Firstly, the settlement called Komsomolskoye no longer exists.
When they say that Grozny has been wiped off the face of the earth, it is true, but the truth is relative. Some houses were preserved there, and some people managed to survive the whole nightmare in them. When they say that Katyr-Yurt was completely destroyed, this is also true, but some houses are “subject to restoration,” and people also live in them.
There is not a single house in Komsomolskoye now.
Moreover, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SURVIVING WALL IN KOMSOMOLSKY.
Huge space in most beautiful place Chechnya, where just a couple of months ago there lay an ancient patriarchal village with the Chechen self-name Soadi-Kotar (that is, the settlement of Soadi), has been turned into ashes and garbage.
But even to look at this garbage, even to cry over the ashes of all my past life the surviving residents of Komsomolskoye are not allowed. And the relatives of those whose mutilated, half-rotten corpses are lying throughout the village gather every day at the checkpoint in the village of Goiskoye. Every day they come here in the hope that at least today they will be allowed to visit their native village.

Prelude
It all started on the night of March 5, when militants entered Komsomolskoe, which had been cleared four times (!) and had been blocked from all sides for two weeks. Or rather, even a little earlier - when a dozen militants, including the wounded, came down from the mountains with the goal of laying down their arms and surrendering to the amnesty promised by the feds. Soon they were taken away by the military. A couple of days later, the mutilated corpse of one of them was found on the outskirts of the village.
Was the “Komsomol breakthrough” of the militants an act of retaliation for this murder? Hard to say. According to eyewitnesses and village residents, it seems that the group of militants who entered Komsomolskoye did not intend to engage in battle with the federals. Firstly, they were all extremely exhausted and tired. Secondly, half of them were essentially refugees - residents of the same Komsomolskoe, who at the beginning of hostilities, fleeing bombs, went to the high-mountain village of Gukhoy: their ancestors once lived there. When living in the mountains became completely unbearable (no food, impossible to go to the forest for firewood, constant air raids), they decided to go down to the plain.
The fact that in the mountain villages there are many refugees - civilians, including women and children, who suffer from hunger and cold, but do not dare return to the plain for fear of punitive actions from the federals and due to the fact that all the leading The roads in the mountains were mined, both the administration of the Urus-Martan region and the commandant’s office knew. Residents of Komsomolskoe personally addressed the district commandant, General Naumov, with a request to allow these people to return to the plain. And they even received his consent and assurance that they would not be touched.
On the night of March 5, the first columns of militants entered the village.
At dawn, intensive shelling of Komsomolskoye began. Residents - some of them already knew the reason for the shelling, others knew absolutely nothing - began to flock to the outskirts in the hope of a corridor to exit the village. Of course, they didn’t give us a corridor. Thousands of civilians spent the entire day and the next night in the drizzling rain in an open field between the villages of Komsomolskoye and Goyskoye.
On the second day there was relative calm, and the tired, frightened people were told that a clean-up had been carried out in the village and they could return.
But before the people had time to disperse to their already half-destroyed homes, the village began to be heavily shelled again. The fire was so dense that it was simply impossible to rush back. People hid in the basements and decided to wait out the night.
That night the first wounded and killed appeared. It was impossible to bury them; the corpses were taken with them to the basements. When the next morning people again ran to the field on the outskirts of the village, 16 killed civilians remained in the basements of Komsomolskoye.
By this time, contact battles were already in full swing in the “cleared” Komsomolskoye.

Between death and death
At a checkpoint at the exit from the village, a crowd of thousands of people was blocked, announcing that anyone who tried to leave would be shot. To be convincing, several machine gun bursts were fired over the heads of the refugees.
All the men were immediately separated, starting with ten-year-old boys. They were taken a little to the side and kept under special surveillance, from time to time being searched and having their shoulders examined to see if they were carrying weapons.
After some time, thousands of people (in Komsomolskoye at the beginning of the fighting there were over five thousand residents and about six hundred refugees from different regions of Chechnya) lined up, forming a “human shield.” The federals themselves positioned themselves a little further behind this line. Thus, all the artillery shells fired at Komsomolskoye flew over the heads of the people fleeing from it. Several people in the crowd were wounded by shrapnel.
From time to time, the feds visited the crowd and looked for disguised militants among the women.
“We have information that you are hiding bandits in disguise,” they said and threatened to shoot everyone if the bandits were not immediately handed over...
For five days, residents of Komsomolskoye were kept as cover in a field near the village. People had a choice: either return to the village, as the military repeatedly suggested, and die there; or become a human shield for the feds and die here. Or survive, if you're lucky.
Only on the sixth day, when it was no longer possible to restrain the pressure and rage of the refugees exhausted from hunger, cold, and disease, did the military listen to the voice of reason. It was necessary to do something with these people: either shoot them all, or let them go.
And they were released.

About some features of the operation in Komsomolskoye
Perhaps, after the battles for Grozny, there was no such long and bloody confrontation between federal forces and militants in any settlement in Chechnya. For comparison, we can only cite the battles for Bamut, but that was in last war.
What is the reason for such a duration of the “operation” in Komsomolskoye?
If we take a short excursion to the beginning of the events, then, I remember, the military assured us that separate groups of Gelayev’s militants, totaling up to 200-300 people, had infiltrated Komsomolskoye. A week after the start of the fighting, they began to say that the main forces of the militants had been defeated, all that remained was to finish off about twenty people, led by Gelayev himself. At the same time, reports began to arrive about searches in Komsomolskoye for Ruslan Gelayev and even (for some reason) his elderly mother, two sisters and wife. And also about the possible death of Gelayev in this village. To the question of journalists: where, in his opinion, are Basayev, Khattab, Maskhadov and other militant leaders? - one of the generals answered rather frivolously:
- Well, maybe they are already dead too.
However, the fighting did not stop. And now they began to talk about a group of one, two, three thousand militants. They talked about the supposedly ultra-modern weapons that the militants are equipped with, thereby justifying the use in Komsomolskoye of the latest heavy rocket mortar, which the military spent almost half a day installing on the outskirts of the village (in the same field with refugees).
And - attention! - Almost from the first day of the operation until the last day, we were told that the village was literally dug up and down with underground passages and loopholes.
I was in Komsomolskoye a few days before the fighting began, and I was there after the village was captured by the military. And I didn’t notice any underground communications, dugouts or super-powerful basements. There simply weren’t any in Komsomolskoye. Unless, of course, we consider banal basements and cellars to be “underground cities.” residential buildings.
As for Gelayev, according to some information, the one whom they searched for so long and carefully using specially trained dogs in the hope of finding, if not alive, then at least dead, did not appear in Komsomolskoye itself at all. He led his squad by radio, and he himself was far beyond the village limits.

Komsomolskoe today
Despite the fact that the military operation in Komsomolskoye has long since ended, not a single resident has yet been allowed into the village. As a matter of fact, there is absolutely nothing for them to do there, since there is simply nowhere to live.
Why people are not allowed into the village is a question to which no one knows the answer. But maybe it’s for the best that they don’t let you in: you can only breathe here through special bandages. It has long been spring in Chechnya, and corpses are perishable matter. The danger of an outbreak of epidemics is indeed very great.
Only on March 29, EMERCOM workers in special vehicles began collecting and transporting corpses from Komsomolskoye to the cemetery of the neighboring village of Goiskoye. In four days, more than a hundred corpses were removed.
Women from all over Chechnya flock here in search of dead sons and former residents of Komsomolskoye in the hope of finding the bodies of relatives. However, in most cases it is simply impossible to identify them: some remains are completely decomposed, others are crushed by tank tracks, and from some of the dead only separate parts of the body remain.
On April 2, more than 200 corpses remained in the completely destroyed Komsomolskoye. Against this background, the message about the typhoid epidemic that has begun in Chechnya seems completely logical: what the bombs failed to do, the pestilence will complete.

By the end of February 2000, after the ousting of militant detachments from the flat part of Chechnya to the mountainous regions, in the Argun Gorge near the settlement. Shata blocked the largest group under the command of and, numbering about three thousand people. Due to the fact that the northern and southern entrances to the gorge were under tight guard Russian troops, the command of the militants decided to break out of the encirclement in the mountains in two different directions, intending to reach the flat terrain along the beds of mountain rivers and streams. The militants' actions were facilitated by the established bad weather- thick fog, rain.

Khattab’s detachment made a breakthrough on February 29 in a south-eastern direction, with the goal of reaching the Vedeno region and dispersing into villages for rest and replenishment on the eve of the summer sabotage and partisan war. On the way of the militants there were only a few weak barriers of federal forces, dispersed on the main heights. Moving forward to occupy height 776.0 in the area of ​​the settlement. Ulus-Kert, part of the 104th RPD of the 76th Guards Airborne Division, found itself in the path of an almost two thousand-strong detachment of militants and immediately entered into a counter battle with them, gradually retreating to the top of the height. Subsequently, generals and journalists came up with stupid fairy tales about offering paratroopers multi-million dollar bribes to “pass” militants, the proud refusal of which was supposedly supposed to emphasize the heroism of the dead.

During several hours of battle during the day and evening of February 29, the detachment of paratroopers was almost at full strength, showing unprecedented heroism. Of the 92 paratroopers who took part in the battle, 6 survived, having left the cliff opposite the battlefield on the morning of March 1st. Having lost during the battle and inaccurate artillery fire about 300 people killed and wounded, the main forces of militants numbering about one and a half thousand people, left the encirclement and dispersed throughout the villages of the Vedeno region.

One incomplete company, even having occupied a commanding height and previously secured a foothold on it (which in reality was not the case), simply physically could not withstand the pressure of such a mass of militants, so the paratroopers tactically retreated to the top of the height and, using all available means, only tried to inflict maximum losses on the militants. Having allocated one of its detachments to block the paratroopers who had retreated to the height and suppress their fire, the main group of militants continued to move and after a few hours of travel reached the Vedeno region.

The command of the Russian troops again failed to foresee the development of the situation and missed the real opportunity to destroy the militants during the breakthrough from the Shatoi encirclement in the Ulus-Kert area. You can leave without comment the ravings of generals and journalists that the heroic paratroopers “at the cost of their lives prevented(??!) the bandits from breaking through into peaceful Dagestan(??!).”

The small village of Komsomolskoye (aka Goy-Chu) at the junction of mountainous and lowland Chechnya was unknown to many people until 2000. However, fate would have it that this village become the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second Chechen War. The encirclement and capture of Komsomolskoye became the culmination of the struggle for southern Chechnya and one of the most acute moments of the entire war.

At the end of winter 2000, the main forces of the militants were surrounded in the Argun Gorge. Over the coming weeks, part of the terrorist army led by Khattab managed to escape to the east through the positions of the Pskov 6th Airborne Company. However, the other half of the surrounded troops remained in the gorge. This gang was commanded by Ruslan Gelayev. He started his war back in Abkhazia in the early 90s, and then put together one of the largest “private armies” in the North Caucasus.

Gelayev retained many people after the breakout from Grozny in early February 2000. However, now he was in an exclusively dangerous situation. After the breakthrough from Grozny, his people were extremely exhausted. They needed rest and replenishment. The only problem was that Gelayev had more than a thousand people under his command. Such a mass of people could not move secretly for a long time, but they also could not disperse yet - this would end in the extermination of those fleeing. Gelayev chose the village of Komsomolskoye between the mountains of southern Chechnya and the northern plain as the site of the breakthrough. He himself was from there, and many of his fighters were born there.

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

On March 5, Gelayevites came to Komsomolsky. All that stood in their way was a loose chain of posts of the 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment. The history of this battle is less known than the breakthrough of the 6th company; in the memoirs of the military leaders of the Chechen conflict, these events are often not even mentioned. It is regularly written in the literature that the militants managed to “bypass” the cordon. Meanwhile, the desperate battle on the road to Komsomolskoye developed no less dramatically.

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

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Photo © Wikimedia Commons

Photo © Wikimedia Commons

At this time, civilians were leaving Komsomolskoye. People understood perfectly well that there would be a siege, brutal bombing and assault. The refugees were placed in a hastily prepared camp under open air. Several wounded militants also came out of the village under the guise of civilians, but they were identified and literally snatched from the crowd of civilians. Oddly enough, the command of the Russian troops still had no data on the number of the enemy. However, everything was already ready for the decisive battle. Residents left the village Russian soldiers concentrated in the surrounding area, the militants took up defensive positions. A fierce battle lay ahead.

With iron and blood

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

Another group of “Mujahideen” tried to break into Komsomolskoye from the outside, but its vanguard, along with its guide, died under fire, so this detachment retreated. By the way, in these first days two exotic fighters were captured. These were Uighurs - representatives of the Muslim people from western China. According to the prisoners, they worked as cooks in Komsomolskoye. “Kuhari” was handed over to the Chinese special services, and in China both received life sentences for terrorism.

For some unknown reason, the Russians tried to quickly take Komsomolskoye with an infantry assault. After Komsomolskoye was cleared by artillery and aviation, the riflemen entered the village and tried to clean up. Due to the severe shortage of trained infantry, even the special forces of the GUIN of the Ministry of Justice went into battle. These, of course, were not ordinary guards, but they were not assault infantry either. The GUIN men fought, by all accounts, heroically, but the assault cost them dearly.

Komsomolskoe was fired upon with a wide variety of heavy weapons. It was then, for example, that the country learned about the existence of the Buratino system. Under the frivolous name was hidden a heavy multiple rocket launcher using volumetric detonating ammunition. “Conventional” artillery and helicopters also worked without a break. However, after the shelling, assault groups still took to the streets.

Street battles invariably resulted in heavy casualties. On the streets, the combatants mixed, and on both sides, overgrown people in equally tattered camouflage fought, so it was difficult to distinguish friends from foes. Soldiers and officers on the front line were constantly urged to take possession of the village as soon as possible. This goading regularly resulted in casualties. This is how, for example, the commander of one of the assault detachments, Senior Lieutenant Zakirov, died: after being accused of cowardice, he went ahead of his squad and died in close combat in one of the courtyards.

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

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

While the militants’ forces were melting away, the Russians were sending fresh units to Komsomolskoye. A parachute regiment approached the village. In the first days, small groups were able to get out of the village at night in small groups, but the ring was continuously tightened. There was still quite a lot of ammunition left inside, but the medicine was running out. However, there was no talk of quick success. The Russians paid in blood for the reconquered streets; armored vehicles were constantly dying in the labyrinth of the private sector. However, our military could at least withdraw battered units, replenish ammunition, without fear that the shell boxes would show the bottom, and call down “punishment from heaven” on the enemy.

On top of everything else, during the assault the weather deteriorated greatly and Komsomolskoye was covered in thick fog. The assault groups fought with the militants from zero distance, almost without seeing the enemy.

In the second half of March, the militants began persistently trying to break out of the encirclement. However, now minefields and targeted armored vehicles awaited them. The militants had practically no chance of salvation. The last large detachment made a breakthrough on March 20, but ran into mines and machine guns and died under fire.

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Photo © RIA Novosti/Vladimir Vyatkin

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

Rescuers had to clear the rubble left at the massacre site and evacuate the dead. Among those killed and captured was a whole international group: Arabs and even one Indian Muslim. Huge trophies were collected on the battlefield. According to various sources, from 80 to 273 terrorists were captured. This massacre was comparable only to the recent defeat in Grozny with a breakthrough from the city through minefields. For Russia it was a hard-won, bloody, but indisputable victory.

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

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

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

“Since October, when we were brought into Chechnya, I have had thirty-five casualties, and I lost another thirty-two soldiers in Komsomolskoye. At the very beginning, the “Czechs” broke through the paratroopers and shot my platoon of grenade launchers point-blank. And then I lost two tank crews. Our hair still stands on end... We stood on top, in the foothills, trying to prevent reinforcements of the “spirits” from entering the village. First, I sent one crew to help, they set it on fire, the second one went and also burned out like a candle. The guys caused the fire on themselves. And that’s all... In the last war they were less evil, or something, but now they came in waves, as if they were going into a psychic attack! We hit them with direct fire, and they go and go. When they fought back with difficulty, one hundred and fifty of their corpses were found.” Meanwhile, the gangs of Basayev and Khattab, trapped in the Argun Gorge, made desperate efforts to break through the blocking ring. Federal forces had to repel militant attacks in the direction of the villages of Komsomolskoye and Goyskoye. According to the commander of the Central Group of the FS, Lieutenant General V. Bulgakov, the detachments of Basayev and Khattab lost the most tactically advantageous defensive positions. “They are surrounded, and our main task is to finish them off,” Bulgakov said. On March 7–8, in the Urus-Martan region, militant detachments attempted to break out of the encirclement near the settlements of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen. Main effective means This time, aviation and artillery were used to deter the militants. During the day, aviation made 89 combat sorties. An air strike in the Vedeno region destroyed the runway and a sports plane on which “prominent” Chechen leaders planned to leave the territory of the republic. On March 8, 22 militants of the “elite” unit “Borz” (“Wolf”) under the command of Kh. Islamov were neutralized. This detachment was known for its cruelty and hatred towards Russian military personnel. Near the village of Selmentauzen, 73 militants from the Khat-taba detachment surrendered with weapons in their hands. According to the commander of the Eastern Group, Major General S. Makarov, 30 militants were brought to the FS location by their field commander M. Adaev. He also reported where more than 40 seriously wounded of his subordinates were still located, who were unable to come on their own. In addition to machine guns, 3 KamAZ trucks with anti-aircraft guns and an army tractor were seized from the militants. According to Russian Defense Minister I. Sergeev, the number of bandits who broke through from the encirclement ranged from 2 to 3 and a half thousand people. According to the acting The commander of the United Armed Forces in the North Caucasus, Colonel General G. Troshev, during fierce battles with bandits trapped in the Argun Gorge, “in principle, managed to defeat the gang of Basayev and Khattab.” However, some of the militants still managed to break through the defenses and escape from the encirclement once again. 8 progress military operation in Chechnya, the FS suffered significant losses during the first weeks of March 2000 (272 killed). The First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces released data on March 10 on FS losses in the North Caucasus - both in Chechnya and Dagestan. In total, from August 2, 1999 to March 10, 2000, federal forces lost 1,836 military personnel killed and 4,984 were wounded. Losses of the Ministry of Defense - 1244 killed and 3031 wounded. Losses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - 552 killed and 1953 wounded. Directly during the operation on the territory of Chechnya, that is, from October 1, 1999, the losses of the FS amounted to 1,556 killed and 3,997 wounded. On March 9, the command of the federal troops in Chechnya announced that the army and internal troops had “established complete control over the Argun Gorge, starting from the village of Komsomolskoye and right up to the Georgian border.” Nevertheless, on March 12, fighting continued both for the village of Komsomolskoye, Urus-Martan region (at the entrance to the Argun Gorge), and near the settlements of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen. Despite significant losses, Gelayev decided to hold the defense to the end. On March 11, units of the internal troops, supported by army artillery, tanks and helicopters, advanced deep into Komsomolskoye. Two Chinese mercenaries surrendered, declaring that they “came to work as cooks in Chechnya - to become familiar with Caucasian cuisine.” By this time, fierce battles for Komsomolskoye were already in their second week. All this time, the FS command assured the press almost daily that the village would be taken in the coming days, or even hours, that the main forces had already been exterminated and that some dozens of bandits remained in the cauldron of fire. And then it suddenly turned out that there were already hundreds of them in the village and they were trying to counterattack... A similar situation took place with the breakthrough of Khattab’s Shatoi group into the Vedeno region. C) according to military reports, it was also “blocked”, “destroyed and scattered”. Nevertheless, she found the opportunity to regroup again and strike at the positions of the tragically killed sixth company.

On March 15, Gelayev’s militants in Komsomolskoye continued to desperately resist. Tensions among the street fighters reached their climax. As darkness fell, federal units entrenched themselves in the occupied houses and attacked again at dawn. During the battle, an Indian was captured, and when asked how he ended up in the ranks of the militants, he said that “bandits approached him in Delhi and demanded money,” but he “didn’t have any.” On March 16, a controlled minefield was placed on the southern outskirts of the Komsomolsk FS. There followed a statement from the command that “the militants were so pressed in the center of the village that they could even begin to break through the armada of equipment stationed here.” The following interview, taken at the same time from one of them, testifies to how tightly the militants were “blocked” and “pressed down”:

How were you able to leave Komsomolskoye if the troops formed a human shield around the village? Lema: At night, of course. The soldier is standing at his post, there is artillery shelling - they are shooting at the soldier. The soldier stands and is afraid of everything: he wants to live. In our case, the soldier was sitting under a tree because the shelling was very strong. We walked ten meters from him.

Are you sure the soldier saw you? It’s still night...

Lema: I'm sure I saw it. He silently pulled the shutter, and so did we. We exchanged “greetings” and went our separate ways. I understand it this way: the soldier knew that if he fired, we would kill him immediately. But the soldier does not need this war as such - he needs to survive.

Please clarify: did you leave Komsomolskoye with weapons? Lema: Of course, with weapons. There were cases when we walked in a detachment of 50 people, passing by soldiers who saw us.

What was happening in Komsomolskoye when you were there?

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

Wasn’t the following plan considered in your detachment: since people are not allowed to leave the village because of you, including boys over 10 years old, then take it and leave Komsomolskoe? And thereby save the village from destruction?

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

Why? You were able to get out, weren't you? But they didn’t take people with them...

Lema: People don’t come with us, they’re afraid of death. We are moving at night, without guarantees.

Okay, we got out of Komsomolskoye. So what is next?

Lema: Passing checkpoints at night is no problem. But I won't talk about the details

March 16 in the southern regions of Chechnya fighting moved to Sharo-Argun. The battles were for control of strategic heights in the Sharoi region. On March 17, a center of resistance arose 2 km from the village of Sharo-Argun, where a gang of militants numbering about 500 people (part of Khattab’s detachment) occupied several commanding heights and fired at federal forces. The militants used previously prepared positions and ammunition. From the FS side, the bandits' positions were subjected to air and artillery strikes. On March 18, in Komsomolskoye, the Novosibirsk special forces detachment “Lynx,” led by Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Shirokostup, stormed the hospital, or rather, its foundation, in which the militants were holed up. The next day, March 19, internal troops occupy house after house. The militants, who had nothing to hope for - only two dozen houses in the center of the village remained in their hands - nevertheless continued to fight; trying not to be detected, they fired until the smoke from the explosion of tank shots cleared, and constantly changed positions. In the houses visited by the FS, dozens of corpses of militants were found, and there was no one to bury them. On March 20, federal troops leave the hill in the south of the village. Although shots are still being heard in Komsomolskoye - the security forces were finishing off the last bandits in the basements, the operation is almost completed. Gelayev's gang has been destroyed. During the operation, about 400 militants were killed, 56 were captured or surrendered. Among the killed and captured bandits there are many foreign mercenaries - Arabs, Ukrainians, Chinese. It was not possible to capture R. Gelayev and his family members. And here is how G. Troshev describes the assault on Komsomolskoye: “On March 4, one of these attempts (to break through from encirclement - author's note) was made by a detachment of field commander Ruslan Gelayev, blocked in the Dachu-Borzoi and Ulus-Kert areas. The bandits used the tactic of infiltrating in small groups, including along the bed of the Goitan River, waist-deep in water. As a result, a significant part of the bandit groups managed to bypass the battle formations of the 503rd regiment and break through to the village of Komsomolskoye. As it turned out, ultimate goal there was a unification of disparate gang groups in Komsomolsk and the seizure of the regional center of Urus-Martan. Gelayev believed that he would be able to rouse all the Chechens who sympathized with him against the federal forces and then dictate his terms to the command of the United Group. Already on March 5, the village found itself in our dense ring. A day later, units of the special forces detachment entered it. Almost immediately, the special forces came under heavy fire and were forced to retreat to the northern outskirts of the village. I entrusted the then acting commander of the “West” group, Major General V. Gerasimov, with general management of the operation. The operation was directly led by my deputy for internal troops, Colonel General M. Labunets. On March 7, the operation began. To conduct combat operations directly in the populated area, units of the Ministry of Defense, Internal Troops, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as a special forces detachment of the Ministry of Justice were involved. The total number of “ours” was 816 people. At the same time, as it turned out later, the federal forces were opposed by more than 1000 (!) bandits. The village turned out to be well fortified in terms of engineering. There were quite a few fortifications equipped in accordance with all the rules of military science. The basements were turned into pillboxes and withstood a direct hit from a tank shell. In addition, most of the basements were connected by communication passages blocked by steel doors. In fact, almost every house was turned into a fortress, designed to withstand a long siege. 1elaev, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, continuously requested reinforcements. A gang of field commander Seifulla - about 300 people - hurried to his aid. But she didn’t have time to reach Komsomolskoye. The gang was defeated by artillery and air strikes. Seifullah himself was seriously wounded and barely escaped. In particular, not in the best possible way The management of units and subunits was affected by the fact that the location for the field control post (FCP) of the operation leader was initially poorly chosen. From it only the northern part of the settlement was visible. Great difficulties also arose due to the unsatisfactory condition and understaffing of communications equipment of both small units and the operational level. This was aggravated by the almost complete lack of communication discipline. Most information, regardless of its importance, was transmitted in clear text. This allowed the militants to intercept information and respond in a timely manner to the actions of the troops, and in many cases, preempt them... The militants suffered significant losses and had many wounded, but under pain of capture they continued to stubbornly resist, to the point that even the wounded remained in their positions. But, in spite of everything, on March 14, that is, a week after the start, the military part of the operation was completed. All attempts by the Gelayevites to break out of Komsomolskoye in the south-eastern and south-western directions were thwarted by the actions of federal forces. This was evidenced a large number of killed in breakthrough areas. The control of the militant groups was completely disrupted, leaving only small scattered groups that were destroyed by fire from tanks, flamethrowers and small arms. And the next day, units of the Ministry of Defense, Internal Troops, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice began a thorough “cleansing” of the village. We had to literally uproot the remnants of gang groups from basements and shelters. They were looking for R. Gelayev. All this time, the most contradictory information was received about him. There was a message that he was wounded and was in a field hospital on March 16–17. The hospital was destroyed, but Gelayev was not found there, nor was he found among the dead. Information that appeared periodically that the bandit had left the village was refuted by interception data. R. Gelayev's special forces - the Borz detachment - made an attempt to pull out their commander, and even managed to break through into the forest belt adjacent to the village in a narrow area. But the bandits were discovered in time and delivered a powerful fire strike. As a result, Borz ceased to exist. On the night of March 19-20, the remnants of the bandit groups made a desperate attempt to break through in a northern direction. We got caught in the crossfire of our units. In this night battle, 46 bandits were destroyed. Among them is the so-called Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ichkeria Bilan Murzabekov” (14).

Section: War |

During the armed conflict in the North Caucasus during the week from November 17 to 23, 2014, at least eight people were injured, six of them were killed and two were injured. Also this week, it became known about the earlier death of another person. Among the dead were six suspected of participating in the activities of the armed underground - two in Dagestan and four in Chechnya. It also became known about the death of a civilian in Chechnya a week earlier.

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Crimes in war

The presentation took place on October 21 at the Museum and Community Center. Andrei Sakharov in Moscow. The book tells about the events of 1999-2002 in Grozny, during the second Russian-Chechen war. Polina Zherebtsova kept a diary as a wounded teenager: dreams, poems and drawings of explosions that looked like flowers helped her not go crazy in this hell. The author participated in the presentation. Polina Zherebtsova spoke about herself, about the history of the publication of the book, read poems from the war years and fragments of her diary.

Watch our video report.

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Crimes in war

Crimes in war

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We are publishing an appeal from Anzor Maskhadov in connection with his new project dedicated to the genocide of the Chechen people in XX-XXI centuries.

Work is underway on a project dedicated to the genocide of the Chechen people. The goal of the project is to collect, analyze and disseminate information about crimes against our people in the 20th-21st centuries. Unfortunately, the world knows nothing or almost nothing about the tragedy of our people. Our duty is to bring this information to the world for the sake of restoring historical justice, in the name of the memory of those killed and in the name of future generations. Only the widest possible publicity can guarantee that something like this will not happen again.

Here you can leave your signature on an appeal to the President of the Russian Federation with a request to release the body of Aslan Maskhadov to relatives.

Leader of the separatists of Chechnya, ex-president Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov was killed on March 8, 2005 in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt.
His body was refused to be released to his relatives for burial. He was secretly buried in an unknown location.