The living and the dead of the first Chechen
The Chechen war began for me with the senior warrant officer Nikolai Potekhin - he was the first Russian serviceman I met in the war. I had a chance to talk to him at the very end of November 1994, after the failed assault on Grozny by "unknown" tankers. Defense Minister Pavel Grachev then shrugged his shoulders, wondering: I have no idea who it was that stormed Grozny in tanks, mercenaries, probably, I have no such subordinates … Until the office where I was allowed to talk with senior warrant officer Potekhin and conscript Alexei Chikin from the Moscow region parts, the sounds of bombing were heard. And the owner of the cabinet, Lieutenant Colonel Abubakar Khasuyev, deputy head of the Department of State Security (DGB) of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, not without malice told that the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, Pyotr Deinekin, also said that not Russian planes were flying and bombing over Chechnya, but incomprehensible "unidentified" attack aircraft.
“Grachev said that we are mercenaries, right? Why don't we serve in the army ?! Padla! We were just following the order! - Nikolai 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. The 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 infantry escort was the militants of Labazanov, who went over to the opposition to Dudayev. 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 the real war was just about to begin, 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 flames 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, militants jump out of the shelters and ruins of the Council of Ministers building and dash, one at a time, dodging like hares, rush 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 was the beginning of almost all the letters that they passed on to their parents through journalists. 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 rusted 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 engulfed 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 greasy 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 - to 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. He fought in Afghanistan, was awarded an 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, he was neat - even in Mozdok, on the eve of the campaign against 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 remark 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 total 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, took revenge on the veteran of the Afghan war. 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 examine the BMP # 684 not earlier than February 1995, when the wrecked equipment began to be 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 my 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. Apparently, they also 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 the survivors, 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 died down and the wrecked cars were taken out of 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 tell them about it 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 elimination, it was calculated that one was Kazakov. Another, that 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 the victims piled 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 against 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?"
