On December 27, 1979, Amin's palace near Kabul was taken by storm. As a result of a special operation codenamed "storm-333", Afghan President Hafizullah Amin was eliminated. This operation, the active phase of which lasted about 1 hour, became the prologue for the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan and marked the beginning of a series of local conflicts with the participation of our country at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century.
About 650 people took part in the operation to seize Amin's residence. The Muslim battalion - 520 people, the Airborne Forces company - 87 people and two groups of special forces of the KGB of the USSR "Thunder" (24 people) and "Zenith" (30 people), which were supposed to directly capture the palace. The attackers were dressed in Afghan uniforms with white armbands, the password for identifying friend or foe was the shout "Yasha - Misha".
The Muslim battalion was created from soldiers and officers from Central Asia (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen). During the selection, special attention was paid to physical training, only those who had served half a year or a year were involved, the principle of voluntariness was the basis, but if there were not enough specialists, a good military expert could be enrolled in the detachment without his consent. The detachment, which due to its size and received the name of the battalion, consisted of 4 companies. The first company was armed with the BMP-1, the second and third BTR-60pb, the fourth company was an armament company, it included an AGS-17 platoon (which had just appeared in the army), a platoon of Lynx infantry jet flamethrowers and a sapper platoon. The detachment had all the corresponding rear divisions: platoons of automobile and material support, communications; additionally, a platoon of the ZSU "Shilka" was attached to the battalion. An interpreter was attached to each company, but, given the ethnic composition, their services were almost never used, all Tajiks, half of Uzbeks and some of the Turkmen knew Farsi, one of the main languages of Afghanistan. The curiosity came out only with the vacancy of an anti-aircraft officer, it was not possible to find the necessary person of the required nationality, and the dark-haired Russian captain Pautov was hired for this position, who, when he was silent, did not stand out in the general mass. The detachment was led by Major Kh. Khalbaev.
The detachment received Afghan uniforms and documents and arrived in Afghanistan at the Bagram base in August 1979. Officially, the battalion was supposed to protect DRA President Hafizullah Amin, in fact, the battalion was used in exactly the opposite way. To call a spade a spade, the leadership of the USSR immediately prepared a battalion to carry out a coup d'etat in Afghanistan with the establishment of a pro-Soviet government in power. Prior to that, Afghanistan had already asked for military assistance and appealed to both the USSR and the United States, the leadership of the USSR decided to go its own way, to provide assistance only after the removal of the current leader of the country.
To implement the plan, a company of the Airborne Forces and two special-purpose detachments, the formation of which was engaged in the KGB of the USSR, were redeployed to Bagram. Detachment "Zenith" consisted of 24 people from special group A, which later became known as the "Alpha" group. Detachment "Thunder" consisted of 30 officers of the special reserve of the KGB of the USSR. All the divisions participating in the assault were armed with the most modern weapons at that time. So the capture of Amin's palace was the first case of using the RPG-18 "Fly". This grenade launcher became widely known, and now the image of a soldier with a "Fly" is firmly associated in consciousness with the participants in the first and second Chechen wars.
Taking Amin's palace was no easy task. An infantry brigade consisting of 3 battalions was deployed around the palace, additionally the guard of the palace was reinforced by a tank battalion and an anti-aircraft regiment, which was armed with 12 100-mm cannons and a large number of DShK machine guns, given that the palace was on a hill, this artillery could become an insurmountable obstacle for the storming. Amin's personal guard company was located directly in the palace, largely consisting of his relatives. Thus, the forces of the defenders were many times greater than the forces of the attackers.
Operation plan
The plan of the operation provided for the seizure of the palace and the destruction of the air defense systems of the anti-aircraft regiment. The rest of the units were supposed to be blocked in military camps. For the destruction of air defense systems, 2 AGS-17 crews and an engineering platoon were allocated. The grenade launchers were supposed to cut off the anti-aircraft gunners from the air defense systems located in the positions, at this time the engineering platoon was supposed to undermine them.
A separate group was to capture 3 tanks dug in near the palace. For this purpose, 12 people were allocated. Two snipers who were supposed to remove the guards from the tanks, 2 machine gunners, tank crews. They had to drive a GAZ-66 car past the positions of the 3rd guard battalion and seize tanks.
The 2nd and 3rd companies of the Muslim battalion and the company of paratroopers attached to them were to block the location of the battalions of the guard brigade and the tank regiment. For the assault on the palace, the first company was involved, which on its infantry fighting vehicles was supposed to bring the assault troops "Thunder" and "Zenith" to the palace.
Storm
The assault on the palace was carried out in accordance with the plan of the operation, the active phase of the battle lasted about an hour, although the shooting did not stop for another day, some soldiers and officers of the infantry brigade did not want to surrender and fought their way into the mountains. Afghan casualties amounted to about 200 people killed, including Amin and his son, about 1,700 soldiers surrendered. Our losses amounted to 19 people, 5 from the KGB assault groups, 5 more were lost by paratroopers, 9 people were lost to the "Muslim battalion". Almost all members of the assault groups were injured.
The group was the first to leave in a GAZ-66 car, but when the car passed by the location of the 3rd battalion, an alarm was already announced in it, the battalion commander and his deputies stood in the center of the parade ground, the soldiers received weapons and ammunition. The commander of the Sakhatov group was not taken aback and decided to seize the leadership of the battalion. The car drove to the parade ground at full speed, the scouts instantly captured the Afghan officers and took off. When the Afghans came to their senses, it was already late, having driven away further, the group lay down by the road and met the Afghan soldiers who set off in pursuit with fire, advancing in a crowd without the leadership of officers, they became easy prey. The snipers of the group at this time destroyed the sentries from the tanks.
As soon as the shooting began at the positions of the 3rd battalion, a general assault began. Two "Shilki" began to work in the palace, 2 more and the AGS crews began to fire at the barracks and courtyards, preventing the soldiers from leaving the barracks. At the same time, motorized infantry advanced to block the barracks. And assault groups moved to the palace on the BMP. The Afghans quickly came to their senses and opened heavy fire on the BMP moving along the serpentine, they managed to knock out the first car, the paratrooper had to leave it and climb the mountain using ladders specially prepared for such an occasion. As a result, the combat vehicles were at the palace 20 minutes after the start of the operation, followed by an assault and battle for each room of the palace, simultaneously with the beginning of the assault, Shilki should have been silenced, but this did not happen. The communication channel was packed with requests for help from the commander of one of the armored personnel carriers, which fell into the ditch, so a messenger had to be sent to the location of Shilok to cease fire across the palace. An hour later, President Hafizullah Amin was already dead.
