For several days the public has been wondering what happened to the Russian private military company Wagner, which is rumored to have suffered heavy losses in Syria. Information about the massacre at the official level is extremely scarce and closed. Both the US and Russia recognize that conflict situation took place. However, both sides are silent about the presence of Russians on the battlefield. However, scraps of information about the death of soldiers from the Russian Federation near the village of Khsham in Syria have already begun to leak into those Russian media that are quite loyal to the Kremlin. The only question is the number of deaths and the very facts of the battle. What fight are we talking about?
What kind of battle was it and how many Russians actually died in it.
On the night of February 8, a battle took place near the village of Khsham in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. The settlement lies on the border between US-backed Kurds and Assad government forces.
The sides are separated by the Euphrates River - the Syrians are entrenched on the western bank, and the Kurds are on the eastern bank, forming the backbone of the "Syrian" opposition to Damascus. free army", which is supported by the Americans.
According to Russia, Islamic State detachments are based in the same area.
The parties shift the blame for the conflict onto each other. The US says that Assad's forces launched an attack on the Kurdish headquarters where American advisers were located. They requested contact with the Russian military, who stated that “they are not there” and they are not conducting any operations in the area.
Then American aviation was called in and defeated the advancing forces “in an open field.” It is reported that the US military notified the Russian side in advance of plans to strike. Russia did not deny this.
In the American media, the most complete reconstruction of the events was made by The Washington Post.
From the commentary of the Kurdish general Hassan, it follows that on the night of February 7-8, a pro-Assad column with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and trucks advanced in the direction of the Conoco oil and gas field. At about 10 p.m. the enemy opened fire from tanks and artillery pieces. The shells exploded “about 450 meters from the positions occupied by the Syrian Democratic Forces (Syrian Democratic Forces - ed.) and American soldiers.”
According to Hasan, US Air Force attack aircraft, fighters and drones were forced to attack the attackers. The battle ended at approximately 5.30 am.
The coalition attack included an AC-130 attack aircraft and an Ah-64 Apache helicopter, F-15 fighter jets and drones, as well as artillery batteries.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the picture is completely different. The Americans carried out an air raid on a detachment of Syrian militias who were conducting an operation against an ISIS sleeper cell in the area of the former Al-Isba oil refinery.
At the same time, the department emphasized that the militias that came under attack from the coalition did not coordinate their operation with the command of the Russian task force. No complaints were made against the United States.
So were they Russians or not?
As the Kremlin later stated, Russian military personnel did not participate in the operation.
“As you know, in this case we operate with the data that relates to military personnel Russian Federation who take part in the operation of the armed forces, the Russian Aerospace Forces in support Syrian army. We do not have information about other Russians who may be in Syria,” said Russian Presidential Speaker Dmitry Peskov.
Even the United States is not officially sure that it was the Russians who were bombed.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis said he does not have accurate information that Russian PMC employees were killed during an airstrike against Assad's forces.
"We're even coordinating ground operations on each side," Mattis said. According to him, Russian troops were not among the Syrian forces that came under coalition fire near Hisham.
“The Russians told us at that time that their forces were not there,” said the head of the Pentagon.
"The fact is that someone decided to attack us, and the Russians said that it was not about them. (...) You cannot ask Russia to prevent a conflict in a case where it does not control something, it could not be implemented," Mattis said.
Pentagon statement on airstrike. Not a word about the Russians
He also added that the Euphrates River for a long time was used as a demarcation line between US and opposition forces, as well as Russian and Syrian government forces. "The Russians have always responded to our signals, we have always responded. That line has never been broken," Mattis added.
He also suggested that Hsham did not have contract soldiers or employees of Russian private military companies. “I think the Russians would have told us,” Mattis said. However, he cautioned that he did not have completely accurate information on this matter.
Nevertheless, reports of the death of soldiers from the Russian PMC Wagner continue to arrive. The participation of these particular fighters in this battle was first reported in the telegram channel of the Conflict Intelligence Team community and on the VK page of Igor Girkin (Strelkov), who for some time commanded the “DPR army.”
No one has yet officially denied this information. Meanwhile, the first names of the dead “private traders” have already appeared.
What they say about losses
At the moment, there have already been five names of soldiers who served with Wagner and allegedly died in the battle near Khsham.
Alexey Ladygin from Ryazan
Vladimir Loginov from Kaliningrad
Stanislav Matveev from Asbest, Sverdlovsk region
Igor Kosoturov, Asbest
Kirill Ananyev from the "Other Russia" party
A number of local Russian media wrote about their deaths, acquaintances and relatives of the victims, as well as public organizations (for example, Cossacks) reported on social networks.
These names are also cited by the Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda, which added one more dead - a Ukrainian. According to the publication, a native of Slavyansk, who since 2014 took part in the battles in Donbass on the part of the separatists, has already been buried in Rostov. And in 2016 he signed a contract with PMC.
RBC conducted several interviews with relatives of the victims.
If we talk about total losses, then the data here is based solely on rumors and varies depending on the source of information.
The American television channel CNBC was the first to report the losses of the Russians, which cited a source in the Pentagon and announced the death of several hundred attackers, including mercenaries from the Russian Federation.
Bloomberg claims the death of 200 Russians - and also citing sources. True, he then cites data from an official from the Pentagon, who speaks of a hundred dead in total (including Syrians) and 200 wounded.
The statement of Kurdish General Hassan in an interview with WP also correlates with this version. He claims that about a hundred attackers were killed. And among them “several Russians, probably from among the mercenaries fighting alongside the forces supporting the Syrian regime.”
Battle for the oil refinery
One of the main unofficial reasons for the failed military operation is an attempt to take control of the Conoco oil refinery and field. The Russian press has already recognized this.
As Komsomolskaya Pravda writes, “considering that the Kurdish forces had occupied a large oil plant on the left bank of the Euphrates without serious reasons, the pro-Assad forces decided to try to recapture it. The calculation was that, having seen impressive forces, the Kurds would not resist and will retreat."
According to Kommersant, the “blitzkrieg” did not work out: “The calculation was that after the artillery shelling, ours would quickly take this plant by storm, the Kurds would throw down their weapons. And the Americans would no longer hit their own when close combat broke out. But by the beginning of the fighting Only half of the detachment managed to deploy in combat formation,” one of the Wagner fighters told the publication.
“They just crushed us,” a Komsomolskaya Pravda source in the PMC reported about the consequences of this hitch. “First artillery, then helicopters... The dead, of course, are not 600 or 200. But American statistics are very close to reality (we were talking about 100 dead Syrians and Russians - ed.).
Surely they saw that we were preparing for an assault on our bridgehead on the left bank. It is no coincidence that the crossing of the Euphrates was flooded the other day through the release of water in the locks. Help would not have come to us even hypothetically. As a result, the 5th assault detachment was almost completely destroyed, burned along with its equipment."
Social networks believe that the “private fighters” went into battle without proper air cover. And they explain this by saying that the attack really was not coordinated with the official military command of the Russian Federation - otherwise there would have been two or three fighters nearby.
According to the Russian military source of Kommersant, the cause of the incident in the province of Deir ez-Zor in the north of the country was an attempt by local “large businessmen who currently support Bashar al-Assad” to seize oil and gas fields controlled by the Kurds, allies of the United States.
“For this purpose, pro-government tribal formations went on the offensive, and the so-called ISIS Hunters, reinforced by fighters from the Wagner PMC, went in the second echelon. Both were hit by the American Air Force and shelled,” the publication writes. .
Kommersant's interlocutor claims that the Russian command in Syria did not give permission to carry out offensive operation to oil fields, which was perceived as a “dangerous amateur activity.”
Why did Trump call Putin?
The situation surrounding the unsuccessful attack by the Syrians and Russians on the positions of pro-American forces has brought considerable tension into relations between Washington and Moscow.
Usually, unfriendly actions in Syria quite quickly (by military standards) provoke a response from the “offended” side.
It is interesting that it was the Americans who immediately tried to relieve this tension. First, the tone of the Pentagon and Mattis was conciliatory and non-confrontational. The US has said several times that it consulted with the Russians before launching the strike.
Secondly, the seriousness of the situation is evidenced by Donald Trump’s call to Vladimir Putin on February 12. Formally, Trump decided to express condolences over the An-148 crash. Negotiations on the Syrian topic were not officially announced, however, the very fact of the call coincided with the growing excitement around the massacre near Deir Ezzor.
It is possible that the plane crash was only a pretext for a personal connection between the presidents, without which this call could have been misinterpreted by the Kremlingate lobbyists in the United States.
What is known about PMC "Wagner"
Officially, this unit does not exist in nature, but the media write about this “private army” as a fait accompli.
The PMC is associated with the Slavic Brigade, which fought in Syria back in 2013. In 2014-2015, the PMC operated on the territory of the “LDPR”. And then she appeared again in Syria.
The commander of the PMC is called a professional military man, reserve lieutenant colonel Dmitry Utkin, who had the combat call sign “Wagner”. By the way, Utkin is a native of the Kirovograd region. And, as it turned out, in the summer of 2016, he came to visit his relatives in Ukraine quite legally.
In contact with
Classmates
As some media outlets note, Russian fighters of the Wagner PMC were attacked by American artillery and aircraft, avenging the death of US military advisers in the Idlib region.
The Wagner private military company suffered significant losses in Syria due to the actions of American artillery and aviation, which covered the ground units of its Kurdish allies, several media outlets reported on the Internet on February 9. Data on PMC losses, as usual, are contradictory.
It all started with the fact that the American television channel CBS, citing an anonymous Pentagon representative, reported that the troops of the international coalition led by America on February 7 dealt a powerful blow to pro-government troops in Syria. This incident, according to the TV channel, was “the first time that Russians were killed due to an American airstrike in Syria.” There have been no official comments from America.
At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that militias supporting the Syrian authorities came under fire from the coalition in the province of Deir ez-Zor due to actions that were not coordinated with the Russian military. The department said that there were no Russian military personnel in the strike area.
The next day, February 10, information appeared in the media with a link to one of the Telegram channels, which published 4 audio recordings at once, as well as a transcript of negotiations between witnesses to the American attack. From the negotiations it becomes clear that the Wagner PMC column was first subjected to artillery and then to an air strike. Because of this, hundreds of soldiers seem to have died.
“There were Pindos (Americans)... First they covered us with artillery (artillery), then they raised 4 turntables (helicopters) and launched them into the carousel from heavy machine guns... Ours had nothing besides machine guns. In general, they created hell there. The Pindos knew specifically and clearly that it was us who were coming, our Russians were coming to take over the plant, and they were sitting at this plant... There were a lot of people who disappeared without a trace,” one entry says.
The second recording says that almost 200 people were killed.
“Brother, look. There were 177 killed - only the 5th company. The deuce almost didn't catch on. In short, the entire 5th was liquidated, they were crushed there by aviation, helicopters, artillery, and the Kurds and the Americans trampled on them, the boys simply had no chance, almost all of the 5th fell,” notes the voice of the unknown.
From the third recording it becomes clear that before the attack, the United States raised its flag and shot the column heading towards them. The voice on the tape marvels at “what the Russians were hoping for.”
“As for the equipment, he reports, one tank and one BRDM survived, and all the other “mess”, all the other tanks were destroyed immediately in the first minutes of the battle,” states the unknown person.
Information appeared that the battle was fought over the Koneko oil field, which became the target of government troops. The facility was most likely supported by a Russian PMC. The figure was announced at 100 people.
“Despite the fact that it is physically controlled by the SDF, the sheikh of the local tribe promised to give it for use to the Syrian government (and most likely, to one of the Syrian entrepreneurs personally). The result of this agreement was an attack by the Syrian Arab Army,” the media reports.
There is unofficial confirmation of the fact of a clash between Russian mercenaries and US troops in Syria from the lawyer of the International Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, Alexander Ionov. He also, as in the original audio recordings, voices the figure of 200 people.
“According to my sources, more than two hundred people died. The exact number of those killed will be determined within a few days; negotiations are underway regarding their presence in this corridor. The column was attacked on the march. It is not entirely clear what goals and objectives the representatives of the “Wagner Company” had when they were gathering their units for the march towards the Euphrates,” Ionov said.
An approximate picture of what happened has also emerged.
“After talking with the Syrian military, we realized that our fighters were under heavy fire from artillery installations that were covering pro-American Kurdish units. Then 2 American Air Force helicopters launched a missile and bomb attack on those who had taken refuge behind the ruins. People were simply finished off,” says the expert.
Alexander Ionov admits that the strike was the Pentagon’s revenge for the death of US military advisers in the Idlib region, which occurred as a result of a retaliation strike by the Russian Aerospace Forces after the heroic death of the Su-25 attack aircraft pilot Roman Filipov.
“During the attack on our plane in Idlib, the Russian side responded with air strikes against militant concentration points. There were probably American military advisers at these points. Apparently, they were among the 30 people whom ours put down. And here, probably, the Americans showed integrity, decided to take revenge and struck, but not against units and formations of regular Russian troops, but against their allies - the Wagner PMC and militias of Syrian origin,” Ionov noted.
However, there are those who admit that the losses of Russian volunteers due to the American strike in Syria are greatly exaggerated. Most of of them was killed while being transported in a truck. Ataman of the Baltic Separate Cossack District Maxim Buga spoke about this. He refers to messages from fighters who continue to operate in the SAR.
On February 12, information appeared on the Internet that Kaliningrad Cossack Vladimir Loginov had died in Syria due to an attack. Buga confirmed this fact. He clarified that this happened due to a coalition strike. But the ataman refutes information about hundreds of victims among volunteers. As he notes, 15-20 people were killed, approximately 50 more were injured.
Ataman said that each participant in the clashes has his own vision of events, “the general has his own, the person on the front line has his own,” hence the difference in information about the dead.
“Because of this, different information came out. One said it was during the offensive, the other said it was during the movement. Most of the people died while they were driving a KamAZ truck,” Buga clarified.
As he notes, the strike was carried out, according to him, either by a missile from a helicopter, or by artillery, and the helicopter directed it. Ataman did not name the organization that includes volunteers in Syria. Now there are approximately 10 Kaliningrad Cossacks remaining in the SAR. There may be more immigrants from the region, since people of “different political convictions” go there.
A group of independent investigators, the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), announced the names of 4 Russian fighters from the Wagner PMC who died as a result of an airstrike by a coalition led by America. Experts note that the dead are Alexey Ladygin from Ryazan, Stanislav Matveev and Igor Kosoturov from the city of Asbest, Sverdlovsk region, and Vladimir Loginov.
According to CIT, Ladygin and Kosoturov previously fought in the Donbass, and Loginov was an active participant in the Cossack movement. But experts add that it is currently impossible to name the exact number of dead Wagner PMC fighters.
For several days the public has been wondering what happened to the Russian private military company Wagner, which is rumored to have suffered heavy losses in Syria.
Information about the massacre at the official level is extremely scarce and closed. Both the United States and Russia admit that a conflict situation took place. However, both sides are silent about the presence of Russians on the battlefield.
However, scraps of information about the death of soldiers from the Russian Federation near the village of Khsham in Syria have already begun to leak into those Russian media that are quite loyal to the Kremlin.
The only question is the number of deaths and the very facts of the battle.
What fight are we talking about?
On the night of February 8, a battle took place near the village of Khsham in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. The settlement lies on the border between US-backed Kurds and Assad government forces.
The sides are separated by the Euphrates River - the Syrians are entrenched on the western bank, and the Kurds are on the eastern bank, forming the backbone of the Free Syrian Army, which is in opposition to Damascus, and is supported by the Americans.
According to Russia, “Islamic State” detachments are based in the same area.
The parties shift the blame for the conflict onto each other. The US says that Assad's forces launched an attack on the Kurdish headquarters where American advisers were located. They requested contact with the Russian military, who stated that “they are not there” and they are not conducting any operations in the area.
Then American aviation was called in and defeated the advancing forces “in the open field.” It is reported that the US military notified the Russian side in advance of plans to strike. Russia did not deny this.
In the American media, the most complete reconstruction of the events was made by The Washington Post.
From the commentary of the Kurdish general Hassan, it follows that on the night of February 7-8, a pro-Assad column with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and trucks advanced in the direction of the Conoco oil and gas field. At about 10 p.m. the enemy opened fire from tanks and artillery pieces. The shells exploded “about 450 meters from the positions occupied by the Syrian Democratic Forces (Syrian Democratic Forces - ed.) and American soldiers.”
According to Hasan, US Air Force attack aircraft, fighters and drones were forced to attack the attackers. The battle ended at approximately 5.30 am.
The coalition attack included an AC-130 attack aircraft and an Ah-64 Apache helicopter, F-15 fighter jets and drones, as well as artillery batteries.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the picture is completely different. The Americans carried out an air raid on a detachment of Syrian militias who were conducting an operation against an ISIS sleeper cell in the area of the former Al-Isba oil refinery.
At the same time, the department emphasized that the militias that came under attack from the coalition did not coordinate their operation with the command of the Russian task force. No complaints were made against the United States.
So were they Russians or not?
As the Kremlin later stated, Russian military personnel did not participate in the operation.
“As you know, in this case we are operating with the data that concerns military personnel of the armed forces of the Russian Federation who are taking part in the operation of the armed forces, the Russian Aerospace Forces in support of the Syrian army. We do not have information about other Russians who may be in Syria,” said Russian Presidential Speaker Dmitry Peskov.
Even the USA is not officially sure that it was the Russians who were bombed.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis said he does not have accurate information that Russian PMC employees were killed during an airstrike against Assad's forces.
“We're even coordinating ground operations on each side,” Mattis said. According to him, Russian troops were not among the Syrian forces that came under coalition fire near Hisham.
“The Russians told us at that time that their forces were not there,” said the head of the Pentagon.
“The fact is that someone decided to attack us, and the Russians said that it was not about them. (...) You cannot ask Russia to prevent a conflict in a case where it does not control something; this could not be done,” Mattis said.
Pentagon statement on airstrike. Not a word about the Russians
He also added that the Euphrates River has long been used as a demarcation line between US and opposition forces, as well as Russian and Syrian government forces. “The Russians always responded to our signals, we always responded. That line has never been broken,” Mattis added.
He also suggested that Hsham did not have contract soldiers or employees of Russian private military companies. “I think the Russians would have told us,” Mattis said. However, he cautioned that he did not have completely accurate information on this matter.
Nevertheless, reports of the death of soldiers from the Russian PMC Wagner continue to arrive. The participation of these particular fighters in this battle was first reported on the telegram channel of the Conflict Intelligence Team community and on the VK page of Igor Girkin (Strelkov), who for some time commanded the “DPR army.”
No one has yet officially denied this information. Meanwhile, the first names of the dead “private traders” have already appeared.
What they say about losses
At the moment, there have already been five names of soldiers who served with Wagner and allegedly died in the battle near Khsham.
Alexey Ladygin from Ryazan - Vladimir Loginov from Kaliningrad
Stanislav Matveev from Asbest, Sverdlovsk region
Igor Kosoturov, Asbest
Kirill Ananyev from the “Other Russia” party
A number of local Russian media wrote about their deaths, acquaintances and relatives of the victims, as well as public organizations (for example, Cossacks) reported on social networks.
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These names are also cited by the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which added one more dead - a Ukrainian. According to the publication, a native of Slavyansk, who since 2014 took part in the battles in Donbass on the part of the separatists, has already been buried in Rostov. And in 2016 he signed a contract with PMC.
Trophy recording (very Bad quality) shooting of convoy 245 SMEs in Chechnya on April 16, 1996. only 4 parts
At about 14.00 we set off. At 14.10 we passed Chishki and pulled the shutters in front of the entrance to the gorge. Arkasha says: “Look, there are only women and children.” And just yesterday the guys from the 324th Regiment told me a superstition: “If there are men, women and children on the road, everything is fine. If only women are idiots, there will soon be an ambush.”
The column stretched out on the “mother-in-law’s tongue” (this is a serpentine). The trucks on it barely turned around, and I don’t even know how the MAZ trucks that pulled the faulty equipment got through. Everything is quiet, calm. We're going, telling jokes. We passed Yaryshmard, the head of the column had already gone around the bend, and the bridges crossed the dry riverbed. And then - an explosion ahead, we look - the tank turret was thrown up from behind a hillock, the second explosion was also somewhere at the head of the column, and the third just hit between the tank in front and ours. The explosion tore off the hood and broke the windows. That was the first time I was shell-shocked. Arkasha had already gotten out of the car, and I got entangled in two door handles - well, I was simply stunned. Finally fell out of the cabin. The fire was very dense, but I already began to think and ran about 15 meters away from the pourer, despite the fire of the spirits. I found some kind of depression in the side of the road and pushed my butt into it. A conscript soldier lay down nearby. The first shock has passed - I’m observing how things are going. And things are not important. The trucks stood on the road. The guys from the pourer platoon are firing in all directions as best they can; where exactly the spirits are is still unclear. Arkasha wets the white light from under the wheel of his pourer.
Then a grenade slams past me and hits the tank that was walking behind us. The pourer is on fire. I figure that if it explodes now, we will all be very hot. I'm trying to figure out where this thing came from. I look like someone is fussing about 170 meters from us. I looked into the sight, and the “dushara” was already preparing a new grenade... I knocked him down with the first shot, and I really liked it. I begin to look for targets in the sight. Another “darling” is sitting in the trench, watering from a machine gun. I fired, but I can’t say with certainty whether I killed him or not, because the bullet hit the upper edge of the parapet at chest level, behind which he was sitting. The spirit disappeared. Either I finally got him, or he decided not to tempt fate anymore. I took aim again and saw that at the roll the spirit “on four bones” was crawling up the hill. I only scared him with the first shot. He moved his limbs more actively, but did not have time to escape. The second shot, like a good kick in the ass, threw him over his head.
While I was firing at the spirits, Arkasha drove away the burning pourer and threw it off the road. I listened and the machine gun seemed to be working. Something was set on fire from behind, and black smoke went towards us along the gorge, because of it we couldn’t see anything through the sights. Dmitry and I—that’s the conscript’s name—figured out that it was time for us to get out of here. They gathered themselves and rushed across the road, falling behind the concrete blocks in front of the bridge. You can’t raise your head, and meanwhile the machine gunner is hammering away at the tanks, and not without success. He set them on fire. Dima and I are lying down, and a river of burning kerosene, about a meter and a half wide, flows past us towards the bridge. The flames are unbearably hot, but, as it turned out, this is not the worst thing. When the river of fire reached the “Ural” with charges for self-propelled guns, all this stuff began to explode. I see some things with rags flying out of the car. Dima explained that these were lighting shells. We lie down and count: Dima said that there were about 50 of them in the car. Meanwhile, the second Ural with high-explosive shells caught fire. It’s good that it didn’t detonate entirely; the shells were thrown to the sides by explosions.
I lie there and think: “Damn, why isn’t anyone commanding us?” As it turned out later, Khattab planned everything so competently that literally at the very beginning of the battle, the entire control, which was traveling on two command and staff vehicles, was mowed down by fire small arms, and the KShM themselves remained untouched throughout the entire battle.
Suddenly, in the second "Ural" with high-explosive ammunition, something exploded so much that the rear axle with one wheel went up 80 meters like a candle, and, in our opinion, it should have plopped down right on us. Well, we think we've arrived. However, he was lucky: he fell about ten meters away. Everything is in smoke, everything explodes. You can't see anything through the scope because of the smoke. The shooting was erratic, but the spirit machine gunner stood out from the crowd. We decided to get out of this utter hell and ran to the green area. We distributed the firing sectors with Dima. I fire along the front, and he covers my rear and makes sure that no spirits come from above. We crawled out to the edge of the forest, and the tank, which stood at the tail of the column, was hit by spirits from RPGs. They hit eight times, but to no avail. Then they finally pierced the turret from the side of the commander’s hatch. Smoke poured out of it. Apparently, the crew was injured, and the mechanic began to back up. So he walked backwards through the entire column and, they say, reached the regiment.
An hour has passed since the start of the battle. The shooting began to subside. I say: “Okay, Dima, let’s go to the end of the column!” We ran under the bridge, I saw some people sitting in Afghan boots, about seven of them, with two corpses nearby. Let's run up. One of the people sitting turns around. Oh my God! He has a black beard, a hooked nose and wild eyes. I raise the rifle, press the trigger... The rest turn around - ours. Okay, I didn't press it. He turned out to be a bearded contractor. Even without me, he sits there, stunned, stuttering, unable to say anything. I shout: “Uncle, I almost killed you!” But he doesn’t get it.
The BMP is crawling “limping” towards us, collecting the wounded. They hit her in the torsion bar, and she hobbles around. They threw the wounded inside, drove onto the road - the cars around them were burning out, something was breaking in them. The firefight had almost died down.
Let's go. Somewhere on the road closer to Argun, men are shouting: “Guys! We have wounded here. Help!” I jumped down to them, and the car continued on. I approach the guys. They say: “Our major is wounded.” A major is sitting in camouflage, with the sign of the Marine Corps on his sleeve. Penetrating wound in the arm and chest. All pale from loss of blood. The only thing I had was a tourniquet. I pulled his hand. We got to talking and it turned out that he was the political officer of a battalion in the Pacific Fleet. At this time, one of the guys remembered that the car was carrying beer, cigarettes, juice, etc. I covered the guys, and they ran away and brought all this stuff. We lie down, drink beer, smoke. It started to get dark. I think: “Now it’s getting dark, the spirits will descend, there’s no help, and we’re screwed!” We decided to choose a better position. We took a fancy to a small hill, occupied it, lay there, and waited. The guys from RMO show me the situation. The vehicles with ammunition were burned by the spirits with RPGs, and those with food were simply cut down with small arms.
Will help come...
The artillery began to work, very carefully, only along the slopes, and without touching any locality, nor us. Then four Mi-24s arrived and worked in the mountains. It got dark. We hear a terrible roar coming from the 324th Regiment. It turns out that help is on the way. Ahead is a T-72, followed by an infantry fighting vehicle, then a tank again. Not reaching 50 meters, he stops and points his gun at us. I think: “That’s it! They didn’t kill the spirits - they’ll finish off their own out of fright!” We jump up, wave our arms - they say, ours. The tank shook its barrel, turned around and darted into the “green stuff” 20 meters away. With this “help” people jumped out - crawling on the grass, watering around them with machine guns. We yell at them: “Guys, are you crawling? There’s no one here anymore.” It turns out that this was reconnaissance from the 324th Regiment. I approached the officers and said: “Why are you fighting here? We need to go to the head of the column!” And they told me: since you’ve been here and even have some sense, take ten people and move with them where you said.
I walked around, found the scouts, and we moved forward. I counted more than forty burnt corpses. Judging by which cars remained intact, the spirits had clear information about what was where. For example, the medical MTLB remained completely untouched, only the small arms mechanic was destroyed, and the ZUshka behind it was literally turned into a sieve. Then we wondered why help came so late: if they had arrived an hour and a half earlier, then someone at the head of the column would have survived, but there one BRDM resisted until the last, in which almost everyone was killed.
As the guys from the 324th regiment later said, when they reported that our column was being wetted in the gorge and it would be nice to rush to the rescue, they were told not to twitch and to stand where they were. Help came to us two and a half hours later, when everything was over.
The dual power that emerged in Chechnya in 1991, which declared itself a sovereign republic, led to confrontation with the federal government and internal conflicts in the struggle for power, which ended with the introduction of Russian troops in December 1994. This is how not all of the country’s military leadership wanted to participate. But if the generals could resign and avoid being sent to North Caucasus, then among conscripts and junior officers there was simply no choice. In a hurry, the regiments were completed and sent to carry out combat missions in Chechnya. The 245th, which lost a significant part of its personnel during the hostilities, did not escape this fate. The most dramatic battle 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 its heroic history 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, it began to be actively replenished with 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 had not undergone 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.
If we take into account that already in the North Caucasus the regiment would change 4 sets of officers, using its example it becomes clear that the army was not prepared to participate 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 was always in the forefront, participating in the assault on Prigorodny (Grozny), Goysky, Vedeno, Arktan-Yurt, Shatoy and Goth. Since the spring of 1995, the regiment settled near Shatoy, guarding roads and manning checkpoints. The fighters accompanied transport columns carrying fuel, food and civilians. Starting in February 1995, after the encirclement and blocking of Dudayev’s main troops in the “South-East” group of troops, strange events related to concessions to the separatists began to occur more and more often.
During the operation to capture Shatoy in June 1995, a column of the 245th regiment was ambushed near the village of Zone in the Argun Gorge. This happened due to the carelessness of the leadership and the lack of foot reconnaissance. Despite the losses, this fact remained almost unnoticed in the general rejoicing associated with the capture of Shatoy. But this was the first bell to a tragedy that went down in history as the Battle of Yaryshmarda. On March 31, 1996, a column of paratroopers was shot at the village of Benoy, heading to Vedeno, but this did not prompt 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 military operations in the area. Based on a document from the chief of staff of the 324th MRR, under whose control the section of the road to Shatoi was located, a checkpoint was removed 500 meters from the village. The regiment commander was not informed.
The battle at Yaryshmarda will take place in the context of an order from the Minister of Defense on the use of artillery only in case of self-defense and a complete renunciation of the participation of aviation on the territory of Chechnya. He arrived 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 Shatoy, the purpose of which was to deliver material and technical means, fuel and young reinforcements to the military unit. Those demobilized and sent home for family reasons joined the column. There is information that there were also soldiers’ mothers looking for their missing children. From Goisky, they were joined by 4 vehicles of the 324th SME. The rear column under the command of Major Terzovets left on April 15, immediately after the Easter celebration. After spending the night in Khankala, by the middle of the next day, cars and military equipment passed Dacha-Borzoi and Yaryshmardy, stretching for 1.5-2 km. Ahead there was a narrow mountain serpentine, commonly called “mother-in-law’s tongue.”
The reconnaissance controlled artillery spotter maintained contact with the 324th MRR, and that was all that was done to protect the people and military equipment. The battle at Yaryshmarda was filmed by the militants themselves, whose material became public. Against the background of birdsong and conversations of the detachment of Jordanian Khattab and Ruslan Gelayev, the hum of cars can be heard. You can see from behind the branches from the cliff how a tented Ural, a tanker, and an armored personnel carrier appear. The distance between cars is about 20 meters. And suddenly the silence is broken by explosions, and then gunfire. With heavy fire from above, invisible behind the greenery and a curtain of smoke, the militants shoot at point-blank range the Russian column. The time recorded on the video is 13 hours 23 minutes. These are the minutes when the battle at Yaryshmarda began.
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 labor-intensive task. All locations of the Khattab and Gelayev 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. Radio-controlled landmines are installed on the road in the direction of traffic. The location for the attack is ideally chosen due to the curve that hides the lead transport from the tail of the column. The road in this area is so narrow that it is impossible for tankers or trucks to turn around to leave the battlefield.
On the left is an almost vertical 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 a dry river. Those who did not crash during the fall were finished off by snipers, which excluded the possibility of escape. The trap for the transport column slammed shut when the leading tank was blown up by a landmine and an explosion was heard at the end of the procession. The bandits hit the target accurately, shooting the BMP and BRDM leading the column in the first minutes of the battle. Senior Major Terezovets, a radio operator and an artillery spotter were killed. Company 245 SMEs found themselves without contact with outside world(jamming was specially placed in the VHF range), 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 MRR, during the bloody events, 73 people were killed, 52 were injured, 6 infantry fighting vehicles, 1 BRDM, and 11 vehicles were destroyed. Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article indicating 95 dead, including those demobilized and those who joined the convoy, 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 those demobilized, had to search for her son in Chechnya for a month and she was able to identify the corpse in Rostov only after meeting with the surviving participants in the dramatic events. 30 bodies were taken from the battlefield without the possibility of identification: the guys burned like torches after direct hits from grenade launchers on tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. What do eyewitnesses say about the battle at Yaryshmarda?
Sniper Denis Tsiryulnik, a contract soldier, says that after the smoke cleared, the surviving soldiers resisted until the last bullet in conditions of almost zero visibility. After the battle, seven corpses of militants - residents of the Shatoi region - will be found. Only at 6 o’clock in the evening did Miroshnichenko’s armored group and the 324th MRP, as well as a battered reconnaissance detachment, make their way to the column. By this time, the Chechens and Arab mercenaries participating in Khattab’s gang had already fled. Only one question was asked: why did help come so late? The lead BRDM resisted to the last, the guys could have survived. To which the answer came: the regiment command was waiting for instructions from above, and the groups began to break through to help only at four o’clock. The approaching helicopters hit the mountains, artillery fired, but there were no militants on the slopes.
Igor Izotov, who was in the third truck, said that those who survived were those who managed to squeeze into the space between the front infantry fighting vehicle and the rocks, which became the only dead zone for the enemy. Snipers pulled the guys out from under the cars, shooting them with ricochets 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 himself 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 landmines and grenade launchers. The medical car remained untouched. The wounded were gathered into it, and the bodies of the dead were laid on the armor. When the 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 the Argun. All morning on the 17th they cleared the road, finding seven more unexploded landmines. They threw burnt trucks off the cliff and searched for the soldiers' belongings and personal numbers. Thus ended the almost four-hour battle at Yaryshmarda.
The list of the dead 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 warrant officers 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 parents and relatives. A book of memory is posted on the website of 245 SMEs, and a monument to those who fulfilled their task at the cost of their lives was erected in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Official investigation
The mass death of personnel of 245 SMEs became the subject of an official investigation, following which State Duma The prosecutor’s office also spoke out, not seeing any corpus delicti in the actions of the officials. Rokhlin accused the country's leadership and the Ministry of Defense of not controlling the situation in Chechnya and allowing the manifestation of carelessness that led to the death of the military. He pointed to a lack of vigilance, tactical illiteracy and lack of coordination between the 245th and 324th MRR. 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 appeared on the pages of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper about the tragedy with the column of the 245th SME, which on the sidelines immediately began to be called sold. In a video message, Khattab openly talks about the corruption of some high-ranking officers. But you cannot trust him; a thorough judicial investigation is necessary, which should answer the question of the reasons for the terrible coincidences and the mass death of soldiers. But to date, such a trial has not been carried out. One of the mysteries of the First Chechen War remains the April battle at Yaryshmarda. Military secrets have been carefully guarded since those times when participants in the events were strictly forbidden to convey 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?..