"No, Comrade Commander, the history of this war will not be written in fifty years."
Intelligence is by definition about secrets - big and small. Some part becomes known only after the failure of the operation or the agent. There are deliberate leaks of information - for operational reasons or for political purposes. But the overwhelming majority of classified information remains as such, only occasionally emerging due to chance, coincidence of circumstances, or, as in our situation, acquaintance with a secret carrier.
I have known Colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate Alexander Alexandrovich Ivanov (this is his real name) since the 90s. By his first education, he was a military aviation engineer, by the second - a philosopher who, by the will of fate, ended up in intelligence. On three missions to the North Caucasus, he was an analyst for the GRU operational group in the Chechen Republic. From the first I brought a space communication station, either Japanese or American, captured by the special forces from the Raduevites. As a result of his business trips, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Merit to the Fatherland with swords, the Suvorov Medal and the Order of Military Merit.
All operational information from agents, special forces and other sources passed through Ivanov, since it was he who compiled and sent encrypted telegrams to the Center every day. As an analyst, I came across various kinds of information, often mundane, sometimes shocking, but always confidential.
How Raduev left
“This was my first business trip to Chechnya: December 1995 - January 1996,” recalls Alexander Ivanov. - Our group was based in Khankala, I was an analytical officer. The head of my department, the general, admonished: we do not need your heroism, if I find out that you have come close to the perimeter of Khankala, I will recall and punish, you are the bearer of information.
All representatives of the intelligence services of our law enforcement agencies in the morning gathered in the common room, exchanged information. The guys from FAPSI, then an independent organization, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from border guards worked. The FSB sent its operatives to expose the countermeasures of the militants, the army intelligence sent the special forces: take the tongue, go to the rear. There were no analysts among the security officials, so I had to help them, since the “writer” was me alone. I prepared reports, sent to the Center up to three telegrams a day, ranging from a page to three.
Every commander whose units were in the grouping wanted to have a summary of the situation in the morning. But what can an aviation unit transfer, for example, to the commander-in-chief of the Air Force? Only what they saw from the air. This is not enough. So they came to me: Sanych, help. Naturally, he gave what was possible. As expected, first I sent it to my own, and only then to them. Yes, and I received information from them. He also helped the FSB. Relations with everyone were normal, working.
Information about the location of our troops somehow got to the militants, it's not a secret. In Chechnya, the federal troops had a system of strong points. Any shepherd could tell about the strong point. This system did not justify itself: we controlled only the land on which we sat. At first, I was oppressed by the meetings that were introduced by the militia general Shkirko. Soldier Tikhomirov came and canceled the daily meetings.
I was moved by the reports of some militia chiefs about how many attacks were repulsed in Grozny during the night. In the central area of the city there was a fortified building - GUOSH: Main Directorate of Operational Headquarters. Every night they fought off the locals there. And it was called Grozny controlled. During the day our masters shoot back at night. Such was the war.
Or take the battles for Gudermes, for Pervomaiskoe - a real nonsense was going on there. Unmeasured troops were overtaken. Two ministers commanded the operation, which during World War II was a task for an experienced battalion commander. Erin, Kvashnin, Nikolaev were pushing their elbows. As a result, Raduev left through the reeds, through the siphons - huge pipes with a diameter of about two meters, laid across the river.
Then fifty soldiers of our special forces were killed. They were set up as a barrier against the Raduevites. Just in the direction where it was believed that the militants would not go, but they all rushed there from the reed thickets. Our guys all died. Up to one. The chief of intelligence of the 58th Army, Colonel Sergei Stytsina, was killed. Of course, they also crumbled a lot of militants, but some of them left together with Raduyev.
Kvashnin, I remember, was swearing due to the lack of proper organization: for example, the crew of a tank (four people) had to be assembled from three districts, as they say, on a string. They sent anyone they could.
Once I had to fly from Mozdok to Mi-26 together with soldiers from the Far East, who after training. Three shots were fired at the range - and for the war. A whole company. Well, what kind of warriors they are.
After Gudermes and Pervomaisky, after this tension came a lull. General Tikhomirov invited commanders from the services of the Armed Forces, generals, and commanders of large units to the meeting. For the first time in a long time, there was no need to run anywhere. We drank a glass and remembered those who were killed. And Tikhomirov says: “Everyone is sitting here. At least now write the history of the Chechen war. " I, a fool with a philosophical education, pulled my tongue: “No, I say, comrade commander, we can only write the history of military operations, and the history of the Chechen war will not be written in fifty years: how the cash flows went, who covered whom, who paid whom to whom ". I meant, of course, and Berezovsky, who was then actively nimble. Tikhomirov looked at me with an unkind look, but did not argue.
At half past twelve in the night I wrote off all the telegrams and got ready to sleep. Suddenly, a call on the ZAS (classified communication equipment), a frightened boyish voice: "Comrade Colonel, Lieutenant So-and-so (I still regret not remembering his last name) from the radio interception center …" there I was, I was more terrible than any colonel-general for me, the same Kvashnin. “I don’t know, maybe it’s important and interesting for you,” the lieutenant continued, “but a message went through the militants' networks: a car with explosives was prepared in Kursk, an explosion at six in the morning.”
The explosion is canceled
Then different radio networks worked very actively, including DRG - sabotage and reconnaissance groups. The radio amateurs were for the Chechens, the entire population, one might say, was against us. And not only local. Through Georgia, a canal was established for transporting goods and people to Akhmety. As far as I knew, in the Tbilisi hotel "Iveria", room 112 was a station for receiving Chechen fighters. They brought me printouts of interceptions of negotiations like: "There will be no problems at the border, but if they pick on you, give $ 30-50 - the beggars will let anyone you want for this money." It must be said that the Chechens had a peculiar attitude to names. They called Akhmetovsk Akhmetovsk, a bus stop is necessarily a bus station, and if there is a shed with a bench at the bus stop and even a cashier, this is already a bus station.
Intercepted messages had to be filtered, some kind of probability coefficient introduced. For example, they brought information: rumors spread among the militants that Maskhadov was preparing to seize a submarine in Vladivostok. Well, you never know what they can fantasize about. And this information, as insignificant, I registered in one of the telegrams to the Center and forgot. And five years later, a message went on TV that they found Maskhadov's cache with documents and in it a plan to seize a nuclear submarine. So much for the "pass-through" information."
The militants often distorted our names. And I thought: maybe Kursk means the village of Kursk? But why blow up a car filled with explosives at a bus stop in the village? However, the worm of doubt lodged in me firmly. What if the preparation for an explosion, a terrorist attack is really behind this? Well, I'll make a false alarm … They'll blame, blame, the biggest thing - the colonel's shoulder straps will be removed. But if I save a few lives …
The explosion is canceled
I knew the station in Kursk: as a kid, I went to my grandmother in the Caucasus through it. It has such a shape that if it explodes here, it will not seem a little. I decided: the information should be transmitted. And then the fun began. I run to the command post of the 58th Army, there is a shift on duty - a captain and a senior lieutenant. They say: the commander is resting, the chief of staff too - half past midnight. I think to myself: if you call on the army communications, in order to break through to the GRU command post, you have to go through three switchboards - local, Rostov, and General Staff. Well, I'll get through. To the duty shift of the GRU command post, I must explain that I have bad forebodings, convince them to wake up the command center chief by calling him at home and convince them of the need for action. The head of the command post must, in turn, convince the deputy head of the GRU. He will have to wake up the head of the GRU, again to convince him that Colonel Ivanov has doubts in Chechnya. He should contact the director of the FSB, since according to all laws, the army works on the territory of the country only in the area of hostilities, and conducts reconnaissance there. All this took a lot of time. If trouble had happened, the director of the FSB would have learned about the explosion in Kursk from the news bulletins.
In a telegram at night, I explained everything. It was our routine: the deputy chief of the GRU called Khankala at about eight in the morning, inquired about the situation first-hand. I, an analyst, answered calls from the center, since I was sitting within the perimeter, and the agents, the special forces of our group, spent a lot of time at the exit.
The deputy head of the GRU, Valentin Vladimirovich Korabelnikov, then Colonel-General, and today I remember with warmth and respect, I remember our conversations with him. I have always drawn a parallel between him and General Shaposhnikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army under Stalin - a sort of army intellectual bone. He never raised his voice. Once, it is true, he swore at me, but I took it as a reward: for Korabelnikov to swear at someone!.. Then I blindly put the wrong date in the telegram. As a result, the previous history of events was distorted, and respected people could come under attack.
From the common area of the building where we were located, the doors led to us and the FSB. I knew that the major general, the head of the FSB operational group, was, in his rank, the representative of the FSB director in the Chechen Republic. He had direct access to both the director and the territorial departments of the service throughout the country, including the Kursk regional one.
And I broke into the location of the FSB. I was lucky that the general slept here, in the location, and not in a barrel-yurt, as the fenced-in area was called, where higher officials lived in special mobile rooms resembling large barrels. The duty captain, after much persuasion, went to wake the general. His surname - Sereda - I learned much later. All our great generals marched under the code "Golitsyn", and the FSB - "Gromov". Sereda was either Thunders the Fifth or Thunders the Sixth.
That sleepy said to me "an affectionate general's word." I told him: "Comrade general, maybe I am an alarmist, but if we ignore this information, then we will never forgive ourselves." "Why don't you call your own?" I told him the timing, reminded him that the army is not adapted to operate in peaceful territory. Yes, the general himself knew. “And you,” I say, “have direct access both to the director and to the territories.”"Wow, you are literate!" - the general praised in a peculiar way. I thought and said: “I have been wearing lampshades for 15 years already, they have grown to me, they won’t do a damn thing to me. Okay, I'll take it upon myself”(running ahead, I will say: Sereda finished his service as a lieutenant general).
And that is all. FSB - nipple system: there - blow, back - zero. In the following days, the general is silent, and I do not go to him. If he does not want to, he will not tell anyway, no matter how you try. They have their own method. Actually, I don’t need it. The main thing is that in my telegram I honestly wrote everything about the night invasion to the counterintelligence general. And two weeks later, NTV received information: Operation Nevod was carried out in the city of Kursk, more than a hundred kilograms of narcotic substances were seized at the railway station, so many barrels of firearms were found. Nothing was reported about explosives. Well, I think, it was not in vain that I panicked, they found something, cleaned it up.
Appointment of the extreme
The time of the second business trip is approaching (June-July 1996). In the FSB, like ours, one group was decreasing, the second was dropping in, they made a dump. By the way, at that time, God forbid, was to say the words "to say goodbye", "to see off" - they are seen off only on their last journey. This time I almost got hit in the face. No exaggeration.
Their chief, "Gromov-fourteenth," spoke at the dump-free-dump, the commanders of the groups spoke out. They gave the floor to me too. He said something about military cooperation, mutual assistance and, for persuasiveness, cited the story of Kursk. And “Gromov-14”, smiling, said: “We, Sasha, found that car with explosives. They just didn't talk about it to the press, so as not to frighten the people. You understand yourself: Central Russia and suddenly a car with explosives. But since there was a lot of noise, they made a huge noise, they cleaned all the cars in a row. And I had to give information on TV, but corrected: poppy straws, trunks, etc."
During the second business trip I was hooked on the events in Budennovsk. Two weeks before them, he sent the first telegram: Basayev's militants are planning to raid Budennovsk and beyond. This is what actually happened. Then there were one or two similar telegrams, but it ended with what is known. I relied on the information of our agents, special forces. In general, information came to me in an impersonal form, I did not know the sources and should not have known.
After these telegrams, there were orders to increase vigilance, and so on. In Budennovsk, people waited for three days in suspense. But you need to understand that the gangs are not the Wehrmacht. If Halder signed a directive on the offensive, it would start minute by minute. On the Kursk Bulge, ours, knowing about the enemy's plans, inflicted a preemptive artillery strike, but the Germans, as expected, began an offensive at the appointed time.
And here - the bearded guys gathered, conferred, maybe the mullah looked at the stars and said: today is not in good color. Either some bandit groups from other areas did not have time to approach. And they started three days later.
Perhaps they had their own intelligence service. But the most interesting thing began later, after the attack on Budennovsk. High authorities demanded: confirm the outgoing telegram number such and such, repeat the outgoing such and such. This went on for several days. In the capital, there was a sharp showdown. From there the famous Yeltsin: "Nikolaev, your bandits go across three borders!" (General Andrei Nikolaev at that time headed the Federal Border Service). Probably, Yeltsin had in mind the borders of Dagestan - Ingushetia - Chechnya. At that time I thought: the head of the chief, but does not know that the administrative borders within the state are not protected.
After a week of silence on NTV there is a message: military intelligence reported in advance … Our general "Golitsyn" gathered the entire task force, expressed his gratitude. With me he poured a bottle of vodka into two glasses around the edges, we drank with him and went to bed.
I received a "big gratitude" from the commander of the united group of forces, Lieutenant General Tikhomirov. He called me into his office and strained his vocal cords for half an hour. The whole op came down to one thing: you behave dishonestly, you are not alone working here, you reported, but we, it turns out, were removed from the dung heap! I tried to say that I had not hidden the information from anyone, that he had read my telegrams too … But he apparently needed to discharge himself after the showdown above. Discharged and kicked me out of the office.
As I understand it, the showdown was at the level of the first person, they were looking for the extreme one. Then Nikolayev was "snatched". After Tikhomirov, the group was commanded by Vladimir Shamanov, then still a colonel.
