The end of winter and beginning of spring of 2000 in the Chechen Republic was the time of one of the bloodiest battles of the second campaign - the militants had just been partly driven out and partly finished off in Grozny, but they were still numerous and strong, and the territory of the republic was still not completely controlled by the federal forces - the troops were just entering the mountains from the Chechen plains, the equipment was drowning in the "plasticine" of the local roads, the weather was often bad, and the people had a particularly difficult time. It was at this time, on the night of February 15-16, that 4 groups of the combined 700th detachment of the 2nd Separate Special Purpose Brigade (2 OBrSpN) left the area of the Tangi-chu tract to ensure the passage of columns of the 752nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (the well-known encyclopedia of the GRU SpN by Kozlov and co-authors lists the 15th MSP, but other sources speak only of the 752nd). On the 19th of the groups receive a combat order to conduct reconnaissance to ensure 21.02. advance unit 752 msp along the tract Mal. Kharsenoi to np. Kharsenoi. According to one of the users from the forum Desantura.ru in the exit participated the following WG SPN: № 231 (16 people), № 232 (17 people), № 233 (18 people), № 234 (13 people), although with such a number of people gets one "extra" man - we will touch on this a little later. Anyway - by the 20th two groups (232 and 234) reached the height of 947.0, near which dramatic events would unfold later, while groups 231 and 233 remained at 892.0 (not marked on the map of the General Staff of 1990). By the end of the day groups 232 and 234 leave the mark 947.0 and occupy the neighboring heights 1029.0 and 1106.0 (not marked), while group 231 moves to the height 947, leaving 10 people sick and frostbitten together with group 233.
stfu zigger
Around the 20th of the same day, the special forces met with the special unit of the Ministry of Justice "Typhoon", and this is how Major Nikolai Yevtukh tells about it:
"The task before us was to look for old, old paths on the slopes, so that they could drive the equipment up.On one of the heights we had a base, from where we left in the morning and where we returned in the evening [...] We met with scouts on the slopes, they had a lot of sick and frostbitten by February 20. In our group only the artillery corrector was sick. They and the radio operator were taken off another mission and thrown to us with nothing at all. We immediately put up a tent, but the guys slept in the snow for the first few days.
They had only a radio and a coat, that's all. We fed them, but when we went out, their radio operator fell down from a height of a meter and a half and did not move, he had no strength. And the second one jumped from the same place and twisted his ankle. We lifted them up with a breather, a helicopter came and took them away. So we continued to work without an adjuster." - From the above quote it is not clear at all whose radio operator and adjuster were injured and who and from where the chopper eventually took them away. However, if we calculate the number of people, it turns out that neither among the survivors, nor among the dead there is not one person from the 234th group - at the time of the exit there were 13 people, and the battle was taken by 12, which indirectly suggests that on the 20th one of the scouts of 234 was injured, stayed with the minutemen and later was evacuated. True Yevtukhin says about 2 men, but here he was left without artkorrektirochik - perhaps they took the scout and adjuster from the "Typhoon". The third option is that the scout remained together with the group 233.
Meanwhile, WG 231, consisting of 6 men, went early in the morning on February 21 to the height of 947 and reported that an unoccupied stronghold was found on the eastern slope - about a company-sized one, and that 2 trucks with militants were seen moving along the road from the direction of Kharsenoi. According to the group's report, the vehicles were destroyed by RPG fire and the militants were dispersed. Taking into account the small number of the group and the presence of a large concentration of militants in the vicinity - a very risky decision, but who made it - the group commander or the company commander (who was in the order of 752 regiment and commanded by radio) is not possible to find out in open sources. Perhaps the decision was forced. Anyway, but the company commander (S. A. Aleshin) orders two neighboring groups to return to the area of mark 947 to reinforce the 231 WG. [In the "Afterword" we will still return to this episode with these machines, in view of the new facts that have been discovered]. Last, at 11.30 at the mark come soldiers 234 WG. Total at the height is 35 people, of which 8 were attached from the motorized gunners (adjusters and, perhaps, sappers). At this time 233rd group, together with most of the 231st remains in place, in the area of mark 892.0. In some sources it is stated that this group remained "at a dominant height of 800 meters behind", but the map does not show us such heights nearby - at the marks 1029 and 1106 they could not be located. Apparently there is a mistake and it meant "at a height of 800 meters". (In general, we can say that
Here it is necessary to make a small digression, without which the events taking place further on will be quite difficult to understand. The groups have been working in the foothills for 6 days in February, constantly moving and without a single opportunity to sleep in warmth, let alone steel. It is necessary to understand that they go in overcoats and cotton pants, which are not only heavy in themselves, but with strenuous physical activity in them is still very hot. A man sweats, and then in the same overcoat and sweat-wet underwear he goes to bed - right on the ground or snow. And then even before dawn he gets up, piles his weapons and ammunition on himself and again walks first down the mountain and then up the mountain - through water-soaked snow, bushes and other delights of this kind of "tourism". It is because of the extremely harsh conditions that 10 men remain with Group 233 and it is unlikely that the rest of the groups felt much better. From an interview with one of the surviving scouts, Staff Sergeant Anton Filippov: "The weather on the night of February 21 was terrible. It was snowing wet, everyone froze like tsutsiks. And in the morning the sun looked out, in February the sun is good. I remember how everyone was steaming. And then the sun disappeared, I guess it went behind the mountains.
We were first hit from two sides and then surrounded completely. They used flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Of course, we had a lot of ourselves to blame, we relaxed. But we had been walking for eight days through the mountains, we were tired. It was physically very difficult to wade through the snow for so long, it was very hard to fight normally after that. We slept on the ground. We had to carry everything on ourselves, ammunition in the first place. Not everyone wanted to carry a sleeping bag. We had only two sleeping bags in our group - me and one other soldier. I carried a radio, batteries for it, and a grenade launcher. There were seconded men in the group - engineers, airplane spotters, artillery adjusters. There was a soldier-radiator with them, his grenade launcher was carried by my commander, Samoilov, then he gave it to me, then we changed, and I gave it to someone else. It was just that the radio operator was completely tired. So we helped, we carried it.
The batteries are almost dead on my radio. I think, somewhere until the evening of February 21, the last one would work still. On the morning of the twenty-first I transmitted Samoilov's last staff report. He ordered me to inform the command that the radio was running out of power and we were turning off the station so that in case of emergency we could transmit something, it would be enough for one time. But when the battle started, I didn't manage to transmit anything."
The continuation of his story concerns the battle itself, I give it without abbreviations:
"My station was about ten meters away from me, there were six or seven other automatic rifles standing in a herringbone pattern. Opposite me sat the commander, and on my right Vitek. At the very beginning the commander told him to guard me with the radio, so we were always together. When the battle started, the fire density was very high. It was like when you put a company together and everyone starts shooting at the same time. Everyone was sitting two or three people at a time, about twenty meters from each other. As soon as it started, we jumped in different directions. Samoilov fell under a tree, it was the only one there, and there was a small hollow there. I looked at my radio and saw that the bullets were going through it, piercing it. So it was still standing, and it was still standing.
I personally had nothing with me except grenades, I was not supposed to have anything else. I threw them at the very beginning where they were shooting at us from. But I kept my automatic rifle and my radio. Samoilov had a Stechkin pistol and, I think, a machine gun. Our guys started shooting back with their automatic rifles, machine guns were firing - one and the other. Then I was told that someone was found killed in a sleeping bag. But I didn't see anyone sleeping, I don't know.
For the longest time someone from our machine gun fired. He happened to be passing near me. The Chechens were shouting: "Russian Vanka, surrender, Russian Vanka, surrender!" And he was muttering to himself: "I'll give you surrender now, I'll give you surrender now...". He stood up to his full height, jumped out on the road and just started to give a queue, and he was killed.
One of the commanders, either Kalinin or Bochenkov, shouted to me: "Rocket, rocket!...". I remember the scream was so wild. A rocket is a signal that something is happening. But it had to be red, and I only had an illuminating one. I said, "No red!" And he couldn't hear what I was yelling, the noise, the shooting. I didn't get an answer from him, so I fired the red one myself. And right after that something rumbled and I was wounded by a shrapnel in my leg. At that time, of course, I didn't know it was a splinter, then they told me. The shrapnel broke the bone in my foot and stayed in my heel.
I turn around and ask Vityk (he had his head at my feet about a height apart): "Alive?". He replies: "Alive, only wounded." "Me too." And that's how we talked. Then something exploded under my nose again. I said to Vita: "Alive?" I turned my head, and my friend was lying there, wheezing, not answering me. He must have been shot in the throat.
I was hit a second time. If I'd lost consciousness, I'd have wheezed too. Then I would have been killed for sure. "The spirits" began to collect weapons, our "stetchkins" especially. I listened to them shouting in Russian, some in broken Russian, with an accent, and some in Chechen: "Oh, I found a Stechkin!". They thought I had been killed, I must have looked like a "commodity". My face, and not only my face, was covered in blood.
At first, the "spirits" quickly grabbed the weapons and took them somewhere. They didn't stay away for long, about twenty minutes at the most. Then they came back and started killing everyone. Apparently, there were many of them, like Vitek, who was lying wheezing beside me. A lot of guys, apparently, were showing signs of life. So they shot all of them with our own Stetskins. I heard pop, pop, pop! I was lucky. I was lying quietly, the Chechen came up to me, took my watch off my hand, a simple, cheap watch. Then he lifted my head by my ear. Well, I think he's going to cut my ear, I can't stand it. Everything hurts so much, and if you whimper, it's over. But I think he wanted to take the chain off my neck. I always wore my cross on a string. If there had been a chain and he had started to tear it, there's no telling how things would have turned out. That's what I remembered later in the hospital, replaying it. I think it was God's will, that's why it happened the way it did. He didn't find the chain, threw my head, and immediately the bolt on the "Stechkin" went off. I thought: that's it, that's it, that's it... And a shot rang out, a pop. I jerked all over, I couldn't help myself. I guess he didn't notice that I flinched. I guess he shot Vitya.
Samoilov was lying not far away, about five meters away. I don't know how he was killed, but the fighters threw a grenade into the trench where the three of them were lying. If I had lost consciousness at the first moment and moaned, they would have killed me for sure. But as it was, I didn't look alive at all. I had a bullet wound in my arm, and other shrapnel wounds in my face, neck, and leg.
They found me maybe four hours later, I was still unconscious. Apparently, I was in a state of shock, I passed out before the helicopter, after the fifth promedol. First came, I think, the infantry, which we were supposed to meet and which was delayed. I remember someone kept asking me: "Who is your radio operator, who is your radio operator?". I answered, "I'm a radio operator." I told them everything about the algorithm of going on the air. Then they bandaged me up, and after that I could not see anything, only hear.
And I got to the hospital only the next day. From the twenty-first to the twenty-second of February I had to spend the night in the mountains, the helicopter did not fly at night. The helicopters came only in the morning of the twenty-second."
The Staff Sergeant was conscious the whole time and therefore left a fairly clear picture of what happened that day. An important feature of these memories is that the second wounded man survived because he fell down the slope during the battle, and therefore could not see what happened in the clearing afterward. Why is this important? In many articles and references to this battle you can read that the fighters were killed by child fighters, they also write that the bodies of the dead were mocked in a sophisticated manner (allegedly for heavy losses) and everything like that. If we reread the survivor's interview, we will not see anything like that - no child fighters or abuse of the bodies - the fighters collect weapons, loot the dead and kill the wounded with pistol shots. Yes, this in itself is considered a war crime, but it's still not the same as what people who have never been to the battlefield describe in articles. It is possible, it is true, that the survivor saw not everything, and somehow they could determine it from the remains, but the soldiers of 752 Msp who collected the bodies do not emphasize it. In general, it is difficult to say something unambiguously, but one should be very cautious about such statements - it is one thing to raise morale during the war, and another thing to look at things decades later.
But let's return to what was happening on the slopes of 947.0 on February 21, 2000. In the morning, according to other data, from 10.30, motorized riflemen from the 752 regiment - consisting of two companies - moved on foot towards the height from the Maly Kharsenoi tract. At that time the scouts still had communication with the regiment, although their radios were down. At the same time, the motorized riflemen were walking through impenetrable mud on hills and tracts for the third day. According to some sources, the scouts of the regiment were also hit by artillery (even write about Grad), which also slowed down the advance of the regiment. One way or another, the motorized riflemen did not have time to the battle site - and only heard the work of small arms and grenade launchers. The major from Typhoon says the same thing - they heard the battle, it was relatively close to them (less than a kilometer, if in a straight line), but they had no orders or desire to move to help. Those who were in the mountains will understand at once, for the rest of us - first of all, it is impossible to cover such a distance quickly in the snow, and secondly, not knowing the position and not having communication with their own, it is suicide to go up the slope head-on - not strangers, so their own will put them down.
This artillery shot is not mentioned anywhere else, and the situation with the battle that started at 12:45 is also unclear - according to the description of a surviving scout, many people had their weapons in pyramids, were drying their clothes and resting, and the fighters' fire attack was completely unexpected for them. It is unlikely that one of the groups started to fight and the other two did not even pick up their weapons. Either the source is mistaken, or there are some other facts that we do not know yet (and it is not certain that we will know [but we were lucky, see "Afterword"]). I would venture to guess that there was no battle yet - the scouts noticed movement at the fighters' stronghold (apparently filling it with hp) and requested artillery, and at that time another group of fighters went around the clearing from both sides and hit the resting fighters from above - avoiding contact with the combat guard. Anyway - the infantry was about an hour late - at the same time, when they write that "the engines of the equipment were already heard" - these are probably artistic assumptions as well - the infantry was going up the mountain on foot [the equipment would come later on the 22nd and later]. According to all sources, the active firefight lasted no more than 15-20 minutes, and individual shots for another 20 minutes (they were finishing the wounded). With such a duration, it is clear that even the Typhoon squad could not physically help the special forces. The first to enter the clearing were the motorized riflemen, and I managed to find a comment from one of those who participated in those battles as part of the infantry:
"We walked for several twenty-four hours, all on our own, too. The reconnaissance company led us part of the way. The scouting company stayed behind, so we went on. We walked for an hour and heard bursts. Later they said that our reconnaissance was covered with "grads" (I wondered, who directed it?). When we came out on Kharsenoi, everyone fell down - just from the tension and fatigue double in the eyes. Here, without giving us a rest, they set the task to move to the height to the spetsami. Already starting to climb up, we heard a fight up there. The "graniks" were really hitting hard up there. We were two companies of the 752nd Msp. When we got to the height, what we saw made us feel creepy. The picture was as follows: a clearing stretched down the slope, densely surrounded by thick thorny bushes. The road went down the center of the clearing to B. Kharsenoi. The spetses positioned themselves under the trees closer to the center of the clearing. The guards were posted on the side of B. Kharsenoi below and for some reason on a bare spot near the edge of the clearing. I don't understand, where did the guards get the mattresses from? I don't think they went with them. I got the impression that they had a parking place prepared for them. A two by two meter square was dug where they just lay down. Looks like they were hit with a volley. They found two alive, a radio operator and someone else. A lot of canned food was scattered in the clearing, we collected it. Two of them were lying next to each other, trying to bandage each other.
We set a task to move down to B. Kharsenoi. We moved out - we were met with dense fire. We moved to a clearing. They called it the Dead Glade."
Later we will return to this narrator, as he is the only source in the continuation of this sad story, but for now let's summarize what we managed to establish and some observations:
1) All storytellers not related to the GRU believe that it was one group of special forces and consider it as a single unit. At the same time in reality there were 3 of them and the last one arrived at this point an hour before the battle. The longest was group 231, which was monitoring the militant stronghold and the village itself [or perhaps not].
2) The scouts took a disadvantageous position - a certain clearing with a road running through it towards the village - probably a place very familiar to the insurgents. Arriving infantrymen found mattresses there (???) and that there were guards only on the side of Kharsenoi village. It is unlikely that someone lured the fighters to it on purpose - the mattresses, if there were any, could have been traces of a parking lot of the militants who "lured" the tired fighters.
3) Many of them did not have weapons at hand - the surviving radio operator of the RG says that during the battle he found himself without a radio and without a machine gun, only with hand grenades. His story is also affected by point 1 - he says that both machine guns were firing (apparently he means that there were 2 of them in his group), but in fact there were 8 of our machine guns on the heights. Apparently, unfortunately, 6 of them refused not to be on hand or were quickly suppressed.
4) Communication with the scouts was lost in the first minutes of the battle - probably the radios or radio operators were physically destroyed. There are still questions about the theoretical possibility of artillery support, but in fact, without targeting and correction, such support would hardly have been useful.
5) There were no explosive or signaling barriers - the infantry then got to the clearing unhindered and collected bodies without mentioning mines or anything like that.
6) The battle was fought, no one surrendered (although it was offered) and the soldiers resisted to the last possible opportunity.
7) The battle was extremely fleeting and there were no opportunities for assistance from any level of command and neighboring units - artillery could kill their own, aviation does not react so quickly and also requires precise targeting.
8) By the time the infantry arrived, the fighters had already taken their stronghold and met them with fire when they tried to move towards Harsenoy.
Now let's return to the infantryman's eyewitness account:
"It was starting to get dark - we were given the task of moving to the third group of special forces - the one that had survived because it was on the sidelines. The company refused to move out at night. KEP told us that after the task was completed the company would be taken to Mozdok to be court-martialed. In short, we were also told that the area would be covered by artukha and pilots at 6 am. Like: if you want to stay, stay. In the morning we gathered all the 200s and dragged them from the clearing into the forest so that they would not be torn up. That area was really covered - we had time to move away. Further-funnier: the head spotted two spirits ahead of us, going ahead of us the same course. Further they flashed in front of the 3rd group of spetsov and went away to the side. The spets did not respond to the communication, to the conditional signals with a rocket, too. We went forward to them. Well, the spets, it is clear what they thought - it was their turn. Anyway, a fight broke out. Their sniper came forward and met us. One in the forehead, the other in the neck. Our third was blown up on a stretching rod (wounded in the stomach). Their position was also super: there was a slope on three sides and a high cliff in the rear. They managed to dig in normally. Having surrounded them, we cut off the sniper. This sniper realized that we were ours - he was close to us and could not change his position, he got into the bag. He started shouting that we were our own. The shooting subsided. After, a little while later, he led us through the mined areas to his own. Honestly, they were very lucky, and so were we. One of them was wounded in the leg (in the flesh). Anyway, that's how that episode with the special forces ended."
If this comment is to be believed [which would later be fully corroborated by the sapper's account from the group] - then on the 22nd we lost two more soldiers killed by 233 Group fire. Most likely the batteries in the radios had finally run out the previous day, and the rockets did not realize or believe it. But this extremely sad incident shows how an attempt to attack a special forces group in a prepared position and ready for battle could end....
>wall of text
would it kill you to format your posts?
Is this that big firefight that happened at the peak of some hill or mountain?
Nice post OP. Thx for the read.
Boy... the moment I read about going out with Less Than Minimum gear I could take poison that it would massively bite them in the ass later - exactly as it did. Never skip out on essential gear. Of course I'm not surprised by the way the Russian military operates based on the footage etc I've seen about the Chechen Wars and now RUS-UKR war.
Miracle that one guy survived. And yeah, it was a fricked up ambush they found themselves in. But it seems like the takeaway is not "how to avoid such a possible ambush" but rather "to avoid the dozen or more fundamental mistakes that led up to this ambush prior"
The final incident of course with the two spirits ahead of them and then getting sniped and killed by friendlies was almost comical. However make no mistake this kind of tomfoolery will happen to all at least once.
On the topic of Chechen Wars:
does anyone have or have a link to a radio communication recording from the Russians that used to be easily found on the internet?
The one I have in mind is where a RU unit is taking cover in an apartment building with Chechen keeping it under fire. The RU unit commander repeatedly asks for support (a transport out of there) with no avail. The officer on the other end suggests taking some locals in the building as hostages to ensure surviving the night. At one point the suppressed unit commander is also put through to a helicopter gunship unit where he curses them out for not flying in to support them
it's from the documentary "First Chechen War 1995-1996" and the clip you mentioned can still be found on youtube if you use the right keywords