Combat vehicle crew

The sites of New Year's battles are marked by the skeletons of burned-out armored vehicles, around which the bodies of Russian soldiers are lying around, although time was already coming to Orthodox Christmas. Birds pecked out their eyes, dogs ate many corpses to the bone ...
I stumbled upon this group of damaged armored vehicles in early January 1995, when I was making my way to the bridge across the Sunzha, behind which were the buildings of the Council of Ministers and the Reskom. A terrifying sight: the sides pierced with cumulative grenades, torn tracks, red, even rusty from fire towers. On the aft hatch of one BMP, the tail number - 684 is clearly visible, and from the upper hatch, the charred remains of what was recently a living person, a split skull, hang from the upper hatch like a twisted mannequin ... Lord, how hellish was this flame that consumed human life! In the rear of the vehicle, one can see burnt ammunition: a heap of calcined machine-gun belts, burst cartridges, charred shell casings, blackened bullets with leaked lead ...
Near this padded infantry fighting vehicle - another one, through the open aft hatch I see a thick layer of gray ash, and there is something small and charred in it. Looked closer - like a baby curled up in a ball. Also a man! Not far away, near some garages, the bodies of three very young guys in oily army quilted jackets, and all have their hands behind their backs, as if tied. And on the walls of the garages - traces of bullets. Surely these were the soldiers who managed to jump out of the wrecked cars, and theirs - against the wall ... As in a dream, I raise the camera with cotton hands, take a few pictures. A series of mines that dashed near makes us dive behind the knocked-out infantry fighting vehicle. Unable to protect her crew, she still shielded me from the fragments.
Who knew that fate would later again confront me with the victims of that drama - the crew of the damaged armored vehicle: alive, dead and missing. “Three tankmen, three cheerful friends, the crew of a combat vehicle,” was sung in a Soviet song of the 1930s. And it was not a tank - an infantry fighting vehicle: BMP-2, hull number 684, from the second motorized rifle battalion of the 81st motorized rifle regiment. Crew - four people: Major Artur Valentinovich Belov - chief of staff of the battalion, his deputy captain Viktor Vyacheslavovich Mychko, driver-mechanic Private Dmitry Gennadievich Kazakov and communications officer Senior Sergeant Andrey Anatolyevich Mikhailov. You can say, my fellow countrymen-Samara: after the withdrawal from Germany of the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Petrakuvsky twice Red Banner, the orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the regiment was stationed in the Samara region, in Chernorechye. Shortly before the Chechen war, according to the order of the Minister of Defense, the regiment began to be called the Volga Cossack Guards, but the new name did not take root.
This BMP was knocked out in the afternoon on December 31, 1994, and I learned about those who were in it only later, when, after the first publication of the pictures, the parents of a soldier from Togliatti found me. Nadezhda and Anatoly Mikhailovs were looking for their missing son Andrei: on December 31, 1994, he was in this car ... What could I say then to the soldier's parents, what hope to give them? We called over and over again, I tried to accurately describe everything that I saw with my own eyes, and only later, when we met, I passed on the pictures. From Andrey's parents I learned that there were four people in the car, only one survived - Captain Mychko. I accidentally ran into the captain in the summer of 1995 in Samara in the district military hospital. I talked to the wounded man, began to show pictures, and he literally stared at one of them: “This is my car! And this is Major Belov, there is no one else ... "
15 years have passed since then, but I know for certain the fate of only two, Belov and Mychko. Major Artur Belov is that charred man on the armor. He fought in Afghanistan, was awarded the order. Not so long ago I read the words of the commander of the 2nd battalion Ivan Shilovsky about him: Major Belov perfectly fired any weapon, he was neat - even in Mozdok, on the eve of the campaign to Grozny, he always wore a white collar and arrows on his trousers made with a coin; a beard, which is why he ran into the comment of the commander of the 90th Panzer Division, Major General Nikolai Suryadny, although the charter allows you to wear a beard during hostilities. The division commander was not too lazy to call Samara by satellite phone to give the order: to deprive Major Belov of his thirteenth salary ...
How Artur Belov died is not known for certain. It looks like when the car was hit, the major tried to jump out through the top hatch and was killed. Yes, and remained on the armor. At least, this is what Viktor Mychko says: “Nobody has given us any combat mission, only an order over the radio: to enter the city. Kazakov was sitting at the levers, Mikhailov in the stern, next to the radio station - providing communication. Well, I am with Belov. At twelve o'clock in the afternoon ... We didn’t really understand anything, we didn’t even have time to fire a single shot - neither from a cannon, nor from a machine gun, nor from machine guns. It was sheer hell. We did not see anything or anyone, the side of the car was shaking from the hits. Everything was shooting from everywhere, we no longer had any other thoughts, except for one - to get out. The radio was disabled by the first hits. We were just shot like a range target. We didn’t even try to shoot back: where to shoot if you don’t see the enemy, but you can see it yourself? Everything was like a nightmare, when it seems that eternity lasts, and only a few minutes have passed. We are hit, the car is on fire. Belov rushed into the upper hatch, and blood immediately gushed at me - he was cut off by a bullet, and he hovered on the tower. I rushed out of the car myself ... "
However, some colleagues - but not eyewitnesses! - later they began to claim that the major burned to death: he fired from a machine gun until he was wounded, tried to get out of the hatch, but the militants poured gasoline on him and set it on fire, and the BMP itself, they say, did not burn at all and its ammunition did not explode. Others agreed to the point that Captain Mychko abandoned Belov and the soldiers, even "handed over" them to the Afghan mercenaries. And the Afghans supposedly took revenge on the veteran of the Afghan war. But there were no Afghan mercenaries in Grozny - the origins of this legend, like the myth of "white tights", must apparently be sought in the basements of the Lubyaninformburo. And the investigators were able to examine BMP # 684 not earlier than February 1995, when the damaged equipment was evacuated from the streets of Grozny. Arthur Belov was identified first by the watch on his arm and his waist belt (it was some kind of special one, bought back in Germany), then by his teeth and a plate in the spine. The Order of Courage posthumously, according to Shilovsky, was knocked out of the bureaucrats only on the third attempt.

Tomb of an unidentified soldier

A shrapnel pierced Captain Viktor Mychko's chest, damaging a lung, there were still wounds in the arm and leg: "I stuck out to the waist - and suddenly the pain fell back, I don't remember anything else, I woke up already in the bunker." The unconscious captain was pulled out of the wrecked car, as many say, by the Ukrainians who fought on the side of the Chechens. They, apparently, knocked out this BMP. About one of the Ukrainians who captured the captain, something is now known: Alexander Muzychko, nicknamed Sashko Bily, seems to be from Kharkov, but lived in Rovno. In general, Viktor Mychko woke up in captivity - in the basement of the Dudayev palace. Then there was an operation in the same basement, release, hospitals and a lot of problems. But more on that below.
Soldier Dmitry Kazakov and Andrei Mikhailov were not among those who survived, their names were not among the identified victims, for a long time they were both listed as missing. Now they are officially declared dead. However, in 1995, Andrei Mikhailov's parents, in a conversation with me, said: yes, we received a coffin with the body, buried it, but it was not our son.
The story is as follows. In February, when the fighting in the city subsided and the wrecked cars were taken out of the streets, it was time for identification. Of the entire crew, only Belov was officially identified. Although, as Nadezhda Mikhailova told me, he had a tag with the number of a completely different BMP. And there were two more bodies with tags of the 684th BMP. More precisely, not even bodies - shapeless charred remains. The saga with identification lasted four months and on May 8, 1995, the one whom the examination identified as Andrei Mikhailov, the guard of the senior sergeant of the communications company of the 81st regiment, found his peace in the cemetery. But for the parents of the soldier, the identification technology remained a mystery: the military refused to tell them about this then flatly, the genetic tests were definitely not carried out. Maybe it would be worth to spare the nerves of the reader, but one still cannot do without details: the soldier was without a head, without arms, without legs, everything was burnt. There was nothing with him - no documents, no personal belongings, no suicide medallion. Military doctors from a hospital in Rostov-on-Don told the parents that they had allegedly carried out the examination using an X-ray of the chest. But then they suddenly changed the version: the blood group was determined by the bone marrow and, by elimination, they calculated that one was Kazakov. The other means Mikhailov ... Blood type - and nothing else? But the soldiers could have been not only from another BMP, but also from another unit! The blood group is another proof: four groups and two rhesus, eight variants per thousand corpses ...
It is clear that the parents did not believe also because it is impossible for the mother's heart to come to terms with the loss of her son. However, there were good reasons for their doubts. In Togliatti, not only the Mikhailovs received a funeral and a zinc coffin, in January 1995 the messengers of death knocked on many. Then came the coffins. And one family, having mourned and buried their deceased son, in the same May 1995 received a second coffin! The mistake came out, they said in the military registration and enlistment office, the first time we sent the wrong one, but this time it was definitely yours. Who was buried first? How was it to believe after that?
In 1995, Andrei Mikhailov's parents traveled to Chechnya several times, hoping for a miracle: suddenly in captivity? They ransacked the cellars of Grozny. There were also in Rostov-on-Don - in the infamous 124th medico-forensic laboratory of the Ministry of Defense. They told how boorish, drunken "guardians of bodies" met them there. Several times Andrei's mother examined the remains of those killed in the carriages, but she did not find her son. And I was amazed that for six months no one even tried to identify these several hundred killed: “Everything is perfectly preserved, facial features are clear, everyone can be identified. Why can't the Ministry of Defense take pictures by sending them out to the districts, checking them against photographs from personal files? Why should we mothers ourselves, at our own expense, travel thousands and thousands of kilometers to find, identify and take our children - again at our own pittance? The state took them into the army, it threw them into the war, and then there it forgot - the living and the dead ... Why can't the army, humanly, at least pay its last debt to the fallen boys? "

"Nobody set the task"

Then I learned a lot about my fellow countryman. Andrey Mikhailov was called up in March 1994. They sent to serve not far, to Chernorechye, where the 81st regiment withdrawn from Germany was based. It is a stone's throw from Togliatti to Chernorechye, so his parents visited Andrei often. Service as service, there was hazing. But the parents are firmly convinced that no one was involved in combat training in the regiment. Because from March to December 1994, Andrei held a submachine gun in his hands only three times: on the oath and twice more at the shooting range - the fathers-commanders became generous by as much as nine rounds. And in the sergeant's training, in fact, they did not teach him anything, although they gave him stripes. The son honestly told his parents what he was doing in Chernorechye: from morning till night he built summer cottages and garages for gentlemen officers, nothing more. He described in detail how they set up some kind of dacha, a general's or a colonel's: the boards were polished with a plane to a mirror shine, they were adjusted to one another until they were sweaty. After that I met with Andrey's colleagues in Chernorechye: they confirm that it was so, all the "combat" training - the construction of summer cottages and the maintenance of officer families. A week before being sent to Chechnya, the radio was turned off in the barracks, and televisions were taken out. Parents, who managed to attend the dispatch of their children, argued: the soldiers had their military cards taken away. The last time the parents saw Andrei was just before the regiment was sent to Chechnya. Everyone already knew that they were going to war, but they drove away gloomy thoughts. The parents filmed the last evening with their son on a video camera. They convinced me that when they look at the film, they see that even then the stamp of tragedy lay on Andrei's face: he was gloomy, did not eat anything, he gave the pies to his colleagues ...
By the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the once elite regiment was a pitiful sight. Almost none of the regular officers who served in Germany remained, and 66 officers of the regiment were not regular officers at all - "two-year students" from civilian universities with military departments! For example, Lieutenant Valery Gubarev, commander of a motorized rifle platoon, a graduate of the Novosibirsk Metallurgical Institute: he was drafted into the army in the spring of 1994. He was already in the hospital telling how grenade launchers and a sniper were sent to him at the last moment before the battle. "The sniper says: 'Show me how to shoot.' And the grenade launchers - about the same ... Already in the column to line up, and I train all the grenade launchers ... "Commander
Of the 81st regiment, Alexander Yaroslavtsev later admitted: “People, to be honest, were poorly trained, some of them drove little BMP, some fired little. And from such specific types of weapons as a grenade launcher and a flamethrower, the soldiers did not shoot at all. "
Lieutenant Sergei Terekhin, the commander of a tank platoon, wounded during the assault, claimed that only two weeks before the first (and last) battle, his platoon was manned. And in the 81st regiment itself, half of the personnel was missing. This was confirmed by the chief of staff of the regiment Semyon Burlakov: “We concentrated in Mozdok. We were given two days to reorganize, after which we marched off to Grozny. At all levels, we reported that a regiment with such a composition was not ready to conduct hostilities. We were considered a mobile unit, but we were staffed in peacetime: we had only 50 percent of the personnel. But most importantly, there was no infantry in the motorized rifle squads, only the crews of combat vehicles. There were no shooters directly, those who were supposed to ensure the safety of combat vehicles. Therefore, we walked with what is called “bare armor”. And, again, the overwhelming majority of the platoon men are two-year-olds who had no idea about the conduct of hostilities. The driver-mechanics only knew how to start the car and get under way. Operator gunners could not shoot from combat vehicles at all. "
Neither the battalion commanders, nor the company and platoon commanders had maps of Grozny: they did not know how to navigate in a strange city! The commander of the regiment's communications company (Andrey Mikhailov served in this company), Captain Stanislav Spiridonov, said in an interview to Samara journalists: “Maps? There were maps, but they were all different, of different years, they did not fit together, even the names of the streets are different. " However, platoon-two-year-olds did not know how to read maps at all. “Here the chief of staff of the division got in touch with us,” Gubarev recalled, “and personally set the task: the 5th company along Chekhov - to the left, and to us, the 6th company - to the right. So he said - to the right. Just right. "
When the offensive began, the regiment's combat mission changed every three hours, so we can safely assume that it did not exist. Later, the regiment commander, giving numerous interviews in the hospital, was unable to intelligibly explain who set his task and what. First they had to take the airport, moved out - a new order, turned around - again the order to go to the airport, then another introductory one. And on the morning of December 31, 1995, about 200 combat vehicles of the 81st regiment (according to other sources - about 150) moved to Grozny: tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles ...
They did not know anything about the enemy: no one provided the regiment with intelligence, and they themselves did not conduct reconnaissance. The 1st battalion, which was marching in the first echelon, entered the city at 6 am, and the 2nd battalion entered the city with a gap of five o'clock - at 11 am! By this time, little remained of the first battalion, the second was on its way to its death. BMP number 684 was in the second echelon.
They also say that a day or two before the battle, many soldiers were given medals - so to speak, in advance, as an incentive. It was the same in other units. In early January 1995, a Chechen militia showed me a certificate for the medal "For Distinction in Military Service", 2nd degree, which was found on a deceased soldier. The document read: Private Asvan Zazatdinovich Ragiev was awarded by order of the Minister of Defense No. 603 of December 26, 1994. The medal was awarded to the soldier on December 29, and he died on December 31 - later I will find this name in the list of soldiers killed in the 131st Maykop motorized rifle brigade.
The regiment commander later argued that when setting a combat mission, “special attention was paid to the inadmissibility of destroying people, buildings, and objects. We had the right to open only return fire. " But the mechanic-driver of the T-80 tank, junior sergeant Andrei Yurin, when he was in the Samara hospital, recalled: “No, no one set the task, they just stood in a column and went. True, the company commander warned: “If anything - shoot! The child is on the road - push. " That's the whole task.
Control over the regiment was lost in the very first hours. The Yaroslavtsev regiment commander was wounded and out of action, he was replaced by Burlakov - he was also wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Aydarov was the next to take over the reins. Survivors almost unanimously spoke of him very unflattering. The softest of all is Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Shilovsky, the commander of the 2nd battalion: "Aydarov showed obvious cowardice during the hostilities." According to the battalion commander, having entered Grozny, this "regiment commander" placed his BMP in the arch of the building near Ordzhonikidze Square, set up guards and sat there all the time of the battle, having lost control of the people entrusted to him. And the zamkomdiv, trying to regain control, winged on the air: “Aydarov [pip-pip-pip]! And you, coward, where are you hiding ?! " Lieutenant Colonel Shilovsky claimed: Aidarov "later got out of the city at the first opportunity, leaving people behind." And then, when the remnants of the regiment were taken to rest and put in order, “the regiment was ordered to re-enter the city to support the units already entrenched there. Aydarov, on the other hand, discouraged the officers from continuing the hostilities. He tried to persuade them not to enter the city: “You will get nothing for this, motivate this by the fact that you do not know people, there are not enough soldiers. And they will demote me for this, so you'd better ... "
The regiment's losses were terrible, the number of those killed was not made public and is reliably unknown to this day. According to the data of the former chief of staff of the regiment, posted on one of the websites, they died
56 people and 146 were injured. However, according to another authoritative, although far from complete list of losses, the 81st regiment then lost at least 87 people killed. There is also evidence that immediately after the New Year's battles, about 150 units of "cargo 200" were delivered to the Kurumoch airfield in Samara. According to the commander of the communications company, out of 200 people from the 1st battalion of the 81st regiment, 18 survived! And of the 200 combat vehicles in the ranks, 17 remained - the rest burned down on the streets of Grozny. (The chief of staff of the regiment admitted the loss of 103 units of military equipment.) Moreover, the losses were borne not only from the Chechens, but also from their artillery, which had been nailing Grozny completely aimlessly since the evening of December 31, but no longer regretted the shells.
When the wounded Colonel Yaroslavtsev was in the hospital, one of the Samara journalists asked him: how would the regiment commander act if he knew what he knows now about the enemy and the city? He replied: "I would report on command and act in accordance with the given order."

The Mikryakov brothers.

By the end of December 1994, according to intelligence, Dudayev had concentrated in Grozny up to 40 thousand militants, up to 60 guns and mortars, 50 tanks, about 100 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, about 150 anti-aircraft weapons.

Initially, the storming of Grozny was scheduled for January 5, but on December 30 at 19-00 an order was received to leave at 5 a.m. on December 31 according to a combat plan. Federal forces set out at dawn, at about 7 a.m. The scouts went first. There was no resistance. But the closer to the center, the more often mines, obstacles and fire resistance were encountered. By 14-00 the railway station was taken, the units of the 131st motorized rifle battalion were pulling up. At 15-00, the first and second battalions of the 81st motorized rifle regiment and the combined detachment of the 201st motorized rifle regiment blocked the presidential palace, Dudayev threw his best forces to restore the situation. The shelling stopped only at 12 o'clock in the morning. The new year 1995 has come. For many 18, 19-year-old children, it has not come.

In these battles, the Tolyatti people also took part: the guard junior sergeant, the commander of the infantry fighting vehicle of the first battalion of the 81st Petrakovsky, twice Red Banner orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky motorized rifle regiment, Alexander Valerievich Mikryakov and the guards operator of the Order of the Petrograd army officer, Petrakovsky's first gunner, twice Petrakovsky's guard and Bogdan Khmelnytsky motorized rifle regiment Mikryakov Aleksey Valerievich.

It seemed to me that I said everything

But never cry my heart out ...

And the boys torn by death

From someone else's war they leave for the skies,

And I can't shout a song to them ...

About my unforgettable memory!

Oh Lord, there are only crosses all around!

But how many new stars are you lighting up.

Calling them by the names of the fallen

And you will never forget them,

Forgive them, God, my boys,

Without desecrating their souls with someone else's sin ...

(Marianna Zakharova)

Sasha and Alyosharobodied on the same day on June 24, 1975. Sasha was born a little earlier and was heavier than his brother by almost a kilogram. For the life of the weaker Alyoshka, doctors were seriously and for a long time feared. But he survived, and since then the boys have been inseparable. They weren't twins, they were twins. They could not live without each other. We were always and everywhere together. Sasha was fair-haired, kind and silent in character, almost a head taller than Alexei. The brother, however, is dark-haired and of a different character - "lively" and cheerful. He was restless. A fiery, beautiful laugh was constantly heard at home. Only Alyosha could laugh. His naughty eyes always gave a good and cheerful nature. He was a master of all tricks. The Mikryakov family had three children. The elder brother Sergey is two berries older than Alyosha and Sasha. Iraida Alekseevna herself did not indulge in life. Therefore, she was orphaned by her grandmother herself. To be able to stand up for themselves, to be strong.

Sometimes my boys would fight with someone, - Iraida Alekseevna recalls, - they come home scratched, covered in blood, and I will put them out the door and say: "Go and be able to stand up for yourself." I’ll cry myself, I feel sorry for them, but I don’t show them. In general, the guys were not spoiled, they did not cause much trouble.

All housekeeping responsibilities have been assigned in advance. Who should go for groceries, who should clean up the house. At the family council, they decided all financial issues - who and what to buy in the first place. And Iraida Alekseevna also tried to make her sons trust her in everything, and shared all their problems. It so happened that the boys did not have any secrets from them. The guys even told their mother about their first cigarette. True, at the same time sixth graders Sasha and Alyosha added that they didn’t like smoking healthily. The brothers had in common that they could not live without each other. Starting from school, when they went to the same class, from a pioneer camp, where they certainly wanted to join the same squad get there.

I remember, - says Iraida Alekseevna, - in the fifth grade, the boys went to the pioneer camp. The difference in height was too great, no one mistook them for twins. The next day, the counselors called and asked Alyosha to pick him up, because he cried all day. I went and figured it out. They were together again, and everything fell into place. In a word, it was impossible to separate them.

Their paths diverged only after the ninth grade. After finishing the ninth grade of school # 37, Aleksey entered the auto-mechanical technical school, where he studied in the specialty "processing of materials on machine tools and automatic lines" as a technician-technologist. After the technical school, he got a job at the CVC VAZafreserovshchik. And Alexander graduated from the 11th grade of high school, and in September 1992 began to master the profession of a mechanic for car repair in PTU-36. After PTU-36 he worked in MSP VAZ as an operator of automatic lines. He completed his studies at the lyceum earlier than Alexei , so Sasha was also drafted into the army earlier, but their mother Iraida Alekseevna, with difficulty, but still begged to wait with the call of one of the brothers and not divide them even in the army. Until the beginning of December 1994, Alexander and Alexei managed to serve 9 months near Samara, in Chernorechye, in the 81st regiment. Both brothers served on the same BMP (infantry fighting vehicle). True, Sasha was in the position of vehicle commander and in the rank of sergeant, and Alexei was a gunner-gunner. On December 12, Iraida Alekseevna visited them in the unit. Nobody imagined that this was their last meeting. On the 13th they were sent to Mozdok. And on the 29th they were already near Grozny. A few days before that, a letter was sent home from the guys. As it turned out - the latter. Iraida Alekseevna was agitated by Sasha's strange words in the letter "... I really don't know, honestly, I'll have to see each other or not, don't worry, take care of yourself, don't get sick ...", as well as footage from Grozny, shown on television in the first days of the new 1995 She called the information center in PrivO, where she was told that there were no children on the lists of those killed, and a few days later, they were told that they were not on the lists of the living. She called all the authorities, right up to Moscow, but no one could give her the exact information about her children. By hook or by crook Iraida Alekseevna flew to Mozdok. On departure, they tried to take her off the plane. The pilot, who had already seen enough of the mothers tears, helped and hid her in a safe place. Iraida Alekseevna did not have a pass, and this greatly impeded the search. Mozdok had to conduct a real investigation of its own. There was a rumor that one nurse was bandaging some guy, and he kept saying that he needed to go back, and not to the hospital. As if he had a brother. According to the description, the guy looked like Sasha ... She was not allowed in Mozdok. At the next post, kneeling in the sticky mud, she begged the colonel to let her go further. The power of mother's love won - and the search for sons was continued. Continued, despite the fact that the commandant of Mozdok wanted to force her out of the city. Iraida Alekseevna bit by bit collected information about her sons. Then there was a nurse who was bandaging the boy. But it was not Sasha. Iraida Alekseevna left with nothing. Only the tents standing in the mud, and the mutilated soldiers groaning with pain, remained in my memory. Later, in the February armistice, the colleagues of the first company, who had come to the Rostov hospital for identification, first found Sasha, then Alyosha. On February 12, it became known about Sasha's death, and she immediately flew to Rostov. Alexander was buried on 18 February. Soon Alyosha was brought from the Rostov hospital. The mother was informed about this on February 22nd. Aleshun was buried the next day - on February 23rd. Only God alone knows how Iraida Alekseevna was able to endure the death of her sons and not go mad. Life for her was darkened; the sun had ceased to shine for her; she simply did not notice it. Yes, she noticed nothing and nothing. A deadly cold was blowing on her from everywhere. Her sons are gone; they are not at all. No, and never will. No one will ever laugh so loudly and beautifully in her house, as Alyosha did. Nobody will play the guitar like that and sing like Sasha liked to do. The heart "goes in" and "catches" your breath when you unravel this tangle of pain by a thin thread of narration, continuing the story of two brothers who died honestly fulfilling their military duty, defending the constitutional rights of Russia, and remaining faithful to the given oath to the end.

Information about the last hours of Sasha and Alyosha's life was collected by Iraida Alekseevna from eyewitnesses of those events, from witnesses of chance meetings and from fellow soldiers, from those who were shoulder to shoulder with her sons in those tragic events that unfolded on the eve of the new 1995, in the city of Grozny. One of them was Igor Ivoshin and Sergey Kuptsov from Togliatti. And that's what she managed to find out. At the entrance to Grozny, the brothers were separated. Sasha with an infantry platoon went to capture the railway station. And Alyosha, in his BMP, as part of an assault group, was moving towards the presidential palace. Thrown by the headquarters generals into an unprepared attack, 18-year-olds fell into a real hell. Without maps, reconnaissance, combat training, medical escort, heavy tanks and infantry fighting vehicles entered the streets and tight quarters of a completely unfamiliar city. And the tanks in the city were completely deprived of the possibility of maneuver. they beat me point-blank - from basements, entrances, from okondoms. Deadly fire seemed to "spew" from everywhere. The scorching heat began: tanks were burning, all around were explosions, cries for help, groans of the wounded, blood and more and more shooting at the "targets" set up in the streets. , in which Alyosha was, was hit and caught fire. One of the crew members died. Alexei himself, who was wounded in the thigh, was pulled out of the burning car by his fellow countryman Igor Ivoshin. After giving Alexei an injection and bandaging the wounded, he carried him to the fountain, and was immediately deafened by the explosion. He woke up already among the militants, as he was captured. He was freed from captivity only after 9 months. And at that time Alexander was fighting at the railway station. The guys stayed for a day surrounded by "Dudayevites". When the militants started throwing grenades and mines on their vehicles, Captain D. Arkhangelov made a decision: on the three remaining "on the move" BMPs to break through the ring circle and withdraw the remaining soldiers, among whom there were many wounded. Standing under the cover of the building's wall, with their backs pressed against each other, Sergeant Alexander Mikryakov and Captain Archangels covered the loading of the wounded on the armor with their fire. One of the cars was knocked out when the circle was broken. A group of soldiers and officers was ambushed, and this is a new blood and the death of comrades. According to the testimony of those who were in those three cars, Sasha was not among them. Someone said that they had told him over the radio about Alexei's injury. Of course, Sasha could not leave his brother. He sent cars with the wounded and went to look for his brother. Most likely, he ran into an ambush and knocked out point-blank. According to Iraida Alekseevna's assumptions, Aleksey, who remained lying by the fountain, was most likely killed by the militants, and possibly also blown up. Because there is such information that the militants dragged the wounded soldiers in a heap and threw a grenade at them. Apparently this was the case, because there were many bullet and shrapnel wounds on Aleksey's body. And Sasha's body was shot through with bullets. It was seen that the entire clip was fired at close range. His military ID was also punched. Now this document is kept in the museum of the machine-building technical school. And Iraida Alekseevna's mother keeps two orders of Courage, with which Sasha and Alyosha were posthumously rewarded, their letters, tender letters that the brothers sent home, and her memory for two inseparable bloodsheds.

Letter-note from the Mikryakov brothers dated July 9, 1995 (transmitted by one of the Togliatti residents who demobilized on that day):

“Mom, come on July 9 for us. Everything is fine with us, we are not sick. We were transferred to the 90th division in the 81st regiment in the 1st battalion, 1st company. Come by 10 o'clock, on that day the new conscription will be sworn in. You can come a little bit later, as we are taking this oath. Come see and pick us up. "

Despite the fact that in its time the Chechen war did not leave the TV screens and newspaper pages, the hostilities of the Russian army, internal troops and special forces in the Caucasus still remain largely unknown, a "secret" war. Its main operations still await serious research, its analytical history has not been written to this day. By the end of 1994, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who thought he was the president of a large Islamic state in the North Caucasus, managed to create his own sufficiently combat-ready armed forces of up to 40 thousand people, some of whose personnel underwent not only military training in specially created camps, but also fought in Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia. Among the Chechen soldiers were a large number of mercenaries and recidivists hiding from Russian justice. The republic was well armed, only after the Soviet Army more than 40 thousand units of small arms were captured, in addition, there were many foreign-made weapons, hunting rifles. In Grozny, the production of the Boriz (Wolf) machine gun was launched. There were 130 armored vehicles, about 200 artillery systems, including 18 Grad installations. These weapons could stop an army of up to 60 thousand people. Its formation was located not only in Grozny, but also in Shali, Argun, Gudermes, Petropavlovsk. In other settlements, there were local armed detachments, which were created under the guise of self-defense detachments. Thus, the Chechen Republic was ready for resistance and a long guerrilla war, which the Russian command did not take into account in their plans. Therefore, first-hand information, unique photographs and schemes of combat clashes are invaluable material for history.

From a letter from the captain of the 81st regiment D. Arkhangelov:

“Dear Iraida Alekseevna! The former deputy commander of the first company, Captain Arkhangels, is writing to you. I personally knew and served with Aleksey and Alexander. I would like to say a lot of warm words of gratitude to you for your sons.

I was in a battle at the railway station in Grozny with Sasha on December 31, January 1 and 2, when we broke through the encirclement. You can be proud of your sons. They did not hide behind other people's backs. Yalichno and Sasha bandaged the wounded in the station building.

The last two of us left the building, covering the landing of the soldiers, including the wounded, on the BMP. That was the last minutes when I saw Sasha. We were standing under the wall of the station, back to back. I covered his back, he - mine. When all the wounded were seated, Sasha ran to sit on one BMP, and I on another. Then we went for a breakthrough ...

He was an excellent man. There would be more of them on earth! Of course, nothing can calm your aching mother's heart. I understand all your pain. Deeply condolences to the loss, loss of sons. Thank you for the wonderful guys and courageous soldiers. May the earth rest in peace!

Sorry if something is wrong. With great respect to you, Captain D. Arkhangelov, 81st Regiment. "

Russian Federation

City Hall of Togliatti

Department of Education

07/08/2002 No. 1739

Committee Chairman

Togliatti city

public organization,

whose children died in

Chechen Republic

R.N.Shalyganova

Dear Raisa Nikolaevna!

The answer to your appeal about assigning the name of brothers Alexander and Alexei Mikryakov to the vocational lyceum №36, who died in the Chechen Republic, the Department of Education of the city administration of Togliatti informs the following.

The joint work of the teaching staff of this lyceum and the Togliatti city public organization of parents whose children died in the Chechen Republic on the patriotic education of young people deserves attention.

Taking into account the opinion of the administration of the vocational lyceum No. 36 and the consent of I.A. Mikryakova, the mother of the Mikryakov brothers, the Department of Education of the Togliatti City Hall supports the initiative to assign the name of Alexander and Alexei Mikryakov to the Togliatti vocational lyceum No. 36.

Deputy Director S.A. Punchenko

Samara Region

81 motorized rifle regiment of military unit 465349

The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment - the successor to the 210th Rifle Regiment - was formed in 1939. He began his combat biography at Khalkin-Gol. During the Great Patriotic War he took part in the defense of Moscow, liberated Oryol, Lvov, and the cities of Eastern Europe. During the existence of the unit, 30 servicemen of the regiment became Heroes of the Soviet Union and 2 Heroes of Russia. On the battle banner of part 5 orders - two Red Banners, orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bohdan Khmelnitsky. After World War II, the regiment was deployed on the territory of the GDR (GSVG), and in 1993, in connection with the elimination of the GSVG, was withdrawn to the territory of the Russian Federation and deployed in the village of Roshchinsky in the Volzhsky district of the Samara region, becoming part of the Second Guards Tank Army.

From December 14, 1994 to April 9, 1995, the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment took part in the fulfillment of the assignment of the Government of the Russian Federation to disarm illegal armed formations on the territory of the Chechen Republic. The personnel of the regiment took part in the military operation to capture the city of Grozny from December 31, 1994. until January 20, 1995

Materials from the press, created according to the stories of Alexander Yaroslavtsev, commander of the 81st regiment, about the military operations of the regiment in Grozny from 31.12.1994 to 1.01.1995.

... Events unfolded like this. On December 8, the regiment was alerted and began to urgently recruit in order to complete the recruitment by December 15, and then begin combat training. Of the 1,300 people, about half came from "training". The regiment arrived in Mozdok on December 20. On December 21, Colonel A. Yaroslavtsev began to withdraw battalions for firing. By December 24, everyone had shot. It turned out that some of the guns on the armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles were faulty. From Mozdok the regiment moved to the area of ​​Grozny airport. Here the regimental commander ordered one more time to shoot five or six shells each and not to unload the cannons, only to put them on safety. “We thought that they would not send us further than the airport,” says the regiment commander. “We thought that we would stand behind the airport on the defensive… But things turned out quite differently.”

On December 30, 1994, the regiment was given the task of entering Grozny on the morning of December 31. The day before, the regiment commander, Colonel A. Yaroslavtsev, was asked how much time he needed to prepare the regiment for the assault. He replied that 10-15 days were needed. They did not give time for preparation. They did not give a written order for the assault (General Kvashnin gave a verbal order ...).

The regiment was supposed to go to Grozny in the flank of the federal forces. They promised to provide infantry, but they did not. With intelligence it was very bad. However, with the tactics of the "Dudayevites", which they then used, no intelligence would have helped.

At dawn on December 31, the regiment began moving from the airport towards Grozny. As 81 SMRs approached Mayakovskogov Street, tanks appeared ahead. It turned out that these were the "Rokhlins". They agreed on interaction - they went to the left of Pervomaiskaya, so as not to interfere with the advancement of the regiment. The real battle began on Ordzhonikidze Square, but not immediately. The first battalion under the command of Semyon Burlakov passed without any problems to the station past the presidential palace. it turned out later - he fell into a "mousetrap".

From the story of A. Yaroslavtsev: “Now, I think, I will pump it up closer and pull out the second battalion on myself. Well, and then I will surround the palace. They were already beating thoroughly ... It was difficult to find out where they were, where they were hitting from? until they burn you ... "

At the corner of Pobeda and Ordzhonikidze avenues, the regimental commander, Colonel A. Yaroslavtsev, was seriously wounded ... Next to him was the radio operator and the chief of communications. He asked the radio operator to bandage him, he was scared, but ... they provided first aid to the commander. Yaroslavtsev said to the soldier: "Come on, tell me that I am wounded ... Command Burlakov."

Burlakov will again have to transfer command to Lieutenant Colonel Aydarov - the future commander of 81 MRPs. First, Semyon Burlakov is wounded in the leg at the station, and then, when the wounded are evacuated to the BMP, the Chechens will shoot everyone, but Burlakov will be taken for the deceased ...

On the morning of January 1, 1995, regiment commander Alexander Yaroslavtsev was transferred to the Vladikavkaz hospital ...

Captain Arkhangelov's group. Little is known about this group, it is only clear that they covered the evacuation from the station until the last, after which they went to the freight station, where they found 3 surviving BMPs of 81 MSRs. Of the three cars, only one got out to its own. And one of the knocked out could be BMP # 61822.

Assigning the name of the brothers Alexander and Alexei Mikryakov to the mechanical engineering school

February 18, 2004. Mechanical engineering college. Time: 14-00. The assembly hall is full to overflowing. Chairs are placed along the aisles. In the gallery - there are graduate students. There are many of them. They also came to the event, but there were not enough seats in the hall for them. Photo flashes. Carnations. Tears of mothers whose children died in hot spots. On the stage are portraits of Alexander and Alexei Mikryakov. The ceremonial part of the event on the occasion of conferring the title of the Mikryakov brothers to the educational institution in which Sasha studied is coming. The twins Alexander and Alexei died in the New Year's assault on the city of Grozny in the first Chechen company. They have always been together: both in life and in death. Only they were buried at different times: on February 18 they buried Sasha, on February 23 - Alyosha. Exactly 9 years have passed. The memory of the brothers-soldiers was immortalized by their "alma mater".

Friends acted: some went to school with their brothers, others - in a technical school. The soul of the company, a good athlete, a person with a zest - such brothers remained in the memory of friends. The soldiers said that on December 14, 1994, the 81st regiment, where the brothers served, was sent to Chechnya. 1,300 soldiers were traveling in the echelon. All of them took part in the storming of Grozny. On the very first day of the battle, more than 100 people were killed. The defending militants were 7 times more than the Russian soldiers. This is contrary to any rule of military science. There were a lot of wounded, killed and missing. The most difficult thing was to retrieve the bodies of Russian soldiers with traces of torture from the basements. But ... there is such a profession - to defend the Motherland ...

In the opinion of the military speakers, history will judge who became a hero in the Chechen company, and who - quite the opposite. The Russian state has always had two pillars - the army and the navy. Dmitry Chugunkov, the scout platoon commander, fellow soldier of the Mikryakov brothers, was laconic. He said that the guys were at the most dangerous section of the New Year's assault on Grozny. Whatever trials the current recruits face, they must be worthy of the memory of their fellow countrymen.

Then they talked about the importance of patriotic education and the basic educational institution of AVTOVAZ. The brothers' mother, Iraida Alekseevna, cried, giving Sasha's military ID to the museum of the educational institution for eternal safekeeping. I read a poem of my own composition.

Time carries away from us the events of 13 years ago. New Year's assault on Grozny. The soldiers who found themselves at the forefront of the fighting were labeled almost "lambs thrown to the slaughter." The names of the units that suffered the greatest losses also became common nouns: the 131st brigade, the 81st regiment ...

Meanwhile, in those first days of the Grozny operation, the servicemen displayed unparalleled courage. The units that entered that “formidable” in every sense of the city, stood to the end, to death.

Chechen "abscess"

On November 30, 1994, the President signed a decree "On measures to restore constitutional legality and law and order on the territory of the Chechen Republic." It was decided to cut the Chechen "abscess" by force.

To carry out the operation, a Joint Grouping of Forces was created, including the forces and means of various ministries and departments.

Igor Stankevich (January 1995, Grozny)

In early December 1994, the regiment commander, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, and I arrived on official business at the headquarters of our 2nd Army, recalls Igor Stankevich, the former deputy commander of the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, who was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for the January battles in Grozny. - In the midst of the meeting at the chief of staff of the association, General Krotov, the bell rang. Some of the high-ranking military leaders called. “That's right,” the general replied to the subscriber to one of his questions, “I have the commander and deputy of the 81st regiment. I will bring the information to them right away. "

After the general hung up, he asked everyone present to come out. In a tete-a-tete situation, it was announced to us that the regiment would soon receive a combat mission, that "we need to prepare." Application region - North Caucasus. The rest will be later.

OUR REFERENCE. The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment - the successor to the 210th Rifle Regiment - was formed in 1939. He began his combat biography at Khalkhin Gol. During the Great Patriotic War he took part in the defense of Moscow, liberated Oryol, Lvov, and the cities of Eastern Europe from the Nazis. 30 servicemen of the regiment became Heroes of the Soviet Union. On the military banner of the unit there are five orders - two of the Red Banner, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky. After the war, he was stationed on the territory of the GDR. Currently it is part of the 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Division of the Volga-Ural Military District, is part of the constant combat readiness.

In mid-1993, the 81st regiment, which was then part of the 90th Panzer Division of the 2nd Army, was withdrawn from the Western Group of Forces and deployed 40 kilometers from Samara, in the village of Chernorechye. Both the regiment, the division, and the army became part of the Volga Military District. Not a single soldier remained in the regiment at the time of arrival at the new deployment site. Many officers and warrant officers were also "confused" with the conclusion. Most of the issues, primarily organizational, had to be resolved by the remaining small backbone of the regiment.
By the fall of 1994, the 81st was staffed with the so-called mobile forces. Then the Armed Forces just started to create such units. It was assumed that, on the first command, they could be deployed to any region of the country to solve various tasks - from eliminating the consequences of natural disasters to repelling attacks by bandit formations (the word "terrorism" was not yet in use at that time).

With the granting of a special status to the regiment, combat training noticeably intensified in it, and manning issues began to be dealt with more effectively. The officers began to be allocated the first apartments in a residential town built with funds from the Federal Republic of Germany in Chernorechye. In the same 94th year, the regiment successfully passed the check of the Ministry of Defense. The 81st, for the first time after all the troubles associated with the withdrawal and settling in a new place, showed that he had become a full-fledged part of the Russian army, combat-ready, capable of performing any tasks.
True, this inspection did the regiment a disservice.

A number of servicemen, who received good training, were eager to serve in hot spots, in the same peacekeeping forces. Trained specialists were taken there with pleasure. As a result, about two hundred servicemen were transferred from the regiment in a short period. Moreover, the most demanded specialties are driver mechanics, gunners, snipers.

In 1981, it was believed that this was not a problem, the vacancies that had formed could be filled, trained new people ...

Echelons to the Caucasus

The 81st motorized rifle regiment of the PrivO, which was to go to war in December 94th, was quickly staffed with servicemen from 48 parts of the district. For all fees - a week. I also had to select commanders. A third of the officers of the primary level were "biennial", had only military departments of civilian universities.

On December 14, military equipment began to be loaded onto the trains (in total, the regiment was transferred to Mozdok in five echelons). The mood of the people was not depressed. On the contrary, many were sure that it would be a short business trip, that they would be able to return by the New Year holidays.

Due to the lack of time, classes with the personnel were organized even on the train, along the route of the echelons. The material part, the order of aiming, the combat manual, especially the sections concerning military operations in the city, were studied.

Another week was given to the regiment for preparation already upon arrival in Mozdok. Shooting, alignment of units. And now, years later, it is clear: the regiment was not ready for combat. There was a shortage of personnel, primarily in motorized rifle units.

About two hundred paratroopers were assigned to the regiment as a replenishment. The same young, unfired soldiers. I had to learn to fight under enemy fire ...

The enemy was not conditional ...

At the time of the start of the storming of Grozny, about 14,000 federal troops were concentrated around the Chechen capital. The city, blocked from the north-east, north, north-west and west, was ready to enter 164 tanks, 305 infantry fighting vehicles, 250 armored personnel carriers, 114 BMD. Fire support was provided by 208 guns and mortars.
In military equipment, the feds had an obvious superiority. However, in the personnel, the advantage was not even up to two to one. The classical theory of battle requires an advantage of the attackers about three times, and taking into account the urban development, this figure should be even higher.

And what did Dudayev have at that time? According to the data that later fell into the hands of our security officials, the number of the Chechen army reached 15 thousand people in regular troops and up to 30-40 thousand armed militias. Regular army units of Chechnya consisted of a tank regiment, a mountain rifle brigade, an artillery regiment, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, a Muslim fighter regiment, and 2 training aviation regiments. The republic had its own special-purpose units - the National Guard (about 2,000 people), a separate special-purpose regiment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a regiment of the border and customs service of the State Security Department, as well as personal security detachments of the leaders of Chechnya.

Serious forces were represented by the formations of the so-called "confederation of the peoples of the Caucasus" - battalions "Borz" and "Warriors of the Righteous Caliphs" Aslan Maskhadov, battalion "Abd-al-Kader" Shamil Basayev, detachment "Party of Islamic Renaissance" Salman Raduev, detachment "Islamic Community" Khattaba. In addition, more than five thousand mercenaries from 14 states fought on the side of Dudaev.

According to documents seized in 1995, Dudayev, in addition to regular forces, had at least 300 thousand (!) Reservists. The law “On Defense of the Chechen Republic” adopted in the region of December 24, 1991 introduced compulsory military service for all male citizens from 19 to 26 years old. Naturally, the service took place in Chechnya, in local paramilitaries. A system of regular collection of storerooms was in place: during the period 1991-1994, six full-fledged mobilization exercises were held. Parts of the Chechen army were even replenished with deserters: on the basis of Dudaev's decree No. 29 of February 17, 1992, Chechen military personnel who voluntarily left military units on the territory of the USSR and expressed a desire to serve in the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic, were rehabilitated, and the criminal cases initiated against them were terminated.

Another Dudayev decree No. 2 of November 8, 1991 established a Ministry of War in Chechnya. All military formations on the territory of the republic passed to him, along with equipment and weapons. According to operational data, at the end of 1994, Chechnya had 2 launchers of operational-tactical missiles, 111 L-39 and 149 L-29 aircraft (training, but converted into light attack aircraft), 5 MiG-17 and MiG-15 fighters, 6 aircraft An-2, 243 aircraft missiles, 7 thousand air shells.

The Chechen "ground forces" were armed with 42 T-72 and T-62 tanks, 34 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 armored personnel carriers and armored personnel carriers, 18 Grad MLRS and more than 1000 rounds for them, 139 artillery systems, including 30 122-mm D-ZO howitzers and 24 thousand shells for them. The Dudayev formations had 5 stationary and 88 portable air defense systems, as well as 25 anti-aircraft installations of various types, 590 anti-tank weapons, almost 50 thousand small arms and 150 thousand grenades.

For the defense of Grozny, the Chechen command created three defensive lines. The inner one had a radius of 1 to 1.5 km around the presidential palace. The defense here was based on the created solid nodes of resistance around the palace using capital stone structures. The lower and upper floors of the buildings were adapted for firing small arms and anti-tank weapons. Along the Ordzhonikidze, Pobeda and Pervomayskaya avenues, prepared positions were created for firing artillery and direct-fire tanks.

The middle line was located at a distance of up to 1 km from the boundaries of the inner line in the northwestern part of the city and up to 5 km in its southwestern and southeastern parts. The basis of this line was the strongholds at the beginning of the Staropromyslovskoe highway, resistance nodes at the bridges over the Sunzha River, in the Minutka microdistrict, on Saykhanov Street. Oil fields, oil refineries named after Lenin and Sheripov, as well as a chemical plant were prepared for the explosion or arson.

The outer border passed mainly along the outskirts of the city and consisted of strong points on the highways Grozny-Mozdok, Dolinsky-Katayama-Tashkala, strong points Neftyanka, Khankala and Staraya Sunzha - in the east and Chernorechye - in the south of the city.

"Virtual" topography

The troops practically did not have clear data about the enemy at the beginning of the assault, and there was also no reliable intelligence and intelligence information. There were no maps either. The deputy regiment commander had a hand-drawn diagram of where he was supposed to go approximately with his units. Later, the map still appeared: it was removed from our killed captain-tanker.

Anatoly Kvashnin set the tasks for the commander of the groupings for actions in the city a few days before the assault. The main task fell to the 81st regiment, which was supposed to operate as part of the "North" grouping under the command of Major General Konstantin Pulikovsky.

The regiment, which partly concentrated on the southern slopes of the Tersk ridge, and partly (with one battalion) was located in the area of ​​a dairy farm 5 km north of Alkhan-Churtsky, two tasks were determined: the nearest and the next. The nearest one was supposed to occupy the airport "Severny" by 10 o'clock in the morning on December 31. The next one - by 16 o'clock to seize the intersection of Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets.

The outbreak of hostilities on December 31 was supposed to be a factor of surprise. That is why the convoys of federals were able to reach the city center almost without hindrance, and not, as it was stated later, fell into a prepared trap of bandits who intended to drag our convoys into a kind of "fire bag". Only by the end of the day the militants were able to organize resistance. The Dudayevites concentrated all their efforts on the units that found themselves in the center of the city. It was these troops that suffered the greatest losses ...

Surroundings, breakthrough ...

The chronology of the last day of 1994 has been restored today, not only by the hour - by the minute. At 7 o'clock in the morning on December 31, the advance detachment of the 81st regiment, which included a reconnaissance company, attacked the Severny airport. With the advance detachment was the chief of staff of the 81st Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Burlakov. By 9 o'clock, his group completed the immediate task, seizing the airport and clearing two bridges across the Neftyanka River on the way to the city.
Following the advance detachment, the column was followed by the 1st MSB of Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Perepelkin. To the west, through the Rodina state farm, was the 2nd mdb. Combat vehicles moved in columns: tanks were in front, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were on the flanks.

From the airport "Severny" the 81st SME went to Khmelnitsky Street. At 09.17 the motorized rifle met here the first enemy forces: an ambush from a detachment of Dudayevites with a tank, an armored personnel carrier and two Urals attached. The reconnaissance company entered the battle. The militants managed to knock out a tank and one of the "Urals", however, the scouts also lost one BMP and several people wounded. The regimental commander, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, decided to delay reconnaissance to the main forces and temporarily stop the advance.

Then the advance resumed. By 11.00 the columns of the 81st regiment reached Mayakovsky Street. Ahead of the previously approved schedule was almost 5 hours. Yaroslavtsev reported this to the command and received an order to move to blockade the presidential palace, to the city center. The regiment began its advance towards Dzerzhinsky Square. By 12.30, the forward units were already near the station, and the group's headquarters confirmed the earlier order given to surround the presidential palace. At 13.00 the main forces of the regiment passed the station and along Ordzhonikidze Street rushed to the complex of government buildings.

But the Dudayevites gradually came to their senses. From their side, the most powerful fire resistance began. A fierce battle broke out at the palace. Here, the leading aircraft controller, Captain Kiryanov, covered the regiment commander with himself. Colonel Yaroslavtsev was wounded and transferred command to the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov.

At 16.10 the chief of staff received confirmation of the task to blockade the palace. But the motorized riflemen faced fierce fire resistance. Dudayev's grenade launchers, dispersed among the buildings in the city center, began to shoot our combat vehicles literally point-blank. The regiment's columns began to gradually fall apart into separate groups. By 17 o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov was also wounded, about a hundred soldiers and sergeants were already out of action. The intensity of the fire effect can be judged by at least one fact: only from 18.30 to 18.40, that is, in just 10 minutes, the militants knocked out 3 tanks of the 81st regiment at once!

The units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade that broke into the city were surrounded. The Dudayevites unleashed a storm of fire on them. Soldiers under the cover of infantry fighting vehicles took up a perimeter defense. The bulk of the personnel and equipment were concentrated in the forecourt, in the station itself and in the surrounding buildings. The 1st mdb of the 81st regiment was located in the station building, the 2nd mdb - in the goods yard of the station.

The 1st MSR under the command of Captain Bezrutsky occupied the building of the road administration. The infantry fighting vehicles of the company were displayed in the courtyard, at the gates and on the exit tracks to the railroad bed. At dusk, the enemy's onslaught intensified. Losses have increased, especially in the technique, which was very tight, sometimes literally caterpillar to caterpillar. The initiative passed into the hands of the enemy.

The relative calm came only at 23.00. At night, the skirmishes continued, and in the morning the commander of the 131st Omsb Brigade, Colonel Savin, requested permission from the higher command to leave the station. A breakthrough was approved to the Lenin Park, where the units of the 693rd SME of the "West" group defended. At 15:00 on January 1, the remnants of the units of the 131st Omsb Brigade and the 81st SME began to break through from the railway station and the freight station. Under the incessant fire of the Dudayevites, the columns suffered losses and gradually disintegrated.

28 people from the 1st MRR of the 81st MRR broke through in three infantry fighting vehicles along the railway. Having reached the House of Press, the motorized riflemen got lost in the dark unfamiliar streets and were ambushed by the militants. As a result, two BMPs were hit. Only one car, under the command of Captain Arkhangelov, made it to the location of the federal troops.

... As of today, it is known that from the units of the 81st SMR and the 131st Omsb, which were at the forefront of the main attack, only a small part of the people left the encirclement. The personnel lost commanders, equipment (in just one day, December 31, the 81st regiment lost 13 tanks and 7 infantry fighting vehicles), scattered around the city and went out to their own on their own - one by one or in small groups. According to official data as of January 10, 1995, the 81st MRP lost 63 servicemen in Grozny killed, 75 missing, 135 wounded ...

Let the mother of the enemy cry first

The consolidated detachment of the 81st SMR, formed from the units that remained outside the "station" ring, managed to gain a foothold at the intersection of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets. The command of the detachment was assumed by the deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Stankevich. For two days his group, being in a semi-encirclement, remaining virtually on a bare and shot through place - the intersection of two main city streets, held this strategically important area.

Stankevich competently placed 9 infantry fighting vehicles, organized the "binding" of the fire of the attached mortar gunners in the most threatening areas. When organizing the defense, non-standard measures were taken. Steel gates were removed from the surrounding Grozny courtyards and they covered the combat vehicles on the sides and in front. The "know-how" turned out to be successful: the RPG shot "slipped" over the sheet of metal without touching the car. After the bloody New Year's Eve, people gradually began to come to their senses. The detachment gradually pulled together the fighters who had escaped from the encirclement. We set ourselves up as best we could, organized rest during the break between enemy attacks.

Neither December 31, nor January 1, nor in the following days, the 81st regiment left the city, remained on the front line and continued to participate in hostilities. The battles in Grozny were fought by Igor Stankevich's detachment, as well as the 4th motorized rifle company of Captain Yarovitsky, which was in the hospital complex.

For the first two days, there were virtually no other organized forces in the center of Grozny. There was another small group from General Rokhlin's headquarters, it kept close. If the bandits knew this for sure, they would certainly have abandoned all their reserves to crush a handful of daredevils. The bandits would have destroyed them in the same way as those units that ended up in a ring of fire near the station.

But the detachment was not going to surrender to the mercy of the enemy. The surrounding courtyards were promptly cleared, and possible positions of enemy grenade launchers were eliminated. Here, the motorized riflemen began to discover the cruel truth about what the city they entered was in reality.

So, in the brick fences and walls of most houses at the Khmelnitsky-Mayakovsky intersection, equipped openings were found, near which shots for grenade launchers were stored. In the courtyards there were carefully prepared bottles with Molotov cocktails - an incendiary mixture. And in one of the garages, dozens of empty boxes from grenade launchers were found: here, apparently, was one of the supply points.

Already on January 3, checkpoints began to be set up along Lermontov Street in cooperation with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The posts allowed at least to slip along Lermontov Street, otherwise everything would be shot on the move.
The regiment survived. He survived in spite of those who tried to destroy him in Grozny. He rose from the ashes in spite of those who at that time "buried" in absentia both him and other Russian units that found themselves in the epicenter of the Grozny battles.
For almost the whole of January, the 81st Regiment, “shot” and “torn apart” by evil tongues, took part in the battles for Grozny. And again, very few people know about this. It was the tankers of the 81st who provided support to the marines storming Dudaev's palace. It was the infantry of the regiment that seized the Krasny Molot plant, which the Dudayevites turned from a peaceful Soviet enterprise into a full-scale weapons production. The engineering units of the unit cleared the bridge across the Sunzha bridge, through which fresh forces were then drawn into the city. Divisions of the 81st took part in the storming of the Press House, which was one of the strongholds of the separatist resistance.

I pay tribute to all comrades in arms with whom we fought together in those days, - says Igor Stankevich. - These are the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were led by General Vorobyov, who later died heroically in Grozny. These are detachments of internal troops and special forces groups of the GRU. These are the employees of the special services, about whose work, probably, even today it is impossible to say much. Courageous, heroic people, brilliant professionals that any country would be proud of. And I am proud to have been with them on that front line.

Become heroes

The author of these lines in the first days of January had a chance to visit the belligerent Grozny, just in the location of the 81st regiment, which had just relocated to the territory of the cannery, having fortified a checkpoint at the Khmelnitsky-Mayakovsky intersection. The journalistic notebook is dotted with entries: the names of people who heroically showed themselves in battles, numerous examples of courage and courage. For these soldiers and officers, it was just a job. None of them dared to call what happened on December 31 a tragedy.
Here are just some of the facts:
“... Senior Warrant Officer Grigory Kirichenko. Under enemy fire, he made several trips to the epicenter of the battle, taking out the wounded soldiers in the compartments of the BMP, behind the levers of which he was sitting, to the evacuation center. " (Later awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation).

"... Senior Lieutenant Seldar Mamedorazov (" non-combat "chief of the club) broke through on one of the infantry fighting vehicles into the battle area, took out several wounded soldiers."

“... Major of the medical service Oleg Pastushenko. In battle, he helped the personnel. "
“... The commander of a tank battalion, Major Yuri Zakhryapin. He acted heroically in battle, personally hitting the enemy's firing points. "

And the names of the soldiers, officers, meetings with whom then, on that Grozny front line, remained at least a record in a field notebook. As a maximum - a memory for life. Major of the medical service Vladimir Sinkevich, Sergey Danilov, Viktor Minaev, Vyacheslav Antonov, captains Alexander Fomin, Vladimir Nazarenko, Igor Voznyuk, Lieutenant Vitaly Afanasyev, warrant officers of the medical service Lydia Andryukhina, Lyudmila Spivakova, junior sergeant Alexander Litvinov, privates Alik Salikhanov, privates Alik Salikhanov Vladimirov, Andrey Savchenko ... Where are you now, those young front-line soldiers of the 90s, soldiers and officers of the heroic, glorified regiment? Warriors scorched in battles, but not burned to ashes, but surviving all deaths in this hellish flame in spite of the 81st Guards? ..

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December 31, 1994 - January 1, 1995. "New Year's assault" of Grozny. The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (GvMSP) from Samara. This year is 20 years old. Dedicated to the heroes .....

“Yes, our regiment suffered tangible losses in Grozny: both in personnel and in equipment,” says Igor Stankevich, a former deputy commander of the 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, awarded for courage and heroism in those January battles in Grozny, the rank Hero of the Russian Federation. "But we were at the forefront of the main attack, and the first, as you know, is always the most difficult. In all battles, those who are put in the vanguard risk more than others. I responsibly declare: our regiment has fulfilled its task. And I will say more: the general concept of the entire operation in Grozny was realized, among other things, thanks to the courage and courage of our soldiers and officers, who were the first to enter the battle and heroically fought all these difficult January days. "(Igor Stankevich, former deputy commander of the 81st Guards motorized rifle regiment, Hero of the Russian Federation)

The last photo shows CHECHNYA, 1995. SOLDIERS OF THE 81st REGION IN THE AREA OF STANETS CHERVLENAYA.

The 81st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment was formed in 1939 in the Perm Region. The baptism of fire for his personnel was participation in the battles on the Khalkhin-Gol River from June 7 to September 15, 1939. During World War II, the regiment took part in the battles near Moscow, took part in the Oryol, Kamenets-Podolsk, Lvov, Vistula-Oder, Berlin and Prague operations, ending hostilities in Czechoslovakia. During the war, 29 of its servicemen were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

For merits in battles during the Great Patriotic War, the regiment was awarded awards and distinctions: the Order of Suvorov 2 nd degree, for the mastery of the city of Petrakow (Poland) was declared gratitude and the honorary name "Petrakuvsky" was given, for the mastery of the cities of Ratibor and Biskau was awarded the Order of Kutuzov 2 degree, for the mastery of the cities of Cottbus, Luben, Ussen, Beshtlin, Lückenwalde was awarded the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky of the 2nd degree, for the mastery of the capital of Germany, the city of Berlin, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

In the post-war period, the regiment was stationed in the German Democratic Republic in the city of Karlhorst. In 1993, the regiment was withdrawn from Germany to the territory of the Russian Federation and deployed in the village of Roshchinsky in the Samara region.

By the fall of 1994, the 81st was staffed with the so-called mobile forces. Then the Armed Forces just started to create such units. It was assumed that, at the first command, they could be deployed to any region of the country to solve various tasks - from eliminating the consequences of natural disasters to repelling attacks by bandit formations.
With the granting of a special status to the regiment, combat training noticeably intensified in it, and manning issues began to be dealt with more effectively. The officers began to be allocated the first apartments in a residential town built with funds from the Federal Republic of Germany in Chernorechye. In the same 94th year, the regiment successfully passed the check of the Ministry of Defense. The 81st, for the first time after all the troubles associated with the withdrawal and settling in a new place, showed that he had become a full-fledged part of the Russian army, combat-ready, capable of performing any tasks.

A number of well-trained servicemen were eager to serve in hot spots, in the same peacekeeping forces. As a result, about two hundred servicemen were transferred from the regiment in a short period. Moreover, the most demanded specialties are driver mechanics, gunners, snipers.
In 1981, it was believed that this was not a problem, the vacancies that had formed could be filled, trained new people ...

In early December 1994, the regiment commander and I, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, and I arrived on official business at the headquarters of our 2nd Army, - Igor Stankevich recalls. Some of the high-ranking military leaders called. “That's right,” the general replied to the subscriber to one of his questions, “I have the commander and deputy of the 81st regiment. I will bring the information to them right away. "
After the general hung up, he asked everyone present to come out. In a tete-a-tete situation, it was announced to us that the regiment would soon receive a combat mission, that "we need to prepare." Application region - North Caucasus. The rest will be later.

In the photo Igor Stankevich (January 1995, Grozny)

According to the then Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev, the meeting of the Russian Security Council on November 29, 1994 was decisive. The speaker was the late Minister for Nationalities Nikolai Yegorov. According to Grachev, “he said that 70 percent of Chechens are just waiting for the Russian army to join them. And with joy, as he put it, they will sprinkle flour on our soldiers' road. The remaining 30 percent of Chechens, according to Yegorov, were neutral. And at five o'clock in the morning on December 11, our troops marched into Chechnya in three large groups.

Someone at the top lured flour with gunpowder ...

The 81st motorized rifle regiment of the PrivO, which was to go to war in December 94th, was quickly staffed with servicemen from 48 parts of the district. For all fees - a week. I also had to select commanders. A third of the officers of the primary level were "biennial", had only military departments of civilian universities.

On December 14, 1994, the regiment was alerted and began transferring to Mozdok. The transfer was carried out in six echelons. By December 20, the regiment was fully concentrated on the training ground in Mozdok. In the regiment, by the time they arrived at the Mozdok station, 49 of 54 platoon commanders had just graduated from civilian universities. Most of them did not fire a single shot from a machine gun, let alone fire a regular round from their tanks. In total, 31 tanks (of which 7 are faulty), 96 infantry fighting vehicles (of the bottom 27 faulty), 24 armored personnel carriers (5 faulty), 38 self-propelled guns (12 faulty), 159 units of automotive equipment (28 faulty) arrived in Mozdok. In addition, the tanks lacked elements of reactive armor. More than half of the batteries were discharged (the cars were started from the tug). The faulty communications equipment were literally piled up.

The task of the commander of the forces of the groupings for actions in the city and the preparation of assault detachments was set on December 25. The regiment, which partly concentrated on the southern slopes of the Tersk ridge, and partly (with one battalion) was located in the area of ​​a dairy farm 5 km north of Alkhan-Churtsky, two tasks were determined: the nearest and the next. The nearest one was supposed to occupy the airport "Severny" by 10 o'clock in the morning on December 31. The next one - by 16 o'clock to seize the intersection of Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets. Personally, the commander of the United Group, Lieutenant General A. Kvashnin, with the commander, chief of staff and battalion commanders of the 81st Guards. The small motorized rifle regiment operating in the main direction, classes were held on organizing interaction during the performance of a combat mission in Grozny.

On December 27, the regiment began its advance and was located on the northern outskirts of Grozny, not far from the airport ...

From the investigation of journalist Vladimir Voronov ("Top Secret", No.12 / 247 for 2009):

“But the parents are firmly convinced that no one was engaged in combat training in the regiment. Because from March to December 1994, Andrei held a machine gun in his hands only three times: on the oath and twice more at the shooting range - the fathers-commanders were generous by as much as nine rounds And in the sergeant's training, in fact, they did not teach him anything, although they gave him stripes. The son honestly told his parents what he was doing in Chernorechye: from morning till night he built dachas and garages for gentlemen officers, nothing else. some kind of dacha, general or colonel: the planks were polished to a mirror shine with a plane, one was adjusted to the next sweat. After that I met with Andrey's colleagues in Chernorech: they confirm that it was, all the "combat" training - the construction of summer cottages and maintenance A week before they were sent to Chechnya, the radio was turned off in the barracks, the televisions were taken out. the parents saw Andrei just before the regiment was sent to Chechnya. Everyone already knew that they were going to war, but they drove away gloomy thoughts.

By the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the once elite regiment was a pitiful sight. Almost none of the regular officers who served in Germany remained, and 66 officers of the regiment were not regular officers at all - "two-year students" from civilian universities with military departments! For example, Lieutenant Valery Gubarev, commander of a motorized rifle platoon, a graduate of the Novosibirsk Metallurgical Institute: he was drafted into the army in the spring of 1994. He was already in the hospital telling how grenade launchers and a sniper were sent to him at the last moment before the battle. "The sniper says: 'Show me how to shoot.' And the grenade launchers - about the same ... Already in the column lined up, and I train all the grenade launchers ... "

The commander of the 81st regiment, Alexander Yaroslavtsev, later admitted: “To be honest, people were poorly trained, some of them drove little BMP, some shot little. And from such specific types of weapons as a grenade launcher and a flamethrower, the soldiers did not shoot at all. " Lieutenant Sergei Terekhin, the commander of a tank platoon, wounded during the assault, claimed that only two weeks before the first (and last) battle, his platoon was manned. And in the 81st regiment itself, half of the personnel was missing. This was confirmed by the chief of staff of the regiment Semyon Burlakov: “We concentrated in Mozdok. We were given two days to reorganize, after which we marched off to Grozny. At all levels, we reported that a regiment with such a composition was not ready to conduct hostilities. We were considered a mobile unit, but we were staffed in peacetime: we had only 50 percent of the personnel. But most importantly, there was no infantry in the motorized rifle squads, only the crews of combat vehicles. There were no shooters directly, those who were supposed to ensure the safety of combat vehicles. Therefore, we walked with what is called “bare armor”. And, again, the overwhelming majority of the platoon men are two-year-olds who had no idea about the conduct of hostilities. The driver-mechanics only knew how to start the car and get under way. Operator gunners could not shoot from combat vehicles at all. "

Neither the battalion commanders, nor the company and platoon commanders had maps of Grozny: they did not know how to navigate in a strange city! The commander of the regiment's communications company .. Captain Stanislav Spiridonov said in an interview to Samara journalists: “Maps? There were maps, but they were all different, of different years, they did not fit together, even the names of the streets are different. " However, platoon-two-year-olds did not know how to read maps at all. “Here the chief of staff of the division got in touch with us,” Gubarev recalled, “and personally set the task: the 5th company along Chekhov - to the left, and to us, the 6th company - to the right. So he said - to the right. Just right. " When the offensive began, the regiment's combat mission changed every three hours, so we can safely assume that it did not exist.

Later, the regiment commander ... could not ... explain who set him the task and what. First they had to take the airport, moved out - a new order, turned around - again the order to go to the airport, then another introductory one. And on the morning of December 31, 1995, about 200 combat vehicles of the 81st regiment (according to other sources - about 150) moved to Grozny: tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles ... They did not know anything about the enemy: no one provided the regiment with intelligence, and they themselves did not conduct reconnaissance. The 1st battalion, which was marching in the first echelon, entered the city ... and the 2nd battalion entered the city with a gap of five hours ..! By this time, little was left of the first battalion, the second was on its way to its destruction ... "

The mechanic-driver of the T-80 tank, junior sergeant Andrei Yurin, when he was in the Samara hospital, recalled: “No, no one set the task, they just stood in a column and went. True, the company commander warned: “If anything - shoot! The child is on the road - push. "

In the photo, Lieutenant General L.Ya. Rokhlin

Initially, the role of commander of the forces entering the city was assigned to General Lev Rokhlin. This is how Lev Yakovlevich himself describes it (a quote from the book "The Life and Death of a General"): "Before the storming of the city," says Rokhlin, "I decided to clarify my tasks. Based on the positions we occupied, I believed that the Eastern grouping, to command it was suggested that I should be headed by another general. And it would be expedient to appoint me to command the Northern grouping. On this topic I had a conversation with Kvashnin. He appointed General Staskov to command the Eastern grouping. “And who will command the Northern group?” I ask. Kvashnin replies: “I ... We will deploy the forward command post in Tolstoy-Yurt. You know what a powerful group it is: T-80 tanks, BMP-3. (There were almost no such people in the troops then.) "-" What is my task? "- I ask." Go to the palace, occupy it, and we will approach. " He said that the city is not attacked with tanks. "This task was removed from me. But I insist:" What is my task? "-" You will be in reserve, "they answer. - You will cover the left flank of the main grouping. "And they appointed a route of movement." After this conversation with Rokhlin, Kvashnin began to give orders to the units directly. So, the 81st regiment was given the task of blocking the Reskom. In this case, the tasks were brought to the units at the very last moment.

Colonel-General Anatoly Kvashnin's secrecy was a separate line, apparently, it was some kind of "know-how" of Kvashnin, everything was hidden, and the task was posed directly along the movement of the units, the trouble is that in this case the units acted independently, separately, prepared for one thing, but were forced to do something completely different. Inconsistency, lack of interconnection is another distinctive feature of this operation. Apparently, the whole operation was based on the confidence that there would be no resistance. This only suggests that the leadership of the operation was divorced from reality.

Until December 30, the commanders of units and battalions did not know about their routes or missions in the city. No documents were worked out. Until the last moment, officers of the 81st regiment believed that the task of the day was the intersection of Mayakovsky-Khmelnitsky. Before entering the regiment into the city, its command was asked how long it takes to bring it into combat readiness? The command reported: at least two weeks and replenishment of people, tk. the regiment is now a "bare armor". To solve the problem with the lack of people, the 81st regiment was promised 196 replenishment people for the BMP landing, as well as 2 regiments of the Internal Troops to clean up the quarters passed by the regiment.

Kompolka Yaroslavtsev: “When Kvashnin gave us the task, he sent us to the GRU colonel to get information about the enemy, but he did not say anything specific. Everything is general. There, north-west of Grozny, south-west of Grozny, there is a group of so many. I tell him, wait, which north-west, southeast, I’m drawing a route for you, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, so I’m walking along it, tell me what I can meet there. He answers me, here, according to our data, there are sandbags in windows, here the strong point may or may not. He did not even know if the streets were blocked there or not, so they gave me these fools (UR-77 "Meteorite") so that I would blow up the barricades, but nothing was blocked there In short, there was no intelligence, either on the number or location of the militants. "

After a meeting on December 30, Colonel-General Kvashnin ordered an officer to be sent for replenishment, but due to bad weather it was not possible to deliver people on time. Then it was proposed to take two battalions of the Internal Troops as a landing, the chief of the regiment Martynychev was sent after them, but the command of the Internal Troops did not give up the battalions. That is why it turned out that the 81st regiment went to the city of Grozny "with bare armor", having at best 2 people in the BMP landing force, and often not at all!

At the same time, the regiment received a strange order: one battalion had to, bypassing Reskom, go to the station, and then behind his back the second battalion was supposed to blockade Reskom, that is, without securing the occupation of one line, it should go to the next, which contradicts the charter, methods ... In fact, this separated the first battalion from the main forces of the regiment. For what the station was needed, one can only guess - apparently, this is also part of the "know-how".

The regiment commander Yaroslavtsev recalls these days in this way: “I… worked with the battalion commanders, we didn’t have time to outline, of course, it’s supposed to, not only to the company, we need to go down to the platoon to show where to get what. like this - go ahead, come on, the first battalion ... take the station and surround it, seize it, and the second battalion move forward and surround Dudaev's palace ... they didn't describe where and what, the battalion commander himself made a decision on where to send, according to the situation. ... The immediate task was to reach the intersection ... Mayakovsky-Khmelnitsky, then further one - the station, the other - Dudaev's palace. ... but it was not signed in detail, because there was no time, nothing, but in theory each platoon needs to paint where it should roughly stand, where to get out, until what time and what to do. ”As far as I understood, the commanders thought like this: with bare armor and surround, stand, point the barrels there, and partially, for example, if there is no one there, by infantry, report that he is surrounded ... And then they will say - we will tighten some about there a negotiating group, or there are scouts, and they will go forward! "

Chronology of the last day of 1994: at 7 am on December 31, the advance detachment of the 81st regiment, including the reconnaissance company, attacked the Severny airport. With the advance detachment was the chief of staff of the 81st Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Burlakov. By 9 o'clock, his group completed the immediate task, seizing the airport and clearing two bridges across the Neftyanka River on the way to the city.
Following the advance detachment, the column was followed by the 1st MSB of Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Perepelkin. To the west, through the Rodina state farm, was the 2nd mdb. Combat vehicles moved in columns: tanks were in front, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were on the flanks.
From the airport "Severny" the 81st SME went to Khmelnitsky Street. At 09.17 the motorized rifle met here the first enemy forces: an ambush from a detachment of Dudayevites with a tank, an armored personnel carrier and two Urals attached. The reconnaissance company entered the battle. The militants managed to knock out a tank and one of the "Urals", however, the scouts also lost one BMP and several people wounded. The regimental commander, Colonel Yaroslavtsev, decided to delay reconnaissance to the main forces and temporarily stop the advance.
Then the advance resumed. By 11.00 the columns of the 81st regiment reached Mayakovsky Street. Ahead of the previously approved schedule was almost 5 hours. Yaroslavtsev reported this to the command and received an order to move to blockade the presidential palace, to the city center. The regiment began its advance towards Dzerzhinsky Square. By 12.30, the forward units were already near the station, and the group's headquarters confirmed the earlier order given to surround the presidential palace.

All management of the parts was carried out by the "come-on" method. The commanders who ruled from afar did not know how the situation in the city was developing. To force the troops to go forward, they blamed the commanders: "everyone has already reached the center of the city and is about to take the palace, and you are marking time ...". As the commander of the 81st regiment, Colonel Alexander Yaroslavtsev, testified later, to his inquiry regarding the position of his neighbor to the left, the 129th regiment of the Leningrad Military District, he received the answer that the regiment was already on Mayakovsky Street. “This is the pace,” the colonel thought then (Krasnaya Zvezda, 01/25/1995). It never occurred to him that this was far from the case ... Moreover, the closest neighbor on the left of the 81st regiment was consolidated detachment 8 corps, and not the 129th regiment, which was advancing from the Khankala region. Although it is on the left, it is very far. Judging by the map, this regiment could have ended up on Mayakovsky Street only after passing the city center and past the presidential palace.

In the photo there is a RETIRED COLONEL, PARTICIPANT OF COMBAT ACTIONS IN THE TERRITORY OF DRA AND CR, CAVALER OF SEVERAL BATTLE ORDERS, COMMANDER OF 81 SMR IN THE EARLY 90-X YAROSLAVTSEV ALEXANDER ALEXEEVITS.

From the memoirs of a tanker: "I was in front with the tanks of the company, our infantry retreated. The regiment commander gives the command -" forward! "
I clarified - where to go, the task of the day is completed, there is no infantry to cover the tanks ...
He says - "Skating rink", this is Pulikovsky's order, understand correctly, you go to the station ...
The premonition of an unkind adventure did not deceive me. In observation devices I saw tightly "stoned" militants who slowly moved along the houses, but did not enter into confrontation. Even then I realized that they were letting us into the "New Year's carousel". I understood that if something went wrong, it would be difficult to get out of the station. But it never crossed my mind that our posts would not be on the entry route after the assault groups had passed ... "

At 13.00, the main forces of the regiment passed the station and along Ordzhonikidze Street rushed to the complex of government buildings. And then the Dudayevites began a powerful fire resistance. A fierce battle erupted outside the palace; Colonel Yaroslavtsev was wounded and transferred command to the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov.

At 16.10 the chief of staff received confirmation of the task to blockade the palace. But the motorized riflemen faced fierce fire resistance. Dudayev's grenade launchers, dispersed among the buildings in the city center, began to shoot our combat vehicles literally point-blank. The regiment's columns began to gradually fall apart into separate groups. By 17 o'clock, Lieutenant Colonel Burlakov was also wounded, about a hundred soldiers and sergeants were already out of action. The intensity of the fire effect can be judged by at least one fact: only from 18.30 to 18.40, that is, in just 10 minutes, the militants knocked out 3 tanks of the 81st regiment at once!

The units of the 81st mechanized infantry brigade and the 131st motorized rifle brigade that broke into the city were surrounded. The Dudayevites unleashed a storm of fire on them. Soldiers under the cover of infantry fighting vehicles took up a perimeter defense. The bulk of the personnel and equipment were concentrated in the forecourt, in the station itself and in the surrounding buildings. The 1st mdb of the 81st regiment was located in the station building, the 2nd mdb - in the goods yard of the station.

The 1st MSR under the command of Captain Bezrutsky occupied the building of the road administration. The infantry fighting vehicles of the company were displayed in the courtyard, at the gates and on the exit tracks to the railroad bed. At dusk, the enemy's onslaught intensified. Losses have increased. Especially in the technique, which was very tight, sometimes literally caterpillar to caterpillar. The initiative passed into the hands of the enemy.
The relative calm came only at 23.00. At night, the skirmishes continued, and in the morning the commander of the 131st Omsb Brigade, Colonel Savin, requested permission from the higher command to leave the station. A breakthrough was approved to the Lenin Park, where the units of the 693rd SME of the "West" group defended. At 15:00 on January 1, the remnants of the units of the 131st Omsb Brigade and the 81st SME began to break through from the railway station and the freight station. Under the incessant fire of the Dudayevites, the columns suffered losses and gradually disintegrated.

28 people from the 1st MRR of the 81st MRR broke through in three infantry fighting vehicles along the railway. Having reached the House of Press, the motorized riflemen got lost in the dark unfamiliar streets and were ambushed by the militants. As a result, two BMPs were hit. Only one car, under the command of Captain Arkhangelov, made it to the location of the federal troops.

... As of today, it is known that from the units of the 81st SMR and the 131st Omsb, which were at the forefront of the main attack, only a small part of the people left the encirclement. The personnel lost commanders, equipment (in just one day, December 31, the 81st regiment lost 13 tanks and 7 infantry fighting vehicles), scattered around the city and went out to their own on their own - one by one or in small groups.

The consolidated detachment of the 81st SMR, formed from the units that remained outside the "station" ring, managed to gain a foothold at the intersection of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Mayakovsky streets. The command of the detachment was assumed by the deputy commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Stankevich. For two days his group, being in a semi-encirclement, remaining virtually on a bare and shot through place - the intersection of two main city streets, held this strategically important area.

From the memoirs of an eyewitness: "And then it began ... From the basements and from the upper floors of buildings, grenade launchers and machine guns hit the columns of Russian armored vehicles squeezed in narrow streets. The militants fought as if it was they, and not our generals, who studied at military academies. The rest, without haste, were shot as if in a shooting range. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which managed to break fences, escape from traps, without motorized rifle cover, also became easy prey for the enemy. The West grouping lost contact with it. Heavy fire stopped the combined parachute regiments of the 76th division and the 21st separate airborne brigade on the southern outskirts. At nightfall, 3,500 militants with 50 guns and tanks near the railway station the 81st regiment and the 131st brigade, who were carelessly standing in columns along the streets, suddenly attacked. surrounded and almost completely destroyed.

At the same time, champagne corks were clapping at New Year's tables across the country and Alla Pugacheva sang from the TV screen: “Hey, you are up there! There is no escape from you again ... "

Neither December 31, nor January 1, nor in the following days, the 81st regiment left the city, remained on the front line and continued to participate in hostilities. The battles in Grozny were fought by Igor Stankevich's detachment, as well as the 4th motorized rifle company of Captain Yarovitsky, which was in the hospital complex.
For the first two days, there were virtually no other organized forces in the center of Grozny. There was another small group from General Rokhlin's headquarters, it kept close.

The former commander of the North-East group, Lieutenant General Lev Rokhlin, eloquently recalled the morale of our troops these days: “I set the commanders the task of holding the most important facilities, promised to present them for awards and higher positions. In response, the brigade commander replies that he is ready to quit, but he will not be in command. And then he writes a report. I propose to the battalion commander: "Come on ..." "No, - he answers - I also refuse." It was the hardest blow for me. "