during the assault on the village of Komsomolskoye.

Six hundred of our fighters were opposed by more than one and a half thousand militants led by Ruslan Gelaev. The bandits have turned every house into an impregnable fortress. Having no heavy weapons in the first week of fighting, without the support of aviation and artillery, practically only with machine guns and hand grenades, our fighters stubbornly attacked the positions of the militants. Bloody battles for every street, every house, lasted more than two weeks.

For the capture of the village of Komsomolskoye had to pay a terrible fee. Of the hundred fighters of the combined special forces unit of the Ministry of Justice, ten were killed, more than twenty were injured. Eternal memory to the fallen, honor and glory to the living!

Hero of Russia, Colonel Alexei Nikolaevich Makhotin says:

- We combed Komsomolskoye on the first, second and third of March. Our detachment walked along the Goita River. On the left were soldiers of the 33rd brigade of the Internal Troops from the village of Lebyazhye near St. Petersburg, and on the right - the Internal Troops from Nizhny Tagil. The fighting has not yet begun, but the militants have already begun to meet on the way. On one of these days, we saw two militants in civilian clothes from afar saw us and began to run away. One managed to get away, and the other we filled up. Despite the civilian clothes, it was immediately clear that this was not a civilian. His face was the earthy color of those who have spent the winter in mountain caves without the sun. Yes, and in appearance he was an obvious Arab. The head of Komsomolsky's administration was then asked: "Your man?" Answers: "No." But for this incident, we still received a scolding from the authorities: “What are you? Arranged, you know, shooting here for no reason!

On March 5, on the other side of the Goita, SOBR fighters from the Central Black Earth region, those who were walking along with the Nizhny Tagil people, entered the battle and suffered their first losses. They also had deaths. On that day, we were also fired upon for the first time, and we were ordered to retreat.

On March 6, the neighbors on the right again had losses. There was such a situation that they were not even able to take away all of their dead.

In the morning of March 6, we carried out a small operation not in the village, but in the camp of the inhabitants. By this time, they had already been taken out of Komsomolskoye. They camped outside the village about two hundred meters away. Even further, at the crossroads, there was our checkpoint, and the headquarters was located in trailers - six hundred meters from Komsomolsky.

The special operations officer of the division of the Internal Troops “Don-100” tells me: “There is information that there are wounded militants in the camp of civilians. But we probably won't be able to pick them up. Yes, and my leadership is not eager to do this. If you can, then go ahead."

I take the PEPS with me (PPS, police patrol service. - Ed.) and say: "Let's do this: we block, and you take them away, and then we go back together." We burst suddenly into the camp and see that the wounded with characteristic earthy faces are lying on blankets and mattresses. We pulled them out very quickly, so that the population did not have time to react, otherwise they would have arranged a demonstration with women and children, which is usual in such cases.

After that, we broke through to the mosque. She stood in the very center of Komsomolskoye. Here the Nizhny Tagil people ask me to stop, because they were advancing with great difficulty, and we had to keep one line with them.

We go to the mosque. We see that there lies a dead Arab, whom we destroyed on March 5, prepared for burial according to local customs. This alone proves that this is not a resident of Komsomolskoye. Otherwise, according to tradition, he would have been buried on the same day.

The situation was relatively calm - the shooting in our direction was insignificant. The militants, as can be judged by the fire, are somewhere further away. We see a Volga with Moscow license plates coming our way. From the car they ask me: “How is it better to get to the other side here?”. It was an attempt to negotiate with Gelaev (call sign "Angel") so that he would leave the village. The head of the administration of Komsomolsky arrived on the Volga, with him a local mullah. They brought a mediator with them. He used to fight somewhere with Gelaev (like in Abkhazia). Each of them had their own goal: the mullah wanted to keep the mosque, and the head of Komsomolskoye wanted to save the houses of the inhabitants. And I didn’t really understand how Gelaev could be released. Well, he would have left the village - and then what?

I contacted the neighbors on the radio and warned them: "Now I will drive up to you." We sit down with three fighters on a BTEer (an armored personnel carrier, an armored personnel carrier. - Ed.) And let's go. The Volga is following us. We moved to the other side, stopped at the crossroads ... And then suddenly a growing roar of shooting began! .. The fire is still untargeted, bullets fly overhead. But the shooting is fast approaching. "Volga" instantly turned around and drove back.

Nizhny Tagil people ask us: “Punch through the fence for us, and leave!” The BTEer broke through the fence, but then got entangled in it. We think: "Khan to us." I pass on the radio to my deputy: “Take it,“ Dzhavdet ”, take over the command. We will leave as and where we can.”

But we were lucky: the BTEer still got out of the fence. Thanks to the soldiers from the BTEER - they waited for us a little while we ran across Goita waist-deep in water to them. We rushed to the mosque. But then the BTEer began to turn around and crashed into a stone pillar. I smashed my head against the armor! Well, as it turned out later, he just cut the skin on his head.

And on the other side of the river, the war is already in full swing: the militants went on the attack. And from our shore, two BTEERs with fifty fighters were sent to help us along the same road along which we entered. But they couldn't reach us. At one car, the “spiritual” sniper shot the driver, and on the second, he removed the commander.

I told my colonel, Georgich, as I called him: “That's it, no need to send anyone else. We will go out ourselves ”and decided to leave towards the outskirts of the village.

With us at the mosque was the head of intelligence from the 33rd brigade of the Internal Troops, Major Afanasyuk. Everyone called him "Borman". He says: "I will not go, I was not ordered to leave." But, to the honor of this officer, he ordered his soldiers to withdraw with me. He himself stayed, did not leave for a long time, and with great difficulty I still persuaded him to come with us. Major Afanasyuk and his scout Sergei Bavykin ("Ataman"), with whom we were at the mosque that day, died later, on March 10.

We have almost left the village, and then suddenly we receive a command: "Return to our original positions." Orders are not discussed. We quickly return, occupy the mosque again. It's getting dark. I contact my commanders and say: “If I stay here for another half an hour, then tomorrow none of our detachment will be alive here. I'm out".

I understood very well that we would not last long in the mosque against the militants at night. At headquarters, opinions were divided, but my immediate commander nevertheless made a difficult decision for him and gave me the command to retreat.

We see: about twelve civilians with a white flag are walking along the street. I thought it was for the best: "The Chechens shouldn't shoot at their own like a human shield." And in fact, this time we went without loss.

The next day, the seventh of March, was more or less calm for us. The militants turned out to be clearly not thirty people, as the generals had originally said. Therefore, now, taking into account the heavy losses, the leadership of the operation was deciding what to do next. Aviation began to operate in the village.

On March 8, we counted our troops: on the right, there were 130 people from Nizhny Tagil, plus SOBR with four old “boxes” (an armored vehicle or a tank. - Ed.), We had seventy people with two “boxes”. Plus, in the 33rd brigade there are one hundred people with two "boxes". They also gave me fifteen people from the PES. But I ordered them not to shoot at all and to go behind us.

And the front along which we were supposed to advance was stretched for two kilometers. On tanks, the ammunition load is seven to eight shells. There were also UR-70 demining vehicles, which a couple of times with a terrible roar and noise threw their charges of four hundred kilograms of TNT towards the militants. And then we went on the attack.

We reach the first level of houses and see a Chechen woman, an eighty-year-old grandmother. We pulled her out of the garden, showed her where the camp of the residents was, and we said: “You go there.” She crawled.

This is where we started losing. We reach the second level of houses - on the left is an explosion. A fighter from our Pskov detachment, Shiryaev, died. It just tore apart.

Move on. At the cemetery, the river widens, the neighbors go to the side, and our flank remains open. Just in this place there was a small height, which we could not get around. We go to it in two groups. It is felt that the militants have it shot. They knew that there was no way for us to pass by, and from several sides they began to hit this height from a distance of one to three hundred meters. These were definitely not grenade launchers, the explosions were more powerful, but most likely erpege (RPG, hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher. - Ed.) or improvised mortars.

And then it began ... Events unfolded rapidly: an aimed hit on our machine gunner Volodya Shirokov. He is dying. Immediately they kill our sniper Sergei Novikov. Kolya Yevtukh is trying to pull Volodya out, and then the “spiritual” sniper hits Kolya in the lower back: his spine is broken. Another of our snipers was wounded.

We pull out the wounded, start bandaging them. I examine a wounded sniper. And he was seriously injured. Oleg Gubanov tries to pull Vovka Shirokov out - another explosion, and Oleg flies at me head first! Shooting from all sides!.. Again hitting Vovka - it's on fire! We can’t catch on in any way ... We retreat about fifty meters, taking three wounded and one dead. Shirokov remains lying on top ...

On the right flank, too, there is a cut. We report losses. The generals give everyone a command to retreat - aviation will work in the village. Tagil people and we ask first for half an hour, then for another half an hour to pick up our dead.

Then a couple of SU-25 attack aircraft come in and start bombing us! Dropped two huge bombs on parachutes. We hid as best we could: some lay behind a stone, some just in the yard. Bang… and about fifty meters from us bombs enter the ground!.. But they don’t explode… The first thought is a bomb with a delay. We lie still, we do not move. And there is still no explosion. It turned out that the bombs were from the fifties, already substandard. They never exploded, fortunately for us.

The next day, March 9, we again go to the same positions. A hundred and fifty meters away, the militants meet us with a barrage of fire. We can't see the place where Shirokov died from here, and we can't get any closer.

We thought that Volodya was no longer on the hillock. Everyone had already heard about how the militants mocked the dead. Other groups began to ask questions. Somewhere out there, it turns out, a severed hand was found. Our question: “Do you have such and such a tattoo?” No tattoo. So it's not him. And Volodya, as it turned out, was lying in the same place where he was killed. We did not manage to approach the skyscraper that day.

On the tenth of March we go forward with Timur Sirazetdinov. Nearby from the 33rd brigade, guys with a tank cover us. They left them with the tank behind the house, and crawled themselves. Ahead is a bump. We agree: I throw a grenade, and Timur must run across thirty meters to the barn. I throw a grenade over the hill. Timur ran. And then a line from a machine gun from afar ... The machine gunner tracked us, it was understandable.

Timur shouts: "Alexey, I'm wounded! ..". I jump to him. The machine gunner is again pouring water with a burst ... Fountains from bullets are dancing around! "Jackson" from behind shouts: "Lie down! ..". It feels like there is some kind of dead zone where I clung to the ground - the machine gunner cannot get me. I can’t get up - he will immediately cut me off.

And then an officer from the 33rd brigade saved me - he diverted the attention of the machine gunner to himself (his last name was Kichkaylo, on March 14 he died and received the title of Hero posthumously). He went with the soldiers behind the tank towards Timur. The machine gunner switched his attention to them, began to shoot at the tank - only bullets click on the armor! I took advantage of this second and rolled into a ravine that stretched towards the militants. There is a dead zone, no one shoots at me.

The soldiers dragged Timur onto the tank and retreated. I crawled - Timur had a wound in the groin area. He is unconscious. I cut my trousers, and there are blood clots, like jelly ... We pull the leg above the wound, bandage it. Our doctor gives him a direct injection in the heart. We call an amteelbeshka (MTLB, a small light armored tractor. - Ed.), But she can’t find us in any way! .. But the second one, sent after us, nevertheless found us. We throw Timur on it, send him to the rear.

Somehow we really hoped that Timur would pull through. After all, he had been wounded in the first war - fifty-five fragments hit him then. He survived that time. But an hour later, they tell me on the radio: “Cyclone”, your “three hundredth” - “two hundredth” (“three hundredth” - wounded, “two hundredth” - killed. - Ed.). And Timur is my close friend. Went into the shed. Lump at the throat ... I didn’t want the soldiers to see my tears. He sat there for about five to ten minutes, and again went out to his own.

Everyone had big losses that day. No artillery support, tanks without ammunition. We go on the attack with machine guns and machine guns without artillery preparation. Therefore, on the eleventh and twelfth of March, the leaders of the operation again took time out.

On March 11, the Izhevsk detachment of the Ministry of Justice replaced us in positions. We withdrew to stock up on ammunition. As a commander, there was one more thing that worried me. The fact is that twenty snipers who occupied positions in the gorge above Komsomolsky were transferred to operational subordination. And with these snipers, I lost contact. I had to look for them now.

On the way, I stopped at the headquarters, where a tragicomic and very revealing incident took place. We drive up to the sawmill, where the headquarters moved, and we observe such a picture. There are six generals and different journalists running around. It turns out that two soldiers climbed into the ravine for the calf. And here their militants laid fire on the ground and hit them! Everyone is running around, fussing, but no one is doing anything to change the situation.

I was with Vovka "Grump". We grabbed some kind of emteelbeshka, drove up and pulled out the soldiers. Then we went further in search.

While we were looking for them, the commander of the Udmurt detachment, Ilfat Zakirov, was summoned to the headquarters for a report. General Baranov, commander of the Grouping of our troops, came there for a meeting.

At this meeting, a very unpleasant story took place, which had tragic consequences. And it is doubly unfair that General Troshev, in his book on the Chechen war, described it from the words of General Baranov. And he wrote - no more, no less - that there were underpants in the special forces of the Ministry of Justice, who comfortably settled down in sleeping bags in a calm place and did not really want to fight. And only the personal intervention of the valiant General Baranov made these cowards take up their minds and then show themselves heroically.

Until now, I just can’t understand: how could it be written about some kind of sleeping bags and a quiet place, when our position was in the very center of Komsomolskoye, to the right of the mosque, which was not even visible from the command post?

And here's how it really happened. There were always two colonels at the headquarters, the military commandants of Komsomolskoye and Alkhazurovo. They told me exactly what happened at that meeting. Ilfat reports the situation (and before the meeting I told him what is happening in our positions) as it is - you can’t go there, there is a gap on the right flank, the militants are shooting from here. And Baranov told him, without understanding: “You are a coward!”. Only one person stood up for Ilfat then, police general Kladnitsky, whom I personally respect for this. He said something like this: “You, Comrade Commander, are behaving incorrectly with people. You can't talk like that." I heard that after that Kladnitsky was pushed somewhere.

And Ilfat is an oriental guy, for him such an accusation is generally terrible. He, when he returned to the position from this meeting, was all white. Says to the detachment: "Forward! ..". I told him: “Ilfat, wait, calm down. Give me an hour. I'll go out to the height where Vovka Shirokov is lying, I'll pick him up and then we'll go together. Don't go anywhere."

Shortly before that, we stole, secretly from our headquarters, a militant killed, a field commander. There were several of them there, at the headquarters, for identification. And so, through the head of Komsomolsky's administration, we pass on to the militants an offer to exchange him for Volodya. But none of this worked. We didn't wait for an answer. I sent the militant's body to the commandant's office of Urus-Martan. Already on the seventeenth, they ask me from there: “What should we do with him?” I answer: "Yes, bury it somewhere." So he was buried, I don’t even know where.

Then I took four fighters, a tank and again went to that same ill-fated height. And the militants are hitting it with might and main! .. We put the tank in a hollow, the guys cover me. I myself with the “cat” crawled from below to the edge of the cliff, and then threw it and hooked on the boot (there was nothing else) what was left of Volodya. What I saw Volodya - it's scary ... From a healthy twenty-five-year-old guy, only half remained. Now it looked like the body of a ten-year-old teenager - he was all burned out, shrunken. Of the clothes, only shoes remained on the body. I carefully wrapped it in a raincoat, crawled to the tank, loaded it with the guys on the tank and sent it to headquarters.

I was torn apart by conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I was terribly shocked by the way he looked. On the other hand, it was relieved from the heart - he did not go missing, and it will be possible to bury him, as expected, in his native land.

These feelings are hard to describe in words. Quite recently, a still alive, warm person, your close friend, who means so much to you, suddenly dies in front of your eyes for some moments - and you not only cannot do anything for him, but you cannot even take away his dead body, so that the enemies could not mock him!.. Instead of lively cheerful eyes, a bright smile and a strong body, “something” is spread out in front of you, riddled with fragments, burned by fire, mute, wordless ...

I ask on the radio of Ilfat - does not answer. And before that, on the radio, he repeated to me again: “I went ahead.” I told him again: “Wait, do not rush. I'll come, then we'll go together." Then our general gave me an order on the radio: “I am removing you, Cyclone, from command of the combined detachment of the Ministry of Justice. Senior Lieutenant Zakirov will be in command.” Well, removed and removed. I understand him too. He is there among the rest of the generals. Well, that he removed the lieutenant colonel, and appointed the starley, is his question.

I go out to the house where the Izhevsk people went, and I see - there is a detachment. I ask: "Where is the commander?". They point towards the house. I have four of my fighters with me. I also take "Grandfather" from the Izhevsk detachment. He is an experienced person, he participated in previous campaigns. We break into the yard, throw grenades, arrange shooting in all directions. We see - in the courtyard near the house there are two bodies, completely mutilated, clothes - in tatters. This is Ilfat with his deputy. Dead. "Grandfather" threw them on the tank, although it is very difficult to raise the dead. But he is a healthy man.

And it was like that. Ilfat with his deputy entered the courtyard, and they fought with the militants almost hand-to-hand. It turned out that the militants had trenches dug behind the house. Several militants Ilfat and his deputy were shot dead, and the rest of them were bombarded with grenades.

So the Izhevsk detachment was left without a commander. The guys are in shock. I took them back a little. And then generally sent for replacement to the reserve. They still remember it kindly to me. But I really understood their psychological state: it was impossible then to send them ahead.

When the generals yelled at the officers, they reacted in different ways. Someone like me, for example, swallowed it all. I keep shooting and that's it. And someone reacts emotionally, like Ilfat, and dies ... By the way, after his death, I was again appointed commander of the detachment.

Once again, I return in my thoughts to that insulting for me and my comrades-in-arms that two generals allowed themselves: to denigrate in their book a person who was completely innocent of what they accused him of. It was in Komsomolskoye that I realized that the generals who commanded us did not even know the soldiers. For them, this is a combat unit, not a living person. They don't call them "pencils" for nothing. I had to drink this bitter cup to the bottom. When I arrived in St. Petersburg, I looked into the eyes of every relative of the dead - my wife, parents, children.

And as for the conscripts, no one really thought about them up there. So on the eighth of March at headquarters, I asked for a platoon to close the gap on the flank between us and the Nizhny Tagil people. And they answer me: “Here I will give you a platoon, and the enemy will have thirty more targets. There will be more losses. Give me better coordinates, I'll cover with a mortar. Well, what can I say ... Stupidity, unprofessionalism? And you have to pay for it with the most expensive - life ...

On the thirteenth of March, a Shturm rocket launcher drove up to our position. They ask: "Well, where do you fuck?". I answer: “Over that house. There's a firing point." It's about seventy or a hundred meters from our positions. They say: “We can’t, we need four hundred and fifty meters.” Well, where can they gouge for four hundred and fifty? After all, everything that shoots at me is at a distance of seventy to one hundred and fifty meters. This wonderful rocket launcher turned out to be completely unnecessary here. So we left with nothing...

On the same day, the ammunition supply service asks: “What can I send you?”. Before that, there was nothing serious, they fought with machine guns and machine guns with grenade launchers. I say: "Send "Bumblebees" (flamethrower. - Ed.) About eight." Send eight boxes of four pieces each, that is, thirty-two pieces. God, where were you before? Although they gave us all this without receipts, it’s a pity for the good. It was very difficult to drag so much iron forward.

Starting from March 8, we no longer left Komsomolskoye, we remained in our positions for the night. It was very unpleasant. After all, until about March 15, no one really covered us from the rear, the militants ran through us periodically. On March 10, one ran to the cemetery, which was next to us. We worked on it and crawled in that direction. At the cemetery found duffel bags with cartridges. The militants prepared them in advance. And only after the fourteenth or fifteenth of March, the OMON near Moscow began to clean up the yards and gardens for us.

On March 15, Komsomolskoye was enveloped in such fog that nothing could be seen three meters away. Once again they went with the fighters to the height where Shirokov died, took away the weapon. By the way, we did not lose a single barrel during the entire battle.

And then I was called by neighbors from the Internal Troops to coordinate actions. So after all, I was almost shot there, but I still did not understand whether they were my own or strangers! That's how it was. Neighbors sat in a house nearby. I go into the yard and see that some figures in camouflage are running past the barn about twenty meters away. They turned at me, looked - and how they would fire a burst from a machine gun in my direction! Let's just say, unexpectedly ... Thank you for only hitting the wall nearby.

It was really very difficult to distinguish between friends and foes - everyone was mixed up. After all, everyone looks the same: camouflage, all dirty, with beards.

There was such a typical case. The commander of the Chuvash detachment of special forces GUIN occupied the house with his fighters. As expected, first they threw a grenade. After a while, the commander comes down to the basement with a flashlight. He shone a flashlight and saw a militant sitting, looking at him and only blinking his eyes. Ours jumped up: but he couldn’t get out - the machine gun caught on the edges of the manhole. He jumped out all the same, a grenade into the basement. And a burst from a machine gun… It turned out that there was almost a lifeless wounded militant sitting there, his gangrene had already begun. That is why he did not shoot, but only with his eyes and could blink.

It was on the fifteenth of March, as the commandants of Komsomolskoye and Alkhazurovo later said, that all the generals, by satellite phone, as one, each to his superiors, reported: "Komsomolskoye is taken, completely controlled." What is controlled there, if on March 16 we again have losses - three people were killed, fifteen people were wounded? On this day, Sergei Gerasimov from the Novgorod detachment "Rusichi", Vladislav Baigatov from the Pskov detachment "Zubr" and Andrei Zakharov from the "Typhoon" died. On March 17, another Typhoon fighter died, Alexander Tikhomirov.

On March 16, together with a platoon of the Yaroslavl OMON attached to us, we moved from the middle of Komsomolskoye to the school - to converge with the 33rd brigade. We begin to close in and see - a T-80 tank is heading straight for us! By that time, army equipment had already arrived. And we all have different connections. I can only talk with my general, riot police with my command, fighters from the 33rd brigade only with my own. I ask my general: “What to do? He’s going to start hitting on us now!” It's good that we had the Russian flag with us. I turned it around and went into the tank's visibility zone. He focused on me, and we successfully connected with the 33rd brigade.

On the seventeenth and eighteenth, the militants began to surrender en masse. Two hundred people were taken prisoner in one day. Then they began to dig them out of the basements. There were some attempts to break through on March 20, but by that time, by and large, it was all over. Crosses at the height where Shirokov and Novikov died, Kolya Yevtukh was seriously wounded, we put on the twenty-third of March.

Later we learned that under an amnesty for the presidential elections (on March 26, 2000, the presidential elections in the Russian Federation were held. - Ed.), many of the militants were released. But, if it had been known in advance that they would be released, then, logically and conscientiously, it was not necessary to take them prisoner. True, all the Typhoons left on purpose when the militants began to surrender. I sent one of my deputy and those of ours who did not participate in hostilities, from the guards, to work on receiving prisoners. This must be understood: we had the most severe losses. My friends Vladimir Shirokov and Timur Sirazetdinov died, with whom I passed through Dagestan. I was just afraid that not everyone would be able to withstand it. I did not want to take sin on my soul.

Now I look back at what was in Komsomolskoye and am surprised that the human body withstood such loads. After all, we crawled all over Komsomolskoye many times up and down. It will snow, then it will rain. Cold and hungry… I myself had pneumonia there on my feet. Fluid came out of my lungs when I breathed, and settled in a thick layer on the walkie-talkie when I spoke. The doctor injected me with some drugs, thanks to which I continued to work. But ... like a robot of some kind.

It is not clear on what resource we all endured all this. For two weeks of continuous fighting, no normal food, no rest. In the afternoon, we will kindle a fire in the basement, cook some chicken, then drink this broth. We practically did not eat dry rations or stew. Didn't go down the throat. And before that, we had been starving for another eighteen days on our mountain. And the break between these events was only two or three days.

Now it is already possible, having comprehended everything, to sum up the results of the assault on Komsomolsky. The whole operation was carried out illiterately. But there was an opportunity to block the village for real. The population had already been withdrawn from the village, so it was possible to bomb and shell as much as you wanted. And only after that already storm.

And we stormed the settlement not with the forces that should be according to all the rules of tactics. There should have been four or five times as many of us as the defenders. But there were fewer of us than the defenders. After all, only Gelaev’s selected fighters were six hundred to eight hundred people. And also local militias, who from all the surrounding villages came at his call.

The positions of the militants were very good: they were above us, and we went from bottom to top. They fired at us from prearranged positions around every corner. We start moving forward, and sooner or later they notice us. When they open fire from one firing point, and we focus our fire on it, then they start shooting at us from two or three more points and allow the first point to retreat. In addition, in the first week, both we and the militants were armed approximately the same. On those tanks that were given to us, there was practically no ammunition - seven or eight shells per T-62 tank. T-80 tanks were sent to us only on the twelfth. Flamethrowers "Bumblebee" appeared about ten days later.

And if it was wise, then it was necessary to go around Komsomolskoye from the side of the village of Alkhazurovo, above which our regiment of the Ministry of Defense stood, and from the position of the regiment to push the militants down from the heights. I have a very good attitude towards the special forces soldiers of the Internal Troops and very badly towards the command of the Internal Troops, which carried out the overall management of this operation. Although I do not have a higher military education, I can say for sure that it is impossible to fight the way they fought in Komsomolskoye. On the one hand, they did not learn combat tactics in the academies. And on the other hand, the desire to impudently receive high awards and report on time was noticeable to the naked eye. Our generals were not cowards. But not commanders. Far from commanders...

Of course, looking back, I understand that our command was in a hurry. The presidential elections were approaching. Therefore, the operation was carried out, despite the loss of life. The operation was commanded by about seven generals. The general command was initially carried out by a general from the Internal Troops, from the Don-100 Special Purpose Division. Then the commandant of Urus-Martan commanded, then the commander of the Internal Troops, Colonel-General Labunets, familiar to us from Dagestan. Later, the commander of the group, General Baranov, arrived. But I can only say kind words about Lieutenant General Kladnitsky from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was a man who truly understood what was really going on there.

And one more thing I can say for sure - the conscript soldiers showed themselves heroically. I have not seen a single case of cowardice. They were hard workers. But only platoon and other officers of this level felt sorry for them. And the generals did not spare them. They had the main task: that they themselves would not be screwed. And on occasion, perhaps, and receive a high reward.

But the most important result of this mediocre operation - Gelaev-"Angel" with his elite still left. True, he suffered heavy losses. However, the militias, who were brought up from the surrounding villages, mostly died.

Then they began to say everywhere: “We defeated Gelaev.” But I don't think we broke it. There was no victory over Gelaev, since he left. And the losses we suffered were unjustified. Now, if we had destroyed it, then these losses could somehow be justified.

I myself was not Alexander Matrosov, in Komsomolskoye I did not rush into the embrasure in battle. But then I decided for myself that I would have to carry out the reckless orders of the generals along with everyone else. It is impossible to go forward, but it is necessary, because there is an order. So I went forward with the fighters. There was such a situation that I could not do otherwise. If you don’t go yourself, but send the guys, you are the wrong person. And if you don’t go with them at all, they will call everyone cowards. Just like in a Russian folk tale: “If you go to the left, you will be lost; if you go to the right, you will die; if you go straight, you will lose yourself and your horse.” And you have to go...

Although my relations with our general during the operation were tough, he reported to the leadership everything as it was. That the Typhoon was moving in the most dangerous direction along the Goita River, that it was in position for the longest time and suffered the greatest losses. I think so: our detachment really fought heroically, and I was even presented with the title of Hero of Russia for the merits of the entire detachment.

A week later, on March 26, 2000, elections of the President of the Russian Federation were held. And the inhabitants of the village of Komsomolskoye, which we "heroically" wiped off the face of the earth, also vote in one of the schools of Urus-Martan. And we, the Typhoon Detachment, are honored to ensure the security of this particular polling station. We check it in advance, put up guards from the night. The head of the administration of Komsomolsky appears. He witnessed how we did not leave a single whole house in the village, including his own house ...

I organized the work, and therefore I had only to check, stopping by the site from time to time. I arrive in the evening to pick up the ballot box. Although it was dangerous to move around Urus-Martan late in the evening, it was even more dangerous to leave the urn at night and guard it in the station. In accordance with all democratic procedures, we safely delivered the sealed urn, accompanied by an armored personnel carrier, to the commandant's office.

And the voting ended with the fact that the head of Komsomolsky and I drank a bottle of vodka. He says: “I understand that there was nothing personal about what happened. You are soldiers." We - to him: “Of course, we have no enmity towards the inhabitants. Our enemies are militants.”

The result of the elections in this area struck everyone on the spot. Eighty percent of the votes are for Putin, ten percent are for Zyuganov. And three percent - for the Chechen Dzhebrailov. And I can testify that there were no signs of falsification at the polling station. This is how the heads of the Chechen clans of Komsomolsky voted. Here are the schedules...

The small village of Komsomolskoye (aka Goi-Chu) at the junction of mountainous and lowland Chechnya was little known until 2000. However, fate wanted this village to become the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second Chechen. The encirclement and capture of Komsomolskoye was the culmination of the struggle for southern Chechnya and one of the most critical moments of the entire war.

At the end of the winter of 2000, the main forces of the militants were surrounded in the Argun Gorge. Over the next few weeks, part of the terrorist troops led by Khattab managed to break out to the east through the positions of the Pskov 6th airborne company. However, the other half of the encircled detachments remained in the gorge. This gang was commanded by Ruslan Gelaev. He started his war back in Abkhazia in the early 90s, and then put together one of the largest "private armies" in the North Caucasus.

Gelayev saved many people after the breakthrough from Grozny in early February 2000. Now, however, he was in an exceptionally dangerous position. After the breakthrough from Grozny, his people were extremely exhausted. They needed rest and replenishment. The only problem was that Gelayev had over a thousand people under his command. Such a mass of people could not move secretly for a long time, but they could not disperse either - this would have ended in the extermination of the fugitives. Gelayev chose the village of Komsomolskoye between the mountains of southern Chechnya and the northern plain as the place of the breakthrough. He himself was born there, and many of his militants were born there.

The Russian army at that time experienced serious problems, the main ones being low mobility and poor interaction between units and types of troops. Therefore, the militants had reason to hope for success.

On March 5, the Gelayevites went to Komsomolsky. Only a liquid chain of posts of the 503rd motorized rifle regiment stood in their way. The history of this battle is less known than the breakthrough of the 6th company; in the memoirs of the military leaders of the Chechen conflict, these events are often not even mentioned. Literature regularly writes that the militants managed to "pass" the cordon. Meanwhile, the desperate battle on the road to Komsomolskoye developed no less dramatically.

The militants swept away the first strongholds with a mass of manpower. There were no more than 60 soldiers on the breakthrough site. A platoon of automatic grenade launchers literally drowned under the advancing horde. The commander of a rifle company in this sector also died, his company was dispersed. A small armored group pulled up to the battlefield to help the survivors, but the militants knocked out a tank in no man's land and forced the rest to retreat.

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At this time, civilians were leaving Komsomolskoye. People understood perfectly well that a siege was coming, brutal bombing and assault. The refugees were housed in a hastily prepared open-air camp. Several wounded militants also came out of the village under the guise of civilians, but they were identified and literally snatched from the crowd of civilians. Oddly enough, the command of the Russian troops still had no data on the size of the enemy. However, everything was already ready for the decisive battle. Residents left the village, Russian soldiers concentrated in the vicinity, the militants took up defense. There was going to be a fierce fight.

iron and blood

Gelayev did not wait until the arriving units finally tightly blocked Komsomolskoye. On the night of March 9, he escaped from Komsomolskoye at the head of a very small detachment. He managed to break through loose barriers, but hundreds of ordinary militants and small field commanders had to die in the doomed village. Another detachment tried to break out of the village the next day, but it was riddled with tanks and automatic guns.

Another group of "mujahideen" tried to break into Komsomolskoye from the outside, but its vanguard, along with the guide, died under fire, so this detachment retreated. By the way, two exotic militants were taken prisoner in those first days. They were Uighurs - representatives of the Muslim people from western China. According to the prisoners, they worked as cooks in Komsomolskoye. "Kuharei" was handed over to the Chinese special services, and in the Celestial Empire both received life sentences for terrorism.

For an unclear reason, the Russians certainly tried to quickly take Komsomolskoye by infantry assault. After processing Komsomolskoye by artillery and aviation, the arrows entered the village and tried to clean up. Due to the severe shortage of trained infantry, even the special forces of the GUIN of the Ministry of Justice went into battle. These, of course, were not ordinary guards, but they were not assault infantry either. The GUIN soldiers fought heroically, according to all reviews, but the assault cost them dearly.

Komsomolskoye was fired upon with a wide variety of heavy weapons. It was then, for example, that the country learned about the existence of the Pinocchio system. Under the frivolous name was a heavy multiple launch rocket launcher using volumetric detonating ammunition. "Normal" artillery and helicopters also worked non-stop. However, after the shelling, assault groups still went to the streets.

Street fighting invariably resulted in heavy casualties. On the streets, the belligerents mixed up, besides, overgrown people in the same shabby camouflage fought on both sides, so it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Soldiers and officers on the front line were constantly urged on, demanding to take possession of the village as soon as possible. This spurring regularly ended in casualties. So, for example, the commander of one of the assault detachments, Senior Lieutenant Zakirov, died: after being accused of cowardice, he went ahead of his detachment and died in close combat in one of the yards.

However, if the Russians could complain about heavy and not always justified losses, the battles in Komsomolskoye quickly led the militants to disaster. In the village there were many foreigners and well-trained fighters before the second war in Chechnya, now they were slowly but surely crushed by streams of steel from the air and street battles.

Khamzat Idigov, who replaced Gelayev as commander of the garrison, tried to leave the village on March 11, but stepped on a mine and died. The strength of the resistance slowly fell. The wounded began to surrender. In conditions of wild unsanitary conditions and ongoing shelling, they had no other chance to survive. One of the soldiers later described the fate of a wounded militant who did not want to come out with his hands up. He sat quietly in the basement while grenades were thrown there. As it turned out, this militant was simply exhausted and distraught from gangrene and could not even move.

While the forces of the militants were fading, the Russians threw fresh units to Komsomolskoye. The parachute regiment approached the village. In the early days, small groups could get out of the village at night in small groups, but the ring was constantly thickening. There was still quite a lot of ammunition left inside, but the medicines were coming to an end. However, there was no need to talk about quick success. The Russians paid with blood for the reclaimed streets, armored vehicles were constantly dying in the labyrinth of the private sector. However, our military could at least withdraw the battered parts, replenish the ammunition without fear that the shell boxes will show the bottom, and call on the enemy "punishment from heaven."

In addition, during the assault, the weather deteriorated badly and Komsomolskoye was covered with thick fog. Assault groups were cut with militants from zero distance, almost without seeing the enemy.

In the second half of March, the militants began to stubbornly try to break out of the encirclement. However, now they were waiting for minefields and fired armored vehicles. The militants had practically no chance of salvation. The last large detachment went on a breakthrough on March 20, but ran into mines and machine guns and fell under fire.

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The operation in Komsomolskoye was expensive. Russian losses exceeded 50 dead and dead from wounds. However, even in this form, thanks to the enormous endurance and selflessness of the detachments that stormed the village, the battle for Komsomolskoye turned into a beating of militants. The losses of the terrorists amounted to more than 800 people killed, and this is not the data of the military, who are always inclined to exaggerate successes, but the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Rescuers had to dismantle the rubble left at the site of the massacre and evacuate the dead. Among the dead and captured was a whole international: Arabs and even one Indian Muslim. Huge trophies were picked up on the battlefield. According to various sources, from 80 to 273 terrorists were captured. Only the recent rout in Grozny was comparable to this massacre, with a breakthrough from the city through minefields. For Russia, it was a hard-won, bloody, but indisputable victory.

The soldiers were fierce to the limit. The commander of the GUIN special forces set to accept surrendering own rear men. Otherwise, the fighters of the first line, who had recently survived the death of their comrades, could simply not stand it. However, almost completely wounded and exhausted militants surrendered. Within a few weeks, almost all of them died. Few people mourned for them. Among the prisoners were thugs, personally known for the reprisals against prisoners and hostages.

The assault on Komsomolsky was the last major military operation of the Second Chechen War and a bold point in its first, most difficult phase. The troops faced a long and painful counter-guerrilla struggle, then the country had to endure a wave of terror, but the backbone of organized extremist detachments of thousands of armed people was broken. The ruins of Komsomolsky were terrifying. But the most difficult stage of the Chechen war was over.

Chechnya, Urus-Martanovsky district, Komsomolskoye village

Firstly, there is no longer a settlement called Komsomolskoye.

When they say that Grozny has been wiped off the face of the earth, this is true, but the truth is relative. Some houses were preserved there, and some people managed to survive the whole nightmare in them. When they say that Katyr-Yurt was completely destroyed, this is also true, but some houses “are subject to restoration”, and people live in them too. There is not a single house in Komsomolskoye now.

Moreover, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SURVIVE WALL IN KOMSOMOLSKOYE.

A huge space in the most beautiful place in Chechnya, where just a couple of months ago there was an ancient patriarchal village with the Chechen self-name Soadi-Kotar (that is, the settlement of Soadi), turned into ashes and garbage.

But even to look at this garbage, even to cry over the ashes of their entire past life, the surviving residents of Komsomolskoye are not allowed. And the relatives of those whose mutilated, half-rotted corpses are lying all over the village, every day gather at the checkpoint in the village of Goiskoye. Every day they come here in the hope that at least today they will be allowed to visit their native village.

Prelude

It all started on the night of March 5, when militants entered Komsomolskoye, which had been cleared four times (!) and had already been blocked from all sides for two weeks. Or rather, even a little earlier - when a dozen militants, counting the wounded, descended from the mountains in order to lay down their arms and surrender to the mercy of the amnesty promised by the federals. Soon they were taken away by the military. A couple of days later, the mutilated corpse of one of them was found on the outskirts of the village.

Was the “Komsomol breakthrough” of the militants an act of retribution for this murder? Hard to say. According to the stories of eyewitnesses, residents of the village, it seems that the group of militants who entered Komsomolskoye was not going to engage in battle with the federals. First, they were all extremely exhausted and tired. Secondly, half of them were essentially refugees - residents of the same Komsomolskoye, who at the beginning of hostilities, fleeing the bombs, went to the high-mountain village of Gukhoy: their ancestors once lived there. When it became completely unbearable to live in the mountains (no food, it was impossible to go to the forest for firewood, constant air raids), they decided to go down to the plain.

The fact that there are many refugees in the mountain villages - civilians, including women and children who suffer from hunger and cold, but do not dare to return to the plain for fear of punitive actions by the federals and due to the fact that all the leaders from The mountains of the road are mined, they knew both in the administration of the Urus-Martan region and in the commandant's office. Residents of Komsomolskoye appealed personally to the commandant of the district, General Naumov, with a request to allow these people to return to the plain. And even received from him consent and assurance that they would not be touched.

At dawn, intensive shelling of Komsomolsky began. Residents - some of them already knew the reason for the shelling, some knew absolutely nothing - began to flock to the outskirts in the hope of a corridor to leave the village. Corridor, of course, was not given. Thousands of civilians spent the whole day and the next night under drizzling rain in an open field between the villages of Komsomolskoye and Goyskoye.

On the second day there was a relative lull, and the tired, frightened people were told that a cleansing had been carried out in the village and they could return.

But before people had time to disperse into their already half-destroyed dwellings, the village was again heavily shelled. The fire was so dense that it was simply impossible to rush back. People hid in the cellars and decided to wait out the night.

That night the first wounded and dead appeared. It was impossible to bury, the corpses were taken with them to the cellars. When the next morning people again fled to the field on the outskirts of the village, 16 dead civilians remained in the cellars of Komsomolskoye.

By this time, contact battles were already in full swing in the "cleaned" Komsomolsk.

Between death and death

At the checkpoint at the exit from the village, a crowd of thousands of people was blocked, announcing that anyone who tried to leave would be shot. For persuasiveness, several automatic bursts were fired over the heads of the refugees.

Immediately separated all the men - starting with ten-year-old boys. They were taken a little aside and kept under special supervision, being searched from time to time and inspecting their shoulders for weapons.

After some time, thousands of people (in Komsomolskoye by the beginning of the fighting there were over five thousand inhabitants and about six hundred refugees from different regions of Chechnya) lined up, forming a "human shield". The feds themselves were located a little further behind this line. Thus, all artillery shells fired at Komsomolsky flew over the heads of people who fled from it. Several people in the crowd were wounded by shrapnel.

From time to time, the federals visited the crowd and searched among the women for disguised militants.

We have information that you are hiding disguised bandits, - they said and threatened to shoot everyone if the bandits were not immediately extradited ... For five days, the residents of Komsomolskoye were kept as a cover in the field near the village. The people had a choice: either to return to the village, as the military had repeatedly suggested, and die there; or become a human shield for the feds and die here. Or survive, if you're lucky.

Only on the sixth day, when it was no longer possible to restrain the pressure and rage of refugees exhausted from hunger, cold, disease, the military listened to the voice of reason. It was necessary to do something with these people: either shoot them all or let them go.

And they were released.

About some features of the operation in Komsomolsk

Perhaps, after the battles for Grozny, there was no such long and bloody confrontation between the federal forces and the militants in any settlement of Chechnya. For comparison, only the battles for Bamut can be cited, but that was in the last war.

What is the reason for such a lengthy "operation" in Komsomolskoye?

If we make a short digression to the beginning of events, then, I remember, the military assured us that separate groups of Gelaev’s militants with a total number of up to 200-300 people had leaked into Komsomolskoye. A week after the start of the fighting, they began to say that the main forces of the militants were defeated, it remained only to finish off about twenty people, led by Gelaev himself. At the same time, reports began to come in about searches in Komsomolskoye for Ruslan Gelaev and even (for some reason) his elderly mother, two sisters and his wife. And also about the possible death of Gelaev in this village. When asked by journalists: where, in his opinion, are Basayev, Khattab, Maskhadov and other militant leaders? - one of the generals rather frivolously replied:

Well, maybe they're already dead too.

However, the fighting did not stop. And now they began to talk about a grouping of one, two, three thousand militants. They talked about the supposedly ultra-modern weapons that the militants are equipped with, thereby justifying the use of the latest heavy rocket launcher in Komsomolskoye, which the military installed for almost half a day on the outskirts of the village (on the very field with refugees).

And - attention! - almost from the first day of the operation until the last day, we were told that the village was literally dug up and down with underground passages and loopholes.

I was in Komsomolskoye a few days before the start of the fighting, I was there after the military took the village. And I did not notice any underground communications, dugouts or super-powerful basements. They simply did not exist in Komsomolskoye. Unless, of course, banal cellars and cellars under residential buildings are considered “underground cities”.

As for Gelaev, then, according to some reports, the one who was searched for so long and carefully with the involvement of specially trained dogs in the hope of finding, if not alive, then at least dead, did not appear at all in Komsomolskoye itself. He led his detachment by radio, and he himself was far beyond the village.

Komsomolskoye today

Despite the fact that the military operation in Komsomolskoye has long ended, not a single resident has been allowed into the village so far. As a matter of fact, there is absolutely nothing for them to do there, since there is simply nowhere to live.

Why people are not allowed into the village is a question to which no one knows the answer. But maybe it's for the best that they don't let you in: you can breathe here only through special bandages. Spring has long been in Chechnya, and corpses are perishable matter. The danger of an outbreak of epidemics is indeed very great.

Only on March 29, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in special vehicles began to collect and take out the corpses from Komsomolskoye to the cemetery of the neighboring village of Goyskoye. In four days, more than a hundred corpses were taken out.

Women from all over Chechnya also flock here in search of their dead sons and former residents of Komsomolskoye in the hope of finding the bodies of relatives. However, in most cases it is simply impossible to identify them: some of the remains were completely decomposed, others were crushed by tank tracks, and only separate parts of the body remained from some of the dead.

On April 2, more than 200 corpses remained in the completely destroyed Komsomolsk. Against this background, the message about the epidemic of typhoid fever that began in Chechnya seems completely natural: what the bombs failed to do, the pestilence will complete.