The 324th regiment was formed as follows: almost completely, with the exception of 4 people who remained in the permanent composition of the regiment at the beginning of 1995, the officers were staffed by units of the garrisons of Yekaterinburg, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Elani, Chebarkul - i.e. almost from the entire Ural Military District. As a replenishment, transport aircraft were sent from the Trans-Baikal Military District with privates and partially officers from the garrison of Gusinoozersk. Thus, the officers of the 324th regiment at first did not even know each other by sight, not to mention their subordinate soldiers. The regiment was given a week to conduct combat coordination. From February to mid-April 1995, the regiment was assigned a special forces group from the city of Kyakhta (ZabVO).

According to Konstantin Pulikovsky, this unit was one of the most combat-ready and well-trained.

The fighters dubbed the regiment "red dogs", as many officers in the regiment grew beards that turned red in the sun.

At the end of January 1995 he left Yekaterinburg for Tolstoy-Yurt. On the night of January 21, 1995, when unloading the echelon at Terek station (Republic of North Ossetia), were fired upon, as a result of which one of the soldiers was wounded in the leg. On January 22, 1995, units of the 324th regiment lined up in a marching column, marched across the Tersky Range and settled down near the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, which is about 20 km from the city of Grozny.

By February 1, 166 motorized rifle brigade and 324 motorized detachments were concentrated in the area east of Khankala. Thus, the eastern direction of Grozny was completely blocked.

On the morning of February 3, two regiments (324 and 245 infantry regiments) of the South-East group of troops carried out a maneuver from the Khankala region to the south and southeast of Grozny. 324 SMEs, advancing under incessant enemy mortar fire, saddled the Prigorodnoye-Gikalovsky road, set up checkpoints at the main intersections and provided escort for the main forces of 245 SMEs and part of the rear with ammunition. Already after 2 days, the Dudayevites, who had previously received reinforcements, were forced to stop resistance in the area of ​​​​Minutka Square through a corridor covered by motorized riflemen.

Capturing and holding the settlement of Gikalovsky: the regiment advanced along a bypass road running along the southeastern outskirts of Grozny, through the areas of Oilfields and Chernorechye. The advance detachment, consisting of a motorized rifle company and two mortar crews, as well as a tank platoon, passed Chernorechye at speed and rushed along the highway to the village of Gikalovsky. When the avant-garde broke into Gikalovsky, no one expected him. Several militants were taken prisoner and, after a short search and interrogation, they were shot. The main forces of the regiment could not break through to Gikalovsky, as a result, by the evening of February 3, the battalion was almost completely surrounded.

The militants began to gather their forces to the village of Chechen-Aul, located 3 km from Gikalovsky. At 5 o'clock in the morning on February 4, 1995, the battle flared up with renewed vigor. First, the militants, hiding behind a thick veil of fog, went through the thickets of elm and along the channel of the canal to the rear of the positions of a tank platoon and almost point-blank shot two tanks from grenade launchers. Militant attacks on the positions of the 3rd battalion continued for 7 hours. Having received a rebuff, the militants stopped trying to attack in the forehead and retreated to Chechen-Aul. The battalion lost 18 men killed and 50 wounded. The tank company lost 5 vehicles, which were knocked out mainly in the first minutes of the battle.

For two more days and three nights, the firefight continued, but both sides did not dare to move on to more decisive action. On February 6, 1995, units of the 1st Battalion of the 324th Regiment, with the support of marines, made a breakthrough from Chernorechye, as a result, the encirclement was removed, and Grozny was finally blocked.

On March 13, the 324th regiment launched an offensive against the positions of militants in the area of ​​​​the villages of Chechen-Aul and Starye Atagi. The purpose of the offensive is to capture the crossing over the Argun River. As a result of an 8-hour battle, the militants were pushed back to the river, and their stronghold in the area of ​​a small-scale commodity farm was practically destroyed. But as a result of a mismatch between the actions of the 1st and 3rd battalions, a gap of about 800 m turned out between them and the regiment retreated to its original positions. On March 15, a second attack on the positions of the militants began.

Then he attacked Chechen-Aul, participated in all major operations: Argun, Gudermes, Vedeno.

Since the spring of 1995, the area of ​​​​responsibility in the Dargo region.

Mid-March 1995 - in the group "South"

late March 1995 - Shawls. 3/324 SMEs started a fight in the PTF area, southwest. elevation 251.3, elevation 277.5 (south-west of Shali), providing operations from the rear of the 503th infantry regiment and 141th detachment to block Shali.

Throughout April 1995, the 324th regiment did not undertake active combat operations. Nevertheless, on average per day, as a result of the actions of Chechen snipers, 1-2 people in the regiment were injured or died. A duty officer was assigned to fight the snipers. battle group as part of a motorized rifle platoon on the BMP-1, which periodically combed the area around the location of the regiment.

At the beginning of April 1995, reinforcements arrived in the regiment - approximately 200 people, who were mainly distributed between the 1st and 3rd motorized rifle battalions. In the 1st battalion, the fighters from the replenishment immediately joined the divisions, and in the 3rd they were formed into three training platoons, the commanders of which were young. Two weeks later, in the replenishment of the 3rd battalion, a young soldier, a Baptist in his religious beliefs, hanged himself.

May-June 1995 - campaign in the mountains. On Shatoysky direction. On the night of June 9-10, 324 SMEs occupied and equipped strongholds (checkpoints) in the area 1.5 km north of Malye Varanda. On June 11, 324 SMEs by the end of the day captured the line 2 km northwest of Small Varanda, Mamyshasty, 1 km north of the Zone, and continued to advance in the direction of Big Varanda.

On June 12, 324 SMEs blocked the western outskirts of the Zone with part of the forces, ensured the entry into battle of 245 SMEs and continued to advance in the direction of Sovetskoye (Shatoi).

On June 13-18, the 324th MRR continued to block and destroy groups of militants in the fortified area they occupied on the western outskirts of the Zone. By the morning of June 19, the regiment, by night actions, in cooperation with part of the forces of the PDP 104 and PDB 7, completely blocked the airborne division, and by 17.00 completed the clearance of the settlement and the surrounding areas from the remnants of militants.

On May 24, the 104th Airborne Division and 324th Infantry Regiment, with the support of aviation and artillery, went on the offensive, attacked the enemy in the Duba-Yurt, Chishki area, 3 km west of Dachu-Borzoi, and by the end of May 26 reached the northern outskirts of Chishki and Dachu-Borzoi.

May 7, 1996 - Goiskoye (reinforced battalion) with 166 and 136 Omsbr. At 10.00 attacked the village from the east side and by 15.00 captured the village.

Having obsolete weapons (the main means of infantry in the regiment was the BMP-1), 324 SMEs was nevertheless known as one of the most combative in the grouping.

The regiment was withdrawn from Chechnya on August 2, 1996. 171 servicemen were killed, 9 were missing. On August 10, units of the regiment were already loading into trains to return home, when a new order was received: to enter Grozny in three consolidated columns and clear several blocks in the city center of militants. By the end of the day on August 11, the battalions completed their task, taking control of all the indicated quarters. This cost the regiment another 39 dead and more than a hundred wounded. After that, the regiment remained in Grozny for another 2 weeks. Then, after the withdrawal from Grozny, he camped in Khankala for another month.

Combat operations of the 324th motorized rifle regiment

1. Formation and preparation of the regiment for combat operations

The operational situation that developed on the territory of the Chechen Republic in December 1994, even before the New Year's storming of Grozny, showed that it was necessary to further build up the forces and means of the grouping of federal troops. The command of the military districts received the order to prepare new units for deployment to the North Caucasus before the New Year. Among others, the transfer of the 324th MSP of the Ural Military District was also planned.

The regiment, stationed in the 32nd military town of Yekaterinburg, was part of the 34th motor division, and in peacetime was staffed by a reduced staff. Moreover, when the 276th SME was sent to the conflict zone, almost all available soldiers and sergeants were transferred for its resupply. Many officers of the regiment went there to fill vacant positions. Thus, the 324th SME had to be assembled almost anew, and if the garrisons of Yekaterinburg, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Chebarkul and Elani could provide the regiment with officers and ensigns, then there were no “extra” soldiers and sergeants in the Ural Military District. Therefore, the General Staff decided to transfer soldiers and sergeants from the Trans-Baikal Military District to replenish the regiment to the full staff. It was considered inexpedient to train a regiment in Transbaikalia, and then to pull it in echelons across all of Russia.

The regiment was recruited according to the states of wartime, however, it included only two motorized rifle battalions. Lieutenant Colonel A. Sidorov, who already had experience in the Afghan war, was appointed commander of the regiment. Lieutenant Colonel V. Bakhmetov became deputy commander of the regiment, lieutenant colonel became deputy for armaments, lieutenant colonel N. Kutupov for educational work, lieutenant colonel for rear. A lieutenant colonel was appointed chief of staff of the regiment.

Motorized rifle battalions were taken under command by lieutenant colonels V. Chinchibaev and M. Mishin. Motorized rifle companies of the battalions were equipped with BMP-1, mortar batteries were armed with 2S12 "Sani" complexes with 120-mm 2B11 mortars. The tank battalion, formed on the basis of the 341st tank regiment, was headed by Lieutenant Colonel A. Mosievsky. The battalion was armed with T-72B1 tanks. The artillery battalion was armed with 122 mm 2S1 self-propelled howitzers, the self-propelled anti-aircraft battalion was armed with ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.

In addition, the regiment included:

communications company;

reconnaissance company under the command of Captain I. Terlyansky;

anti-tank battery under the command of Captain B. Tsekhanovich, armed with SPTRK 9P148;

repair company under the command of Captain I. Tsepa.

The personnel arrived in Yekaterinburg by VTA planes on January __. The formation and preparation of the regiment for combat operations took place at the Gorelovsky and Aduisky training grounds from __ to __ January. In the course of preparation, training firing from all types of weapons and exercises with live firing were carried out. January __ The 324th regiment plunged into echelons.

The regiment arrived in the North Caucasus on January 21, 1995. Unloading took place at the Terek-Chervlennaya railway station. Already during the unloading, the regiment was fired upon, as a result of which one of the soldiers was wounded in the leg. On the night of January 23, the regiment marched to Tolstoy-Yurt, where for a week he conducted combat coordination of units. On January 31, the 324th MRR moved to the village of Adjoining on the eastern outskirts of Grozny.

2. Fighting to block Grozny

Ibid.

Ural military news. 1995. No. 27.

Ural military news. 1997. No. 9.

Decree. op. S. 232.

Remember and bow down. S. 449.

Ibid.

Ibid.

ZKVR 3 minbatr 324 SMEs Lieutenant Georgy Alexandrovich Skipsky: "The 324th regiment was formed as follows: almost completely, with the exception of 4 people who remained in the permanent composition of the regiment at the beginning of 1995, the officer corps was staffed at the expense of parts of the garrisons of Yekaterinburg, Upper Pyshma, Elani, Chebarkul - i.e. almost from the entire Ural Military District. As a replenishment, transport aircraft were sent from the Trans-Baikal Military District with ordinary and partly officers from the garrison of Gusinoozersk. Thus, the officers of the 324th regiment at first did not even knew each other by sight, not to mention their subordinate soldiers, with whom they would soon have to go into battle.

ZKVR 3 minbatr 324 msp lieutenant G.A. Skipsky: "On January 22, 1995, units of the 324th regiment lined up in a marching column, marched across the Tersky Range and settled down near the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, which is about 20 km from the city of Grozny."2

Lieutenant-General Vladimir Yakovlevich Potapov of the NSH North Caucasian Military District: "The final stage of the operation to defeat illegal armed formations in Grozny began on the morning of February 3. Two regiments (324 and 245 msp) of the South-East group of troops carried out a maneuver from the Khankala region to the south and southeast of Grozny."3

Promotion to n.p. Gikalovsky

ZKVR 3 minbatr 324 msp lieutenant G.A. Skipsky: "Having received an order to capture and hold the Gikalovsky settlement, the commander of the 324th regiment, Lieutenant Colonel A.V. Sidorov, organized an advance along a bypass road running along the southeastern outskirts of Grozny, through the suburban areas - Oilfields and Chernorechye."4

From the description of the battle: “The deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir [Pavlovich] Bakhmetov, only took three platoons with him: reconnaissance, infantry fighting vehicles and tank. “Enough,” they decided. “Let’s hold out for a while, and then the rest will come up.”5

From the description of the battle: "[Commander of the 324th MRR] Colonel [Anatoly V.] Sidorov realistically assessed the situation and decided to move not along the highway and not bypassing the small village [Prigorodnoye], but through garden plots."6

ZKVR 3 minbatr 324 msp lieutenant G.A. Skipsky: “Before reaching Chernorechye, our column, which was walking in the forefront, unexpectedly turned off the road into the forest plantation zone and, clinging to the soles of the dominant heights, began to crawl into the greenery like a winding snake. When the column passed no more than 2 km., It was fired upon from mortars. The mines fell at a sufficiently large distance, which made it possible to observe the trajectory of their flight and not be afraid of being hit by fragments (the dispersion of fragments of a mortar mine reaches 200 m in a radius). This meant that the militants noticed our convoy too late, so their fire turned out to be untargeted. Our advance detachment, consisting of a motorized rifle company and two mortar crews, as well as a tank platoon, passed Chernorechye at speed, sweeping away a few pickets of militants along the way, and rushed along the highway to the village of Gikalovsky, between which and the outskirts of Grozny we did not encounter any serious resistance. "7

From the description of the battle: “We advanced onto the highway. And suddenly it seemed to foam. Fragments of mortar mines and torn pieces of asphalt rained down on the armored group. Walking to the left of the rest of the armored personnel carrier, a wave from a mine that exploded in a meter was literally thrown up and lowered onto wheels already pierced along one side.<...>The column surged forward. Coming out of the shelling, Bakhmetov immediately contacted the regiment commander. Transmitted the coordinates of the enemy mortar battery. But he completely switched to solving the problem facing him only when he heard his call sign in the headphones of the headset, and then the message:
- Order. The target is hit. Keep moving."8

From the description of the battle: "Towards a truck full of militants. They hit him from a tank. Who of the" spirits "survived - in all directions. As expected, they processed them from machine guns. Intelligence even managed to take a prisoner. He was already seething with anger. And then ( where did he just get it from?) suddenly grabbed a grenade and shouting: "Allah akbar!" - swung at the soldiers. Didn't have time. The grenade was taken away. At the same time, however, the prisoner was crushed a little. Then they interrogated. He told everything. And that near the former the breeding state farm, where the armored group was going, there were about forty-five militants and that they were at the crossroads near the bazaar. And most importantly, from the side where the Bakhmetovites come from, no one is waiting for them. A little further, behind the state farm, there is a whole stronghold. on the map: there is no bazaar near the crossroads. Not marked. We decided to sort it out on the spot. "9

In n.p. Gikalovsky

From the description of the battle: "Fighting vehicles of the armored group jumped out in a flock from behind the turn. They immediately sorted out the situation. Exactly, there is a market near the road. Or rather, several "Shanghai". The militants at first did not really even accept the battle. . On the grills, even skewers with barbecue remained untouched. "10

ZKVR 3 minbatr 324 msp lieutenant G.A. Skipsky: “When our avant-garde broke into Gikalovsky, no one expected him. The militants fled so hastily that they abandoned all their property and documents. In the courtyard of the building there were boilers in which hot pilaf was still smoking. militants, found lists of the personnel of the detachment of field commander Isa Madaev, in whose area of ​​​​responsibility were the southern outskirts of Grozny<...>. A staff van based on the GAZ-66, as well as several sets of field camouflage uniforms stylized as a mountain national costume, became the mortarmen's trophies. Several militants were taken prisoner and, after a short search and interrogation, they were shot. Sending them to the rear did not make sense, since we did not have one.
After the breakthrough of the 3rd battalion through Chernorechye, the militants organized a denser fire barrier, as a result of which not all units of the 324th regiment were able to slip through the "green" without loss. In our mortar battery, as a result of shelling, a car, which was closing the column, loaded with various field equipment, was hit. The remains of the car had to be transported in tow, attaching it to the BMP with a cable. "11

From the description of the battle: "And the resistance became more and more fierce. It happened that Bakhmetov's fighters had to tear boxes of cartridges from armored vehicles on the move, which were specially hung on the armor against cumulative shots in order to replenish their ammunition load. And yet the resistance of the Dudaevites was broken."12

Militant counterattack

From the description of the battle: “By four o’clock in the evening, the commander drove up to the new location of the regiment. deployed a mortar battery for battle.
By that time, intelligence had reported that a cluster of about fifty Dudayev vehicles had been discovered. Getting ready to move out. The regiment commander, Colonel Anatoly Sidorov, immediately contacted the artillery. Asked for fire.<...>Well done artillerymen! They did a great job back then. Strongly rescued the regiment.
The fight lasted until eleven. Cruel. Persistent. But the approaching night gradually took its toll.
The cannonade has subsided, there is no point in planting shells in the dark like a pretty penny.
And on the KNP regiment, the "battle" lasted all night. Various options for upcoming actions were worked out, the tactical position of one's own and the militants was assessed, orders and instructions were given. Everyone who was there that night was amazed at their commander. Not a hint of confusion on his face. Clarity and confidence in actions, in what was said. He only smoked unusually much - three packs of cigarettes in a few hours. The officers could not stand it anymore, they took the smoke. Instead, they put bags of crackers on the table: you need to take care of a smart commander.

Night trip to the village Suburban

From the description of the battle: "Zhuravlev entered Chechnya as the commander of a tank platoon as part of the 324th motorized rifle regiment. All the tanks were scattered around the motorized rifle units to reinforce them, and Zhuravlev's platoon turned out to be attached to the company of Captain Oleg Deryabin.
Located near the village Prigorodny (the southeastern outskirts of Grozny), motorized riflemen and tankers began to wait for further instructions. It was January, and the silence over the white field in the disposition of our soldiers looked natural and peaceful. Suburban did not show hostility in any way, and the white Zhiguli passing by our positions were, as it were, confirmation that local residents no stone in the bosom. The Zhiguli disappeared, and a little later, shelling began from the direction of Prigorodny.
In the evening, the officers excitedly summed up the day. The result was in favor of the militants, because the Urals fired back not at the enemy, but only in his direction. None of those gathered knew how long they would have to stay in these positions. But everyone, including Zhuravlev, understood that the next shelling could begin at any moment.
- Who's with me? - Asked Deryabin, having decided on a night outing to the village. There were many applicants, but only twelve came. The rest of the company commander left with the personnel.
They took personal weapons and left. Special binoculars, allowing you to see at least something in the pitch darkness of the black southern night, was only one of a dozen brave ones. It was he who made it possible to detect a group of militants coming towards ...
Deryabin was the first to open fire, and a machine gun burst, breaking the silence, knocked down one of the Chechens. The rest, firing back, began to retreat behind the houses, and ours continued to hit them with machine guns. After some time, the shooting ended, the militants fled. The officers approached the dead enemy lying in a pool of blood. A military ID was found on the murdered Chechen, according to which it was determined that he served in airborne troops, as well as lists of names and phone numbers in Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol and other cities of the North Caucasus. Subsequently, it turned out that he was the head of intelligence of one of the major gangs.
Inspired by the success of the first battle, the daredevils went further along Prigorodny. The curves, with numerous bends of the streets of the village, limited visibility, so that even binoculars shining through the darkness did not help. So they walked quietly and listened. Suddenly, Zhuravlev heard the rumble of the "Zhiguli" engine, familiar from childhood. After a few seconds, no one doubted that it was the Zhiguli that were slowly moving towards them. Hiding behind a corner, they waited until the car appeared from behind the turn of a narrow village street. The car that appeared was white - the same as the one that had passed the day before the shelling. There were four militants in it. They were shot point-blank.
Satisfied, hung with trophies, without a single scratch, the twelve officers returned to their own. "13

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

1 Skipsky G. Lessons of the First Chechen campaign// Russia and Soviet Union in local wars and armed conflicts of the twentieth century. Yekaterinburg, 2002. S. 219-235. (http://chechnya.genstab.ru/art_324reg.htm)
2 Skipsky G. Lessons from the First Chechen Campaign // Russia and the Soviet Union in Local Wars and Armed Conflicts of the 20th Century. Yekaterinburg, 2002. S. 219-235. (http://chechnya.genstab.ru/art_324reg.htm)
3 Potapov V. Actions of formations, units and divisions of the Army during the special operation to disarm illegal armed formations in 1994-96. on the territory of the Chechen Republic.
4 Skipsky G. Lessons from the First Chechen Campaign // Russia and the Soviet Union in Local Wars and Armed Conflicts of the 20th Century. Yekaterinburg, 2002. S. 219-235. (http://chechnya.genstab.ru/art_324reg.htm)
5 Belousov Yu. There are no fighting draws // Remember and bow. Yekaterinburg, 2000, p. 318.
6 Khanmamedov A. The regiment that returned... // Ural Military Bulletin. 1996. August 2.
7 Skipsky G. Lessons from the First Chechen Campaign // Russia and the Soviet Union in Local Wars and Armed Conflicts of the 20th Century. Yekaterinburg, 2002. S. 219-235. (http://chechnya.genstab.ru/art_324reg.htm)
8 Belousov Yu. There are no fighting draws // Remember and bow. Ekaterinburg, 2000. S. 319.
9 Belousov Yu. There are no fighting draws // Remember and bow. Ekaterinburg, 2000. S. 319.
10 Belousov Yu. There are no fighting draws // Remember and bow. Ekaterinburg, 2000. S. 319.
11 Skipsky G. Lessons from the First Chechen Campaign // Russia and the Soviet Union in Local Wars and Armed Conflicts of the 20th Century. Yekaterinburg, 2002. S. 219-235. (http://chechnya.genstab.ru/art_324reg.htm)
12 Belousov Yu. There are no fighting draws // Remember and bow. Ekaterinburg, 2000. S. 319.
13 Tikhonov I. War and Peace of Captain Zhuravlev // Remember and Bow. Yekaterinburg, 2000, p. 87.

The dual power that developed in 1991 in Chechnya, which declared itself a sovereign republic, led to a confrontation with the federal government and internal conflicts in the struggle for power, which ended with the introduction of Russian troops in December 1994. So began to participate in which wanted not all the military leadership of the country. But if the generals could resign and avoid being sent to the North Caucasus, then the conscripts and junior officers simply had no choice. In a hurry, regiments were understaffed and sent to carry out a combat mission in Chechnya. The 245th, which lost a significant part of its personnel during military operations, did not escape this fate. The most dramatic was the battle near the village of Yaryshmardy on April 16, 1996, which took place exactly twenty years ago.

245th SME

The 245th regiment has the rank of guards for heroic story during the Great Patriotic War. Stationed in the Nizhny Novgorod region, during the ten days of January 1995, after the failed operation of the federal forces to capture Grozny, he began to actively replenish conscripts under wartime conditions. Its contingent grew 10 times and amounted to 1,700 people due to recruitment from the KDVO (Red Banner Far Eastern Military District). In addition to recruits, volunteers who did not undergo the necessary training were also called up. On the eve of entering Chechnya, the fighters did not have a single joint exercise to practice interaction.

Considering that already in the North Caucasus 4 sets of officers will be replaced in the regiment, it becomes clear from his example that the army was not prepared for participation in the First Chechen campaign and was doomed to losses. Only those killed at 245 SMEs will amount to 220 people, including the son of Lieutenant General Pulikovsky (December 1995) and those guys who laid down their lives during another 20 military operations. The bloodiest battle was near the village of Yashmardy, which caused a huge public outcry.

In the war zone

The 245th SME has always been at the forefront, participating in the assault on Prigorodny (Grozny), Goisky, Vedeno, Arkhtan-Yurt, Shatoi and Goths. Since the spring of 1995, the regiment settled not far from Shatoi, guarding roads and guarding the roadblocks. The fighters accompanied transport columns carrying fuel, food and civilians. Beginning in February 1995, after the encirclement and blocking of Dudaev's main troops in the South-East grouping of troops, strange events began to occur more and more often associated with concessions to the separatists.

During the operation to capture Shatoi in June 1995, a column of the 245th regiment was ambushed near the village of Zone in Argun Gorge. This happened due to the carelessness of the leadership and the lack of reconnaissance on foot. Despite the losses, this fact remained almost unnoticed in the general jubilation associated with the capture of Chatoy. But this was the first call to the tragedy that went down in history as the battle at Yaryshmarda. On March 31, 1996, a convoy of paratroopers near the village of Benoy, marching to Vedeno, was shot, but this did not induce the command to increase security measures when passing through the gorge.

What preceded the April events

On April 4, the administration of the village of Yaryshmardy signed a peace treaty with federal troops, which imposed a ban on hostilities in the area. On the basis of a document from the chief of staff of the 324th SME, under whose control the section of the road to Shatoi was located, a checkpoint was removed 500 meters from the village. The regimental commander was not informed.

The battle near Yaryshmarda will take place in the context of the order of the Minister of Defense on the use of artillery only in case of self-defense and the complete refusal of the participation of aviation on the territory of Chechnya. He came through secret communication channels about ten days before the column left Khankala.

Shot column

The central base of the 245th SME prepared a convoy to Shatoi, the purpose of which was to deliver to military unit logistics, fuel and young replenishment. The demobilized and sent home for family reasons joined the column. There is evidence that there were also mothers of soldiers looking for their missing children. From Goisky, 4 vehicles of the 324th SME joined them. The rear column under the command of Major Terzovets left on April 15, immediately after the celebration of Easter. After spending the night in Khankala, by the middle of the next day, cars and military equipment passed Dacha-Borzoy and Yaryshmardy, stretching for 1.5-2 km. Ahead was a narrow mountain serpentine, which in everyday life is called "mother-in-law's tongue."

The reconnaissance was controlled by an artillery spotter who kept in touch with the 324th SME, and this was all that was done to protect people and military equipment. The battle near Yaryshmarda was filmed by the militants themselves, whose material became public. Against the background of birds singing and the conversations of the detachment of the Jordanian Khattab and Ruslan Gelaev, the rumble of cars is heard. It can be seen from behind the branches from the cliff how a tarpaulin "Ural", a tanker, an armored personnel carrier appear. The distance between cars is about 20 meters. And suddenly the silence is torn by explosions, and then shooting. With dense fire from a height, invisible behind the "green" and a curtain of smoke, the militants shoot the Russian convoy point-blank. The time recorded on the video is 13 hours 23 minutes. These are the minutes when the battle began at Yaryshmarda.

Battle scheme

The presented diagram shows that the militants deliberately waited for the convoy, having equipped up to 20 points for a fire strike. Trenches were specially dug in the rocks, which is a very time-consuming task. All places of deployment of the Khattab and Gelaev gang are equipped with a sufficient number of weapons. They are located on both sides, which allows you to shoot through all sections of the path. On the road in the direction of traffic, radio-controlled land mines are installed. The place for the attack is ideally chosen due to the bend that hides the lead transport from the tail of the column. The road in this place is so narrow that it is impossible for tankers or trucks to turn around to leave the battlefield.

On the left is a practically sheer cliff, on the right is a cliff about five meters high, under which the Argun River flows. During heavy fire, some soldiers managed to jump into the dry river. Those who did not crash during the fall were finished off by snipers, which excluded the possibility of escaping. The trap for the transport column slammed shut when the leading tank was blown up on a landmine and an explosion was heard at the end of the procession. The bandits hit clearly on target, shooting in the first minutes of the battle the BMP and BRDM leading the column. Senior Major Terezovets, a radio operator and an artillery spotter, were killed. A company of 245 SMEs found itself without communication with the outside world (in the VHF band, interference was specially placed), without control and support from artillery and aviation. The battle at Yaryshmarda turned into a real massacre for Russian soldiers and officers.

1996: tragic events through the eyes of eyewitnesses

According to the 245th SME, during the bloody events, 73 people died, 52 were injured, 6 infantry fighting vehicles, 1 armored infantry fighting vehicle, 11 vehicles were destroyed. Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article that indicated 95 dead, taking into account those demobilized and those who joined the column, whose presence was not officially recorded by anyone. This is easy to believe, because the mother of the deceased machine gunner Oleg Ogoreltsev, one of the demobilized, had to search for her son in Chechnya for a month and was able to identify the corpse in Rostov only after meeting with the surviving participants in the dramatic events. 30 bodies were removed from the battlefield without the possibility of identification: the guys burned like torches after direct hits from grenade launchers on tankers and infantry fighting vehicles. What do eyewitnesses say about the battle at Yaryshmarda?

Sniper Denis Tsiryulnik, a contractor, says that after the smoke cleared, the surviving soldiers resisted to the last bullet in conditions of almost zero visibility. After the battle, seven bodies of militants will be found - residents of the Shatoi region. Only at 6 o'clock in the evening, the armored group of Miroshnichenko and the 324th SME, as well as a battered reconnaissance detachment, made their way to the column. By this time, the Chechens and Arab mercenaries involved in the Khattab gang had already fled. Only one question was asked: why did help arrive so late? The head BRDM resisted to the last, the guys could have survived. To which the answer followed: the command of the regiment was waiting for instructions from above, and the groups began to break through to help only at the fourth hour. The helicopters that flew up hit the mountains, artillery hit, but there were no more militants on the slopes.

Igor Izotov, who was in the third truck, said that those who managed to squeeze into a patch between the front BMP and the rocks, which became the only dead zone for the enemy, survived. The guys were pulled out from under the cars by snipers, shooting with a ricochet on the asphalt.

The wounded Sergei Cherchik recalls that, despite the fire, there was mutual assistance between the soldiers. He, wounded by shrapnel, was pulled out from under the car by a contract soldier, and when he was hit in the kneecap, the two of them were saved by a conscript soldier.

Eternal memory to the dead

The fact that the convoy was expected and Khattab had complete information about its composition is evidenced by the fact that the most important vehicles were hit by land mines and grenade launchers. The medical vehicle remained intact. The wounded were gathered into it, and the bodies of the dead were laid on the armor. When MTLB began to turn around, its wheels hovered over the cliff. The driver miraculously managed to straighten the car, but the bodies of the already dead guys fell into Argun. All morning on the 17th, they cleared the road, finding seven more unexploded land mines. Burnt trucks were thrown off a cliff, they were looking for things and personal numbers of soldiers. Thus ended the almost four-hour battle at Yaryshmarda.

The list of the dead of 245 SMEs includes 11 officers, including artillery spotter Captain Vyatkin, who met death in the first minutes of the battle, Captain Lakhin, Major Milovanov, 2 ensigns and 27 soldiers and sergeants. Among them, 8 33 remained unidentified, and for a long time their names, like the machine gunner Ogoreltsev, were established with the help of their parents and relatives. A book of memory is posted on the website of 245 SMEs, and a monument has been erected in the Nizhny Novgorod Region to those who fulfilled their goal at the cost of their lives.

official investigation

The mass death of the personnel of 245 SMEs became the subject of an official investigation, as a result of which the prosecutor's office also spoke in the State Duma, which did not see corpus delicti in the actions of officials. Rokhlin blamed the leadership of the country and the Ministry of Defense for not controlling the situation in Chechnya and for allowing the manifestation of carelessness, which led to the death of the military. He pointed to the loss of vigilance, tactical illiteracy and lack of interaction between the 245th and 324th SMEs. But no one, including the regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel Romanikhin, was punished for the dramatic battle at Yaryshmarda.

20 years later

On May 5, 1996, the first article about the tragedy with the column of the 245th SME appeared on the pages of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, which was immediately called sold on the sidelines. Khattab openly speaks in a video message about the venality of some high-ranking officers. But he cannot be trusted, a thorough judicial investigation is needed, which should answer the question of the causes of terrible coincidences and mass deaths of soldiers. But so far, no such investigation has taken place. One of the mysteries of the First Chechen War remains the April battle at Yaryshmarda. Military secrets have been carefully guarded since the times when the participants in the events were strictly forbidden to transmit the details and details of the terrible tragedy to everyone, including journalists. Today, their memoirs have been published, but they do not answer the main question: why is the command not responsible for the lives of its soldiers? ..

The fighting in the initial period of the campaign showed that the command and control system for performing combat missions is not at all suitable for the military-political situation that has developed in the Chechen Republic. To perform an elementary maneuver or solve the immediate tactical task, it was necessary to coordinate actions at the level of, at a minimum, the headquarters of the joint grouping of federal forces in the republic.

Georgy Alexandrovich Skipsky - Ph.D. ist. Sciences, teacher of the Yekaterinburg branch of the Academy of the State Fire Service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, major of the internal service (Yekaterinburg). He took part in the fighting in the Chechen Republic as part of the 324th motorized rifle regiment as deputy commander of the 3rd mortar battery for work with personnel from January 21 to May 10, 1995.

Russian history has repeatedly proved that its lessons begin to be taken into account only after the repeated repetition of the mistakes made by its predecessors. The same incident happened with the First Chechen campaign, though. it would seem that our country already had the bitter experience of the war in Afghanistan, and our grandfathers paid for it too dearly on the fields of the Great Patriotic War.

There is no doubt that when deciding to send Russian troops into the Chechen Republic, the top military and political leadership of the country did not realize the consequences of this step. Moreover, once again the "hatted" mood prevailed. The military side of the operation was not really planned at all. This can be confirmed by the following example: in the first period of the campaign, which can be conditionally determined chronological framework: December 1994 - March 1995, the supply of the federal group in the republic was carried out to a greater extent by the method of self-sufficiency. This meant that military personnel often received most of their food not in field kitchens, but as a result of requisitions from the local population. The quality of food in the early days was below any criticism. When making a march in the 324th regiment, a fighter was entitled to a can of canned pearl barley porridge with meat (more precisely, with a hint of the presence of such) and a third of a loaf of frozen bread per day. The lack of food was compensated by the stocks of the population, prepared for the winter and abandoned in houses during the flight of the Chechens of the lowland auls to the mountainous regions, where fighting deployed only in May 1995.

Another example can be given. It seems strange to use units from all military districts for a military operation, if we proceed from the use of the element of surprise. Bringing parts of the North Caucasian Military District to full combat readiness and their redeployment to the borders of the Chechen Republic could be carried out in a shorter time than the transfer of military trains from the Urals or Transbaikalia. One can, of course, object to this by saying that the facts of the transportation of military echelons with equipment and personnel would remain unknown to D. Dudayev, but such a position became similar to an ostrich, based on modern possibilities intelligence, as well as the good knowledge of the Chechen leadership about the plans of the Kremlin. When our echelon was standing on sidings near the town of Mineralnye Vody, the sentry prevented by warning shots an attempt to approach it by a group of suspicious persons who at night wandered around the echelon, which was quite far from the city. That is, even before the arrival of our train to the place of unloading, Dudayev's informants already had information about it. On the night of January 21, 1995, while unloading a train at the Terek station (Republic of North Ossetia), we were fired upon, as a result of which one of the soldiers was wounded in the leg. The North Caucasus greeted us so hospitably on the first day of our stay.

On January 22, 1995, units of the 324th regiment lined up in a marching column, marched across the Tersky Range and settled down near the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, which is about 20 km from the city of Grozny. Unlike the 276th motorized rifle regiment, which, after unloading equipment and a long march, was immediately thrown to storm Grozny, our regiment was given a week to carry out combat coordination in order to avoid the heavy losses suffered by our countrymen from the 276th regiment in Grozny. This really gave positive results, as it turned out later. Indeed, if we had been thrown into battle in the same way as the 276th regiment, then the losses would have been even greater than in it. The fact is that to staff the 276th regiment, officers were sent from all over the 34th motorized rifle division, so they at least visually knew each other and their soldiers, the 324th regiment was formed as follows: almost completely, with the exception of 4 people, remaining in the permanent composition of the regiment at the beginning of 1995, the officers were staffed by units of the garrisons of Yekaterinburg, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Elani, Chebarkul - i.e. almost from the entire Ural Military District. As a replenishment, transport aircraft were sent from the Trans-Baikal Military District with privates and partially officers from the garrison of Gusinoozersk. Thus, the officers of the 324th regiment at first did not even know each other by sight, not to mention their subordinate soldiers, with whom they soon had to go into battle.

The fighting in the initial period of the campaign showed that the command and control system for performing combat missions is not at all suitable for the military-political situation that has developed in the Chechen Republic. To perform an elementary maneuver or solve the immediate tactical task, it was necessary to coordinate actions at the level of, at a minimum, the headquarters of the joint grouping of federal forces in the republic. At the same time, the militants rarely brought forces larger than a company or battalion into battle, which made their actions very unpredictable for the Russian troops, made it difficult to observe, not to mention the possibility of reconnaissance.

A favorite technique of Chechen fighters was the use of small groups, usually consisting of a machine gunner, sniper and grenade launcher. The grenade launcher hit armored vehicles, the sniper - officers, and the machine gunner created a fire barrier for an organized exit of the troika from the zone of return fire of Russian units. Such tactics were used by separatists not only in Grozny, but also in clashes with federal forces in the field, and in particular during the offensive of the 1st and 3rd motorized rifle battalions of the 324th regiment in mid-March 1995 near the settlements of Chechen - Aul and Starye Atagi, which will be discussed in more detail later.

Under the prevailing conditions, a successful outcome of the battle for the Russian troops was achieved only if the commander of the unit or subunit took responsibility and made a decision based on the immediate situation, which changed much faster than the headquarters of the combined group could react to it. The most striking example was the regiment's advance to the area of ​​the villages of Gikalovsky and Chechen-Aul, which began on the morning of February 3, 1995 from the Adjacent region (the eastern outskirts of Grozny). Its goal was to completely block the city of Grozny from the south, where until the indicated time, starting from the moment the Chechen capital was stormed, the so-called "green corridor" was in operation, along which civilians were to be evacuated from the city. In fact, this corridor was used to feed the militants in Grozny with reinforcements, ammunition, food, and to evacuate the wounded to secret bases in the highlands.

This corridor was also formed because a picture that was paradoxical from the point of view of military art arose. The federal troops surrounding the city in the first months did not have a numerical superiority over the militants, whose number at the beginning of hostilities in the republic was about 35 thousand people (of which about 15 thousand were the so-called presidential guard, the rest were part of the local militia) , while the combined grouping of federal troops numbered approximately 18.5 thousand people (data on the number of warring parties were borrowed by me from the military press of that period, as well as materials from a military-practical conference held in November 1995 in Yekaterinburg, organized by the headquarters Ural Military District to summarize the experience gained). With such a balance of forces, it was not surprising that Grozny was only partially blocked by the federal group, and the battles for the city continued for almost two months.

Having received an order to capture and hold the Gikalovsky settlement, the commander of the 324th regiment, Lieutenant Colonel A.V. Sidorov, organized an advance along a bypass road running along the southeastern outskirts of Grozny, through the suburban areas - Oilfields and Chernorechye. Not reaching Chernorechye, our column, walking in the forefront, unexpectedly turned off the road into the zone of forest plantations and, clinging to the soles of the dominant heights, began to crawl into the "green" like a winding snake. When the column passed no more than 2 km, it was fired from mortars. The mines fell at a sufficiently large distance, which made it possible to observe the trajectory of their flight and not be afraid of being hit by fragments (the dispersion of fragments of a mortar mine reaches 200 m in a radius). This meant that the militants noticed our convoy too late, so their fire turned out to be untargeted. Our advance detachment, consisting of a motorized rifle company and two mortar crews, as well as a tank platoon, passed Chernorechye at speed, sweeping away a few pickets of militants along the way, and rushed along the highway to the village of Gikalovsky, between which and the outskirts of Grozny we did not meet any serious resistance. When our vanguard burst into Gikalovsky, no one expected him. The militants fled so hastily that they abandoned all their property and documents. In the courtyard of the building there were cauldrons in which hot pilaf was still smoking. The fighters, examining the building of the tribal state farm, where the headquarters of the militants was located, found lists of the personnel of the detachment of field commander Isa Madaev, in whose area of ​​​​responsibility were the southern outskirts of Grozny (each field commander had his own pre-assigned sector of responsibility, which made it possible to respond very quickly to the movements of federal troops and set up ambushes against them). A staff van based on the GAZ-66, as well as several sets of field camouflage uniforms stylized as a mountain national costume, became the mortarmen's trophies. Several militants were taken prisoner and, after a short search and interrogation, they were shot. Sending them to the rear did not make sense, since we did not have one.

After the breakthrough of the 3rd battalion through Chernorechye, the militants organized a denser fire barrier, as a result of which not all units of the 324th regiment were able to slip through the "green" without loss. In our mortar battery, as a result of the shelling, a car was knocked out at the rear of the column, loaded with various field equipment. The remains of the car had to be transported in tow, attaching it to the BMP with a cable.

In the future, I had to draw up an act to write off the car and the property in it 5 times. This once again confirmed that bureaucracy in the Russian army thrives even during hostilities, when the outcome of a case is decided not by a document, but by the real actions of people. We were given such "trust" that it turned out that we almost sold the car with property to the same militants. Although the facts of the sale of weapons, equipment and ammunition took place during the first Chechen campaign, but I myself and my comrades did not have information about such facts. I had to repeatedly confirm the fact of the loss of property, although at the same time from Grozny, when it was restored railway communication, not without the knowledge of the high authorities, entire platforms were loaded with foreign cars, household appliances, furniture looted from abandoned houses in Grozny and other settlements Chechnya. As they say, "to whom is war, and to whom is mother dear."

Regiment marines, which was supposed to follow the 324th regiment, having encountered dense fire from militants, was also unable to support the actions of our battalion that had broken through to Gikalovsky. As a result, by the evening of February 3, we were almost completely surrounded. It should be said that if Lieutenant Colonel A.V. Sidorov had decided to follow the marching column strictly along the indicated route, the regiment would have suffered huge losses, and the author of these lines would hardly have been able to write them.

Recovering from the first shock, the militants began to gather their forces to the village of Chechen-Aul, located 3 km from Gikalovsky, and from there they began to disturb us, making periodic shelling, not allowing us to calmly dig in and take a breath. So the whole night passed. At 5 o'clock in the morning on February 4, 1995, the battle flared up with renewed vigor. First, the militants, hiding behind a thick veil of fog, went through the thickets of elm and along the channel of the canal to the rear of the positions of the tank platoon located at the crossroads of the Rostov-on-Don-Baku highway and the Grozny-Duba-Yurt highway, and almost point-blank shot two tanks from grenade launchers and then quickly disappeared along the same path they had come. The death of the tanks and their crews was the result of the fact that at night the tanks ended up without the cover of motorized riflemen, who were redeployed to the rear, by order of the regiment commander to cover the headquarters from Urus-Martan. The militants fired precisely at the top of the tower, where the ammunition is located, so the explosions were so strong that the tower of one of the tanks was blown aside for several tens of meters. Pieces of armor from another tank whistled over the heads of the mortar crews, one of which plunged into the parapet of the trench where the battery control was located. The battery commander, Captain V.Yu. Arbuzov, took it and, despite the whistle of bullets flying over our heads, went and showed it to his soldiers, thereby putting forward a weighty "argument" for them to tear off trenches to their full height, and not like that, which were open by the morning - the maximum in order to hide in them while sitting from bullets and shrapnel. Standing under the bullets on the parapet of the trench, he, drowning out the noise of the shots, used the vocabulary "suitable" for the given situation, thereby instilling in the fighters the awareness of the need to fulfill their military duty.

Militant attacks on the positions of the 3rd battalion continued for 7 hours. Their direction was constantly changing, since the enemy was quite competently looking for weakness in our defense. It was found from the direction of Urus-Martan, whose elders, at the beginning of the first Chechen campaign, declared neutrality on the condition that the federal troops would not enter the village. Between Urus-Martan and Gikalovskoye, the area is quite flat, almost flat field with small hills. On it, the militants deployed in a chain and moved directly to the position of the mortar battery, which was in the second echelon of the battalion's stronghold of defense. To repel the attack, it was necessary to temporarily stop the fire support of the motorized riflemen, who held back the onslaught of the enemy from Chechen-Aul and Duba-Yurt, and transfer fire to the advancing chains, which were not bending down, just like in the movie "Chapaev". The fighters somehow dug trenches for mortars at night, but they didn’t have time for themselves, so they couldn’t fire from machine guns in full force without dooming themselves to certain death.

Several direct-fire volleys stopped the advance of the militants about 500 meters from the firing positions of the mortars. During the hitch, a platoon of motorized riflemen on the BMP-1 approached to rescue the mortarmen and scattered the battle formations of the Dudayevites with joint fire with a battery. Attempts by militants to break through deep into our defenses in vehicles were thwarted by crossfire from 7.62-mm machine guns mounted on infantry fighting vehicles. One of these vehicles nevertheless broke through the fire screen close enough, but they still set it on fire about a hundred meters from us. I saw militants jumping out of it, engulfed in flames, who were immediately finished off by the queue of our machine gunners.

After the attack from Urus-Martan failed, the militants, having dispersed their forces, tried to strike simultaneously from three sides. Motorized riflemen were in great need of our fire screen, so the guns on the mortar battery were distributed two in each direction, and their fire was led by officers, fearing that inexperienced gunners, when firing direct fire, would cover the positions of their own comrades. At that moment, it turned out that the ammunition for mortars began to run out quickly, so it was necessary to urgently fit a car with mines, which was located behind the headquarters building of the regiment, with which communication had been lost. Captain V.Yu.Arbuzov sent me to complete this task. To be honest, it was very scary to get out of the trench under the bullets. But the order had to be carried out, because without ammunition we would not be able to provide proper support to the infantry. In the future, there was the prospect of engaging in battle with notorious thugs who had gained combat experience back in Abkhazia, while our fighters barely owned their AKSU-74s, suitable only for close combat (after the battle it turned out that the well-known "Abkhazian battalion", formed back in 1993 by Basaev).

Running across the open space and hiding behind a concrete fence, I managed to quickly find a car with mines, transmit our new radio call signs to the headquarters (the militants jammed the frequencies on which communication with the headquarters was maintained until the morning) and go back, showing the way to the driver of the Ural loaded with mines ", who was very afraid to go out into the open. I had to walk in front of the car to show the driver that "the devil is not as scary as he is painted." In addition, the feeling of fear for his comrades overcame his own instinct for self-preservation. The ammunition came in handy, and together with the battalion commander we quickly organized their unloading, although only one successful hit by a bullet in the tip of a mine could send the entire battery to Allah.

Having received a worthy rebuff from 18-19-year-old boys, from whom seasoned militants did not expect such agility, the latter stopped further attempts to attack us head-on and retreated to Chechen-Aul, which for a long month and a half became a headache for the entire 324th regiment. The results of the battle were quite depressing. Our battalion lost 18 people killed, 50 received various injuries. The tank company lost 5 vehicles, which were knocked out mainly in the first minutes of the battle. The rest of the tanks were saved by taking them to spare positions behind the motorized riflemen, who took the brunt of the blow. The militants lost about 50 people killed. It was not possible to specify the number of wounded, since the militants took all of them with them, and after repelling the last attack, the regiment commander did not organize the pursuit of the retreating enemy, because he was afraid of heavy losses and the possibility of falling into an ambush.

For two more days and three nights, the firefight continued, but both sides did not dare to move on to more decisive action. On February 6, 1995, units of the 1st battalion of the 324th regiment, with the support of marines, made a breakthrough from Chernorechye, as a result, our encirclement was removed, and Grozny was finally blocked. A few days later, while listening to the radio, we learned that the BBC radio broadcast a message that a "Ural special punitive regiment" had been brought into Chechnya. Since Western media received information about the war in Chechnya mainly with the help of separatists, this was a fairly high assessment of the combat capability of our regiment. Later, as it turned out during negotiations with the elders of nearby villages, the militants dubbed us "red dogs" because our regiment firmly held its positions and did not allow anyone to move freely within the range of the mine (it is 7201 m). In addition, many of the officers in the regiment grew beards that turned red in the sun. Once again, the common truth was confirmed that the East has always respected strength. When, at the end of February 1995, units of the 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment from the Moscow Military District settled south of our regiment, the militants did not enter into any negotiations with them at all, but simply, giving a small bribe (a bottle of vodka, a block of cigarettes), passed through them positions in the right direction. This was unthinkable in our regiment.

For a month and a half, starting from the departure of the units of the 324th regiment to the village of Gikalovsky, the militants fought grueling night battles. Every day from sunset until late at night, as scheduled, our positions were fired upon and sorties were made to the front line of defense. This was done in order to ensure the transfer of ammunition, weapons and reinforcements to the besieged Grozny. Mortarmen did not sit without work. Often it was necessary to simultaneously "process" the "brilliant green" in front of the positions of motorized riflemen in order to smoke snipers and the fire support groups accompanying them out of it. At the same time, it was necessary to arrange a fire barrier on country roads, along which the militants transported cars with ammunition and other property for their accomplices in Grozny. To detect the enemy, the battery periodically illuminated the area at the forefront with lighting mines.

As a result of raids behind enemy lines, the reconnaissance group of the Kyakhtinsky special forces managed to find two field camps of militants, which were destroyed as a result of fire raids by our battery. The fire of the mortars was finely corrected by the commander of the control platoon, senior lieutenant V. G. Bednenko, who every night went out together with the special forces to search. As a result of these raids, the militants lost about 110 people killed (information was obtained as a result of a morning inspection of the places of the former militant camps). Because radio communications were being monitored by the enemy, we used terminology from Fenimore Cooper's North American Indian novels. In particular, the location of the reconnaissance group and our spotter was designated as a "wigwam". V. G. Bednenko himself had the call sign "Eye", the battery commander captain V. Yu. barely leaned out of the trench so as not to get a bullet from a Chechen sniper).

Despite the sharply changed tactical situation, especially after all the main centers of resistance were suppressed in early March 1995 in Grozny, the Dudayevites got a respite of at least two weeks, since a truce was declared on March 1. While it lasted, under our noses, the militants built a well-fortified and engineered stronghold, which covered the approaches to the only stationary bridge across the Argun River, located in the middle between the villages of Chechen-Aul and Starye Atagi.

The examples given above suggest that the transfer of hostilities from the lowland regions of Chechnya to the mountainous regions was deliberately delayed, since with the proper level of organization of the operation to "restor the constitutional order", this was quite possible back in February 1995, after the city of Grozny was finally blocked. Until the snow melted in the mountains, and the forests in the foothills of Chechnya were not dressed in green foliage, the militants were under the threat of air strikes, and their communications were limited only to river valleys and gorges, while mountain and forest paths snow avalanches and drifts could collapse. This circumstance was taken into account only in the second Chechen campaign, but this is not the subject of our conversation. The deliberate prolongation of military operations in the spring of 1995, which took place in the form of moratoriums on the use of heavy weapons and equipment, the introduction of frequent truces, allowed the militants to regroup their forces, replenish food, fuel and ammunition supplies, and finally restore strength and heal wounds received in fierce battles during the winter months of the war.

Moreover, the truces only provoked the military activity of the separatists and contributed to the deployment guerrilla war against federal troops even in those areas where the local population did not put up strong resistance in the first period of the campaign. One example of such a provocation was the artillery shelling of the positions of the 3rd mortar battery and the headquarters of the 324th motorized rifle regiment, which took place on March 2, 1995, in the village of Gikalovsky, located 12 km south of the city of Grozny. The shelling was preceded by the appearance of a car with emblems and the CSCE flag at the crossroads of the Rostov-on-Don-Baku highway and the Grozny-Duba-Yurt highway. At this crossroads, after a truce was announced on February 28, 1995, on March 1, 1995, the exchange of captured Russian servicemen for the bodies of dead militants took place. Since the firing positions of the 3rd mortar battery and the headquarters of the 324th motorized rifle regiment were within line of sight of the intersection, the participants in the negotiations from the Chechen side were able to accurately determine the coordinates of these units. The next day, March 2, 1995, during lunch (the militants thoroughly studied the daily routine in the regiment), when one of the two fire platoons of the 3rd mortar battery went to the field bath, located behind the government building of the Gikalovsky tribal state farm, and the other platoon I was getting ready to eat, a piercing whistle rang out, and soon before my eyes, about 150 m from the battery positions and 100 m from the headquarters building, an artillery shell exploded (later it turned out that it was fired by a 76-mm anti-aircraft gun). A few seconds later, a second shell exploded. This time it happened almost at the headquarters building. Then came the third explosion. It occurred behind the battery positions with a flight of approximately 50 - 70 m. The first confusion passed, and the officers who remained in the firing position organized an artillery duel. Dining soldiers rushed first to their shelters, and then, on command, returned fire from 120-mm mortars.

The problem was that we were shooting from closed positions (there was a thicket of bushes and forest plantations between us and the enemy), so the platoon needed to adjust the fire. About a minute was lost in order to get in touch with the headquarters of the 3rd motorized rifle battalion and clarify at least the square on which it was possible to strike. After several volleys of three mortars, accompanied by radio adjustments from the forward positions of the 3rd motorized rifle battalion, the shelling of our positions ceased. But the most interesting thing is that immediately after the end of the skirmish, the field telephone called from the headquarters of the regiment and menacingly asked who opened fire back. And this is instead of using observers, who were usually located in the attic of the headquarters building and could make more accurate adjustments to mortar fire than from the positions of a motorized rifle battalion, located in the middle of bushes and forest plantations, which made it difficult to observe the enemy.

Thus, it turned out that the militants could shoot at the positions of the federal troops during the truce, but the federals could not answer them. It turned out to be some strange game of "giveaway".

To prevent further shelling of our positions by the forces of a special forces group from the city of Kyakhta (Trans-Baikal Military District), attached to the 324th regiment, reconnaissance was carried out on the outskirts of the village of Chechen-Aul, during which a camouflaged firing position was discovered, as well as the basement of a house in which militants hid a 76-mm gun and ammunition for it. The coordinates were soon transferred to the mortar battery, and the 1st firing platoon (it was ready for battle faster than the 2nd) aimed its guns at a given target in advance. The 2nd firing platoon received as a target the site of a possible retreat of the militants after the latter had finished shelling. This fire trap worked only a week later. This time, the shelling began at night, as the militants hoped for a drop in our vigilance during the ceasefire period. As soon as the repeated shelling of our positions began, with an interval of 1 minute they hit the 1st with a volley first. and then the 2nd fire platoon. It soon became clear that the militants really began to retreat after our first return salvo, since the entire area of ​​​​their evacuation was littered with abandoned bloody bandages. As for the cannon, as a result of the shelling it was damaged and abandoned by the militants.

After this incident, artillery shelling of the positions of the 324th regiment temporarily ceased. Another attempt was made by militants only at the end of March 1995, when they deployed the "Grad" installation at a distance of about 10 km from the positions of the regiment (the firing range of the "Grad" rocket launcher is 21 km). But this time it was destroyed by a flight of helicopters called from the military airfield in Khankala, located on the outskirts of Grozny.

The senselessness of conducting military operations in the Chechen Republic was proved by the behavior of the command of the federal group. On March 13, the 324th regiment launched an offensive against the positions of militants in the area of ​​​​the villages of Chechen-Aul and Starye Atagi. The purpose of the offensive is to capture the crossing over the Argun River. As a result of an 8-hour battle, the militants were pushed back to the river, and their stronghold in the area of ​​a small-scale commodity farm was practically destroyed. But as a result of the mismatch between the actions of the 1st and 3rd battalions, a gap of about 800 m was obtained between them. It could be closed using the commandant's company guarding the regimental headquarters. But instead, it was decided to withdraw the units to their original positions.

On March 15, a second offensive began on the positions of the militants, who used two days to restore the destroyed stronghold, up to the point that the trenches on the banks of the Argun River were concreted. The peculiarity of their equipment was that the trenches were located on the steep slopes of the river bank and were equipped with evacuation passages to the river. When shells and mines hit, the fragments dispersed and went above the positions of the militants, as a result of which the fire preparation that preceded the offensive of the motorized riflemen of our regiment turned out to be ineffective.

It should be noted that the militants did not wait for the advance of our units, but prevented their deployment in battle formation even on the way to their positions. Their favorite technique was to wedge between the companies and open fire first on one and then on the other company. While the companies were turning around and trying to strike back, a group of militants, hiding in the bushes and in the channels of ditches, withdrew to the main positions, and in the meantime, a real battle broke out between our units, which was stopped only by the commander of the 3rd battalion, Lieutenant Colonel M.V. Mishin who observed the deployment of units.

The offensive that unfolded in the southeastern regions of Chechnya on March 24, 1995, was carried out with the massive use of aviation and artillery. Tanks were used as mobile artillery mounts, accompanying with fire the battle formations of motorized riflemen advancing in front. The classic combination of different types of troops with numerical and technical superiority ensured a rapid breakthrough of the positions of the Dudayevites, as a result of which the federal units occupied almost all the flat regions of the republic with minimal losses and reached the foothills of the Greater Caucasus. But instead of chasing the retreating enemy and inflicting a final defeat on him, the troops stopped again, as another truce was declared again, which contributed to a more organized retreat of the militants to the highland areas.

Throughout April 1995, the 324th regiment did not undertake active combat operations. Nevertheless, on average per day, as a result of the actions of Chechen snipers, 1-2 people in the regiment were injured or died. To combat the snipers, a duty combat group was allocated as part of a motorized rifle platoon on the BMP-1, which periodically combed the area around the regiment's location. This measure could not prevent the actions of the enemy, since the regiment did not have its own specially trained snipers, and the special forces group from Kyakhta, attached to the regiment in February 1995, was withdrawn in mid-April. Thus, the fight against enemy snipers turned into an attempt to kill a mosquito with an ax butt.

A positive consequence of the truce was that the soldiers got the opportunity to rest after the exhausting night battles with the militants, which lasted for almost two months, from the end of January to the end of March 1995. The negative was that discipline fell sharply, cases of unauthorized abandonment of positions became more frequent, which, with excessive curiosity of the soldiers, led to their death on their own or Chechen stretch marks or as a result of the actions of "civilians".

At the beginning of April, reinforcements arrived in the regiment - about 200 people, who were mainly distributed between the 1st and 3rd motorized rifle battalions. It was striking that the newly arrived fighters had practically no skills in handling a machine gun, not to mention the RPG-7 grenade launcher, PK machine gun or hand grenades. At the same time, training in the battalions was organized differently. In the 1st battalion, the fighters from the replenishment immediately joined the units, and in the 3rd they were formed into three training platoons, the commanders of which were young officers, in order to consolidate the practical skills of managing the unit, obtained during recent battles. It is noteworthy that two of them were "jackets". Neither the 1st nor the 3rd battalions were without losses among the replenishment, even before their participation in hostilities. In the 1st battalion, on the very first night after arrival, two soldiers committed a crossbow (they shot themselves in the soft tissues of their legs from a machine gun). Two weeks later, in the replenishment of the 3rd battalion, a young soldier, a Baptist in his religious beliefs, hanged himself.

It is noteworthy that the soldier who hanged himself was assigned to the 1st training platoon, commanded by a young career lieutenant who had recently graduated from the Chelyabinsk Tank School. The style of his command was to humiliate the fighters, to instill in them unquestioning obedience. A frequent occurrence was assault, swearing in front of the ranks, pointless push-ups from the ground - and all this in front of the soldiers of other training platoons. Not surprisingly, it was in his unit that this emergency occurred.

When conducting field exercises with young recruits, I noted that the fighters were happy to perform an exercise in firing from a machine gun and a grenade launcher, throwing grenades. They showed much less enthusiasm when digging and equipping trenches and conducting tactical exercises. In order to avoid an accident, weapons were not initially issued to them. Only the platoon commander had it, who, by firing from a machine gun, taught the fighters to the combat situation during field tactical exercises. A special impression was left from the running in tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. In the middle of the rut in the field, the soldiers dug trenches for prone firing and were in them at a time when a tank and then an infantry fighting vehicle drove over them at low speed (the latter had a much lower landing, which made the position of the soldier in the trench very "uncomfortable").

But the biggest revelation for me was that when my replacement, Lieutenant Misha Shchankin, arrived, he also did not know how to handle a machine gun, although shortly before being drafted he completed a course at the military department of the Izhevsk Agricultural Institute. The question arises: why do career lieutenants wring their hands so as not to go to Chechnya, leave the army, drive soldiers to suicide, although they are professionals in military affairs. In my opinion, it is necessary to radically change the principles and methods educational work in military schools that do not fulfill their purpose. Hopes for "jackets" are illusory. Much depends on the excellent motivation of a reserve lieutenant who entered military service.

The return home took place, as in a base Soviet action movie about the "Afghans". It all started with the fact that I had to get a travel order literally at the car, which was sent to Grozny. Without him, he would have to make excuses about his absence in his unit, and then prove the fact of participation in hostilities. This was followed by a continuation in the form of following the car through half of Chechnya, and, in violation of all sorts of instructions and unwritten rules worked out back in Afghanistan, the car went without combat escort, and my companions and I were deprived of regular weapons. My fellow travelers were wounded soldiers and officers who handed over their weapons during hospitalization, and I handed over my machine gun to the shift. On the way to the city of Grozny, the "nurse" continually drove around potholes on the roads, and there was not a soul at the checkpoints; if desired, all of us without a single shot, the militants could take prisoner. This perspective "brightened up" the discomfort caused by tightness in the back, stuffiness and scorching heat. The typicality of the picture was confirmed upon arrival at the Severny airport. Before we had time to get out of the car, a drunken ensign came towards us and offered to try medical alcohol. We prudently declined, especially as the heat intensified towards noon and we began to be tormented by thirst.

After I and my companion, Ensign Shalagin, who was leaving on leave for family reasons, registered for a helicopter flight to Mozdok, we started searching for water. I was extremely struck that a restaurant was already operating at the airport, the prices in which turned out to be very affordable, and the staff were all mostly "persons caucasian nationality"- did not even want to talk to us. An attempt to seek help from the assistant military commandant for the airport ended with the fact that, in response to his rude refusal, I could no longer stand it and went out, slamming the door, as a result, I was detained by the called patrol and I was forced to humiliate myself to have my papers returned and to be allowed to land on the helicopter, I deduced from this incident that those on the front line will never find common language with "rear rats". We are needed only when we are "cannon fodder". As soon as you begin to return to peaceful life, you need to tune in to the fact that apart from yourself and your loved ones, no one in this country needs you with your problems and only the same as you can understand you. We finally got water at the nearest checkpoint, which covered the road to the runway. The guys shared their meager supplies with us, and the thirst that had tormented us since morning was somewhat quenched.

A new surprise awaited us in Moscow, where a transport plane had arrived from Mozdok. It turned out that the money that Shalagin and I had was only enough for half the ticket. Military travel documents were not issued to us upon departure, and there was no money in the regimental cash desk to pay the advance. We were lucky that, while still in Mozdok, we joined a group of officers and ensigns of the 276th regiment, in which replacements had been carried out since mid-April, and advances were paid to them, due to which they could get home. I found a fellow countryman living in Elmash and borrowed from him, which I returned the next day after my arrival (the most interesting thing is that I was never paid for the train ride in the military unit, although I did not seem to be returning from the resort). This is how the Motherland welcomed its sons, who had fulfilled their constitutional duty to it.

Truly, our state continues to live outside of time and space, repeating past mistakes and correcting them at the expense of the patience of the people. But the margin of safety Russian society came to an end. I mean the margin of safety, primarily spiritual. The blind and boundless devotion of the people to their state is giving way to the cynicism of the next generation. This cynicism is, of course, overcome when one comes face to face with death. But in order to cure our sick society, it cannot be driven through the meat grinder of war, since, as you know, the best die in it, and such a cure is very doubtful. It is hardly possible to call those who returned alive from the local conflict zone mentally and morally healthy.

Russia and the Soviet Union in local wars and armed conflicts of the twentieth century: Scientific conference held by the Humanitarian University, the Ural State Pedagogical University, the Sverdlovsk Regional Union of Reserve Officers, the Shuravi Municipal Museum of the Memory of Soldiers-Internationalists April 13 - 14, 2002: Reports. Yekaterinburg: Publishing house University of the Humanities, 2002. S.219-235