Ruslan (Khamzat) Germanovich Gelaev(April 16, 1964, Komsomolskoye village, Chechnya - February 28, 2004, near the Bezhta village, Dagestan) - Chechen terrorist; an active participant in the Chechen conflict in the 1990s - 2000s on the side of the separatists, “one of the most famous field commanders of the highest echelon,” the newspaper Spetsnaz Rossii noted after his death, held high positions in the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, right up to to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces (from May 2002 until his death), he held the rank of divisional general. He is also known by his nicknames and radio call signs "Angel", "Black Angel" and "Old Man".

Biography

The education he received was three classes of a rural school, although there were rumors about the alleged higher education he had.

In the 1980s, after the death of his father, he went to work in the Omsk region, where he married a local resident of Gubkina Larisa Petrovna. In 1988, their son Rustam was born (died in Syria in 2012). When Gelayev left for Chechnya, his wife Larissa and her son came there and showed the child to her husband's relatives. She wrote to her native village that she would stay in Chechnya, but returned with the start of the second Chechen war. Gelayev worked as a builder, was an employee of the Grozny oil depot, responsible for the sale of petroleum products.

According to the newspaper Spetsnaz of Russia, by the time of the collapse of the USSR Gelayev had three convictions - two for robbery and one for rape.

Since the early 1990s, he began to call himself by the Islamic name Khamzat.

Georgian-Abkhaz conflict

In 1992-1993, together with Shamil Basayev, he participated in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict as part of the detachments of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus. By the end of the war, he became one of the most authoritative commanders. Gelayev fought in Abkhazia together with his relative Khamzat Khankarov. In honor of him, he took the name Khamzat. In 1992, he trained under the guidance of Russian officers of the 345th Parachute Regiment. Gelayev showed success in military disciplines. Combat Khamzat Khankarov appointed him platoon commander.

The brutality of Gelayev became known when the inhabitants of Abkhazia on TV identified him as the leader of the bandits and applied to the checkpoints of the Russian peacekeepers in this regard. In 1995, in response to the Shatoy bombing, he personally executed the captured military pilots, throwing them into the abyss.

First Chechen war

Since 1993 he commanded the Borz special-purpose regiment. Returning to Grozny as a winner in 1993, he formed from the veterans of Abkhazia Dudaev's personal bodyguard - the Abkhaz battalion. However, Gelaev soon handed over this unit to Ruslan Labazanov. And he himself began to form and train the first Chechen special forces - the 6th battalion "Borz" ("Wolf"). Jackets with a grinning wolf on the chevrons were worn by both Abkhazian veterans and criminal elements. Having made friends with Salman Raduyev, close to Dudayev, the Siberian poured into his unit the best of Raduev's Presidential berets. As a specialist in petroleum products, Gelayev became Raduev's partner in illegal export of fuel. The lion's share of the profits went to Dudayev, but what was left was enough even for foreign business trips: Gelayev twice took part of his fighters to study in Afghan camps. By the end of 1994, the battalion had grown to a regiment bearing the same name and armed with the most modern weapons, and by no means Chechen Borzoi (submachine guns of a primitive design, handcrafted from low-quality steel). A powerful sniper team was even created, which included, in addition to well-aimed Chechens, snipers from the Baltic states.

Doku Umarov, who was a distant relative of Doku Umarov, who later became the first Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, recalled that when he came to Chechnya before the start of the war, he immediately went to Gelaev: “I came to him in a Mercedes, in shoes and with a cigarette in my mouth and offered my help ... Gelaev looked at me and asked if I was doing a prayer? "

In May 1995 Gelayev was in charge of the Shatoi defense sector. In the war Gelayev entered the rank of lieutenant colonel of the armed forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. In 1995, the Borz regiment in the amount of 900 people defended the Shatoisky region. Sniper fire and minefields did not allow the feds to take the city, as well as the villages of Itum-Kala and Khalkina. But the militants were damaged by bombing and rocket attacks. Gelayev announced a large cash bonus to anyone who shoots down a Russian helicopter or plane. In addition, he dispatched small capture teams to hunt down servicemen with blue buttonholes and wings. When a group of captured Russian pilots ended up in his hands, Gelayev promised the federal command to drop them into the gorge if the missile and bomb attacks did not stop. And he kept his word: after another raid on Shatoi, the militants pushed the bound officers onto the sharp rocks. The scene of the execution was filmed with a video camera, and the tape was thrown to the feds with a promise to execute the rest of the prisoners in the same way. The bombing stopped.

Reports of Gelayev's death have appeared in the press several times in recent years - and each time they were subsequently refuted by the Russian military themselves. However, now in the biography of this "outstanding figure" one can finally put an end to it.

Let us remind you that Gelayev was in charge, which in December roamed the Tsuntinsky district of Dagestan, robbing civilians and capturing their villages. In addition, they killed ten soldiers of the border detachment. The operation to neutralize this group lasted two weeks. In the course of it, information appeared that Gelayev, who was at the head of the international detachment of militants, but the command of the Russian troops did not confirm it.

According to the testimony of the captured militants, Gelayev was indeed among them, but immediately after the execution of the border guards, he left the gang. For more than two months he was hiding in an abandoned hut, and last Saturday he decided to leave the territory of Dagestan and go to his base in Georgia.

Two of his accomplices (they are now on the wanted list) took the commander by car to the Chaekha gorge, leading to the Georgian border. Then he went alone. But he was not destined to get to his native Pankisi Gorge: on the way of Gelayev he met a squad of two border guards - A. Kurbanov and M. Suleimanov.

The "Black Angel" was the first to open fire from a machine gun, killing Suleimanov on the spot and seriously wounding his comrade. However, Kurbanov, mustering his last strength, fired at Gelayev, crushing his left arm. After that, the militant, bleeding to death, tried to continue on his way, but the strength was gone. To stop the bleeding, Gelayev cut off his wounded arm himself and tied the stump with a tourniquet. Then he tried to get something to eat: he ate a dry bag of instant coffee, opened it and took a bite of a chocolate bar. With her in the hand of the field commander and found death.

All the details of the tragedy that unfolded in the mountains were read by the police officers on the tracks in the snow after the bodies of its participants were found. Gelayev's body was taken to Makhachkala, where his identity was finally established during the forensic examination and identification by former associates who were under arrest.

Ruslan Gelaev was born in 1964 in the village of Komsomolskoye in the Urus-Martan District of Chechnya. For 30 years he had three convictions, and after the collapse of the USSR he joined the separatists, in particular, he participated in the Abkhaz conflict. In 1996, he was already a well-known commander; under his command, up to a thousand Chechen fighters fought. In 1997-1998 he held high posts in the government of independent Ichkeria. The last major battle under the leadership of Gelayev was the capture of his native village in March 2000.

Ruslan Gelaev. Strokes for the portrait

Nature generously rewarded Ruslan Gelayev - tall, oblique fathoms in the shoulders and huge hands. Such palms are found either in excavators or in pathological killers. A native of the Chechen village of Komsomolskoye, considered an honest labor, let the Komsomol members earn a piece of bread. And he fell in love with a completely different life, fun and full of dangerous adventures. Fate did not play a giveaway with the robber Ruslan for a long time, and after a while his thieves' share firmly blended into the classic scheme: "stole - drank - in prison."

During his three "prison universities" the recidivist thief Gelaev firmly mastered the main Zon law, according to which man is a wolf to man. How many times during the bloody gang warfare his trained bestial instinct helped to emerge victorious!

He had never had any friends in his life. Only temporary travel companions. Whom did he mercilessly surrender, whom he substituted, whom he deceived. In prison, as in the forest, the strongest and cunning survives.

Having rewound another term, the representative of the Chechen mountain teip, Gukhoi, went, as he put it, to “poke around” at the Abkhaz war. He liked the fighting atmosphere. Here the militants did not live according to the laws, but according to the usual thieves' notions. Each is his own prosecutor and lawyer. To the extent of moral licentiousness.

The "jackal" Gelaev also liked the taste of human blood. Therefore, when he returned to his homeland, he was happy to try on the wolf skin of the battalion leader of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria.

The strong-willed and stubborn godfather Gelaev rather quickly put together a gang of criminals released by Dudayev. Soon the gang became known as the Galanchosh Special Forces Regiment. Its commander did not miss the opportunity to stake out a plot for himself in the oil business during the redistribution of property in the republic. Business people, white-collar politicians, and lords drank cognac together and made plans for the future. Chechen gangsters flocked to Chechnya to smell of profit. The Moscow crowned thief in law named Khoza (Sparrow) Suleimanov marched in the forefront, then the Krasnodar-Rostov tandem of the Lobazanov brothers (Ruslan and Said), followed by many others. Among them loomed a figure and our hero. But unlike some, he did not make noise, he waited. Waited in the wings.

"New Chechens" at the next meeting went even further than President Dudayev. They made a truly brilliant decision: if the mafia cannot be defeated, it must be led; and since Dudayev, as it seemed to them, had fulfilled his task, it was necessary to ... move him away from the "trough of power."

But the cunning Dzhokhar got ahead of the criminals and struck first. In August 1994, the presidential guards arrested the leader of the conspirators, Khoza Suleimanov. Gelayev saved him from the massacre. Evil tongues, however, say that Khozu passed ... all the same Gelayev.

Dudayev appreciated the political farsightedness of the recidivist Ruslan and assigned him one of the most "chocolate" points in Chechnya - the Commodity and Production Office (TPK) Grozneftiorgsintez - a kind of oil storage of the republic. From here every day, despite the irreconcilable confrontation between Moscow and Grozny in the eyes of the Russian public, railroad trains with "left" Chechen gasoline and diesel fuel went past the domestic government purse.

They went abroad through the Tuapse and Novorossiysk oil terminals controlled by the Chechen mafiosi. They left, judging by some information, even through the Far Eastern ports - right under the noses of the yawning transport police, the Ministry of Railways, customs, border guards.

And near the golden faucet, at the headwaters of the left gasoline rivers from Chechnya, Ruslan Gelayev did not sleep, he was spinning for three. One can only guess what kind of explosive information he was carrying.

The Gelayev farm worked properly for a whole month and a half after the outbreak of hostilities. In early January 1995, stubborn battles were going on, hundreds of people were killed on both sides, and gasoline car caravans, as if nothing had happened, drove past Russian checkpoints and sailed to the north and east. Guarded in the outer ring of the Gelayevsky TPK "Grozneftiorgsintez" tough guys with insignia of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia!

They shut down Gelayev's shop only when the outer guard ring did not come to an agreement with the inner ring of the militants on a new rate for the transit of oil products. In general, the TPK was blown up. According to the Russian version - from injustice, according to the Chechen - foolishness. The fun of Gelayev ended, the harsh working days began.

In that first war, his gang settled in the villages of Komsomolskoye, Alkhazurovo and Goyskoye. She was in no hurry to fight. Many militants are addicted to vodka and drugs. Discipline in the detachment did not just limp, but fell on both legs. And Gelaev at times had to bring his subordinates to life with draconian measures. After "sentimental" conversations with the commander, "lanterns" appeared on the faces of the violators.

To the east of the Gelayevites, on the left bank of the Argun, near the village of Duba-Yurt, in the summer of 1995, paratroopers from Novorossiysk were stationed. At one of the meetings, their senior chief, Lieutenant Colonel Yegorov, summoned the militants to a competition - in full gear, make a march across the mountains for several kilometers. Gelayev accepted the challenge. Then he was very sorry. The "Blue Berets" did not leave any chance for the militants, having outplayed those in all respects. Therefore, Gelayev did not particularly want to fight with the paratroopers, and under various pretexts he dodged the conduct of hostilities.

With Egorov, Gelaev made a secret peace. On the day of the Airborne Forces, the so-called commander of the western front of Ichkeria even treated the landing party with vodka. But they refused. I had to drink vodka only with my own. Learning about the special relationship between Ruslan and the Russian paratroopers, Dudayev was enraged and dismissed Gelayev from his post with a formulation humiliating for the Chechens - for cowardice.

Gelaev woke up from hibernation in the spring of 1996. For the defense of Bamut he even deserved the highest Ichkerian awards. But the war marked him not only with medals. The gunshot wound left marks on the right cheek and throat, and the vocal cords were damaged. It was because of this injury that Gelayev never spoke to journalists.

After the first military campaign Gelayev changed. I quit drinking and grew a beard. Ruslan changed his name to a more Muslim one - Khamzat. The criminal, who always believed only in himself and in the devil, became a Wahhabite.

The guys from Iran (Pakistani military intelligence) looked closely at Gelayev for a long time. Painfully he is tough, quarrelsome, power-hungry, but what a wonderful bouquet of qualities for a politician - hypocrisy, cynicism, treachery! In a word, Gelayev signed a good contract with the Pakistanis. And soon in three controlled villages, he introduced a new religious fashion - Wahhabism. In each courtyard there appeared the Wahhabi Book of Monotheism by the theologian Favzan, typed in the Makhachkala publishing house "Badr" and printed in the Moscow publishing house "Polygran", which prohibits dhikrs (Chechen ritual dances), the cults of saints, sheikhs.

For Gelayev, the age-old Chechen customs (adats), the authority of the elders, and teip kinship seem to have ceased to exist. He obeyed only his changeable mood, his quirks. Those who disagree were immediately declared enemies of Islam.

Using Pakistani money, he organized and led the Wahhabi movement "Tablikhi", became an imam.

This is how the associate professor of the Chechen University Iriskhanov describes what was happening then: “Although the constitution of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria says“ a secular democratic republic ”, the media more often say that we have an Islamic state or“ we are building an Islamic state ”, and you will never hear that we have a democratic ... Who benefits from such a free treatment of status, which creates an image of an Islamic state in the form of what Ichkeria is today? Only to the enemies of Islam. They have the opportunity to say: “Look what is happening in the Islamic state. Lawlessness that never dreamed of. "

But the intellectual Iriskhanov did not know that lawlessness is exactly what is needed by such ignorant imams as the criminal Gelaev. Indeed, in the lawlessness, when the fist replaces the laws of Islam, it is easier to hide your ignorance, to hide moral licentiousness: after all, evil is becoming the norm.

Gelaev always felt when it was necessary to reel the fishing rods. He is one of the few field commanders who slipped unharmed through the open crack of a trap from Grozny in February 2000. He slipped out of Komsomolskoye, got out of the water in the Kodori Gorge of Georgia ... But he did not leave the border guards in Dagestan. He did not manage to deceive death.