Missing people of the first Chechen war. Lost and forgotten. A laboratory in Chechnya was plundered by local residents

Russian troops fought in Chechnya under the Tsars, when the Caucasus region was just part of the Russian Empire. But in the nineties of the last century, a real massacre began there, the echoes of which have not subsided to this day. The Chechen war in 1994-1996 and in 1999-2000 are two disasters for the Russian army.

Prerequisites for the Chechen wars

The Caucasus has always been a very difficult region for Russia. Issues of nationality, religion, and culture have always been raised very sharply and were resolved in far from peaceful ways.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the influence of separatists increased in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the basis of national and religious hostility, as a result of which the self-proclaimed Republic of Ichkeria was established. She entered into confrontation with Russia.

In November 1991, Boris Yeltsin, then the President of Russia, issued a decree “On the introduction of a state of emergency on the territory of the Chechen-Ingush Republic.” But this decree was not supported in the Supreme Council of Russia, due to the fact that most of the seats there were occupied by Yeltsin’s opponents.

In 1992, on March 3, Dzhokhar Dudayev said that he would enter into negotiations only when Chechnya received complete independence. A few days later, on the twelfth, the Chechen parliament adopted a new constitution, self-proclaiming the country as a secular independent state.

Almost immediately all government buildings, all military bases, all strategically important objects were captured. The territory of Chechnya completely came under the control of the separatists. From that moment on, legitimate centralized power ceased to exist. The situation got out of control: the trade in arms and people flourished, drug trafficking passed through the territory, bandits robbed the population (especially the Slavic ones).

In June 1993, soldiers from Dudayev's personal guard seized the parliament building in Grozny, and Dudayev himself proclaimed the emergence of a “sovereign Ichkeria” - a state that he completely controlled.

A year later, the First Chechen War (1994-1996) will begin, which will mark the beginning of a whole series of wars and conflicts that have become, perhaps, the bloodiest and most brutal throughout the entire territory of the former Soviet Union.

First Chechen: the beginning

In 1994, on the eleventh of December, Russian troops in three groups entered the territory of Chechnya. One entered from the west, through North Ossetia, another - through Mozdok, and the third group - from the territory of Dagestan. Initially, command was entrusted to Eduard Vorobyov, but he refused and resigned, citing complete unpreparedness for this operation. Later, the operation in Chechnya will be headed by Anatoly Kvashnin.

Of the three groups, only the Mozdok group was able to successfully reach Grozny on December 12th - the other two were blocked in different parts of Chechnya by local residents and partisan militant groups. A few days later, the remaining two groups of Russian troops approached Grozny and blocked it from all sides, with the exception of the southern direction. Until the start of the assault from this side, access to the city would be free for militants; this later influenced the siege of Grozny by federal troops.

Storm of Grozny

On December 31, 1994, the assault began, which claimed many lives of Russian soldiers and remained one of the most tragic episodes in Russian history. About two hundred units of armored vehicles entered Grozny from three sides, which were almost powerless in the conditions of street fighting. There was poor communication between the companies, which made it difficult to coordinate joint actions.

Russian troops are stuck on the streets of the city, constantly falling under the crossfire of militants. The battalion of the Maykop brigade, which advanced the furthest to the city center, was surrounded and was almost completely destroyed along with its commander, Colonel Savin. The battalion of the Petrakuvsky motorized rifle regiment, which went to the rescue of the “Maikopians”, after two days of fighting consisted of about thirty percent of the original composition.

By the beginning of February, the number of attackers was increased to seventy thousand people, but the assault on the city continued. It was not until the third of February that Grozny was blocked from the south and encircled.

On March 6, part of the last detachments of Chechen separatists was killed, others left the city. Grozny remained under the control of Russian troops. In fact, little remained of the city - both sides actively used both artillery and armored vehicles, so Grozny was practically in ruins.

In the rest of the area there were continuous local battles between Russian troops and militant groups. In addition, the militants prepared and carried out a series (June 1995) in Kizlyar (January 1996). In March 1996, militants made an attempt to recapture Grozny, but the assault was repelled by Russian soldiers. And Dudayev was liquidated.

In August, the militants repeated their attempt to take Grozny, this time they were successful. Many important facilities in the city were blocked by the separatists, and Russian troops suffered very heavy losses. Along with Grozny, the militants took Gudermes and Argun. On August 31, 1996, the Khasavyurt Agreement was signed - the First Chechen War ended with huge losses for Russia.

Human losses in the First Chechen War

The data varies depending on which side is doing the counting. Actually, this is not surprising and it has always been this way. Therefore, all options are provided below.

Losses in the Chechen War (table No. 1 according to the headquarters of the Russian troops):

The two numbers in each column indicating the losses of Russian troops are two headquarters investigations that were conducted a year apart.

According to the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, the consequences of the Chechen war are completely different. The number of people killed there alone is about fourteen thousand.

Losses in the Chechen War (table No. 2) of militants according to Ichkeria and a human rights organization:

Among the civilian population, Memorial put forward a figure of 30-40 thousand people, and Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation A. I. Lebed - 80,000.

Second Chechen: main events

Even after the signing of the peace agreements, Chechnya did not become calmer. Militants were in charge, there was a brisk trade in drugs and weapons, people were kidnapped and killed. There was anxiety on the border between Dagestan and Chechnya.

After a series of kidnappings of major businessmen, officers, and journalists, it became clear that the continuation of the conflict in a more acute phase was simply inevitable. Moreover, since April, small groups of militants began to probe the weak points of the defense of Russian troops, preparing an invasion of Dagestan. The invasion operation was led by Basayev and Khattab. The place where the militants planned to strike was in the mountainous zone of Dagestan. There, the small number of Russian troops was combined with the inconvenient location of the roads, along which reinforcements could not be transferred very quickly. On August 7, 1999, militants crossed the border.

The main striking force of the bandits were mercenaries and Islamists from Al-Qaeda. The fighting continued for almost a month with varying success, but finally the militants were driven back to Chechnya. At the same time, the bandits carried out a number of terrorist attacks in different cities of Russia, including Moscow.

As a response, on September 23, a powerful shelling of Grozny began, and a week later, Russian troops entered Chechnya.

Human losses in the Second Chechen War among Russian military personnel

The situation changed, and Russian troops now played a dominant role. But many mothers never saw their sons.

Losses in the Chechen War (table No. 3):

In June 2010, the commander in chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs cited the following figures: 2,984 killed and about 9,000 wounded.

Militant losses

Losses in the Chechen War (table No. 4):

Civilian casualties

According to officially confirmed data, as of February 2001, over a thousand civilians were killed. In S. V. Ryazantsev’s book “Demographic and Migration Portrait of the North Caucasus,” the losses of the parties in the Chechen War are called five thousand people, although we are talking about 2003.

Judging by the assessment of the Amnesty International organization, which calls itself non-governmental and objective, there were about twenty-five thousand civilian deaths. They can count for a long time and diligently, but when asked: “How many actually died in the Chechen war?” - hardly anyone will give an intelligible answer.

Results of the war: peace conditions, restoration of Chechnya

While the Chechen war was going on, the loss of equipment, enterprises, land, any resources and everything else was not even considered, because people always remain the main ones. But the war ended, Chechnya remained part of Russia, and the need arose to restore the republic practically from ruins.

Huge amounts of money were allocated for Grozny. After several assaults, there were almost no entire buildings left there, but at the moment it is a large and beautiful city.

The economy of the republic was also raised artificially - it was necessary to give time for the population to get used to the new realities, so that new factories and farms could be built. Roads, communication lines, and electricity were needed. Today we can say that the republic has almost completely emerged from the crisis.

Chechen wars: reflected in films, books

Dozens of films were made based on events that took place in Chechnya. Many books have been published. Now it is no longer possible to understand where are the fictions and where are the real horrors of war. The Chechen war (like the war in Afghanistan) claimed too many lives and swept through an entire generation, so it simply could not remain unnoticed. Russia's losses in the Chechen wars are colossal, and, according to some researchers, the losses are even greater than during the ten years of war in Afghanistan. Below is a list of films that most deeply show us the tragic events of the Chechen campaigns.

• documentary film of five episodes "Chechen Trap";
• "Purgatory";
• "Cursed and Forgotten";
• "Prisoner of the Caucasus".

Many fiction and journalistic books describe the events in Chechnya. For example, the now famous writer Zakhar Prilepin fought as part of the Russian troops, who wrote the novel “Pathologies” specifically about this war. Writer and publicist Konstantin Semenov published a series of stories "Grozny Stories" (about the storming of the city) and the novel "We were betrayed by our homeland." Vyacheslav Mironov’s novel “I Was in This War” is dedicated to the storming of Grozny.

Video recordings made in Chechnya by rock musician Yuri Shevchuk are widely known. He and his group "DDT" performed more than once in Chechnya in front of Russian soldiers in Grozny and at military bases.

Conclusion

The State Council of Chechnya published data from which it follows that almost one hundred and sixty thousand people died between 1991 and 2005 - this figure includes militants, civilians, and Russian soldiers. One hundred sixty thousand.

Even if the numbers are exaggerated (which is quite likely), the volume of losses is still simply colossal. Russia's losses in the Chechen wars are a terrible memory of the nineties. The old wound will ache and itch in every family that lost a man there, in the Chechen war.

In Chechnya, a database of people missing during two military campaigns has been officially published. According to official data, this is more than five thousand people - those whose fate is still unknown to their loved ones.

There are also a lot of unmarked graves in Chechnya, there are even mass graves. However, the difficulty is that the republic does not have a genetic laboratory that could carry out enormous identification work.

NTV's own correspondent in Chechnya Fatima Dadaeva I was figuring out how to solve this problem.

The only database on searching for missing persons in Chechnya is now in electronic version. Information from various sources was collected literally bit by bit over several years. The lists are constantly updated. Often public organizations report disappearances, but relatives do not write statements.

Malika Ezhieva, consultant to the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic: “We put on the website everything that is known about this person - a photograph, when he was born, disappeared, if known, then where, the circumstances - we write everything.”

For 14 years now, one of the women has been looking for her only son. He went missing in December 1994 during the assault on Grozny. He ran out of the house with a bucket of water to give water to his wounded neighbors. No one has seen him since then. Zara turned to every authority in search of her son, but all attempts were in vain. She found him neither among the living nor among the dead.

Zara Elzhurkaeva: “I hoped for my son that he would be my support, my breadwinner. But fate decreed differently."

Officially, about 5 thousand people went missing during the two military campaigns. There are more than 60 mass graves on the territory of the republic. One of them is in the Leninsky district of Grozny, not far from the Christian cemetery. According to eyewitnesses, there are 800 unidentified bodies in the mass grave. Mostly these are civilians. Almost all the burials are overgrown with weeds, making them almost impossible to recognize.

Shamad Dzhabrailov, head of the department of the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic: “The difficulty is that they did not put an identification mark that people are buried here or that there is a large burial place here.”

There is no work with mass graves in Chechnya; there is no genetic laboratory to identify the bodies of those killed. The Council of Europe promised to help with the purchase of equipment, but have not yet decided in which region of Russia to build the laboratory.

Masud Chumakov, head of the forensic medical examination bureau of the Ministry of Health of the Chechen Republic: “Since the war was here, then the bone material, all the cadaveric remains, are in our republic. You understand: they lay in the ground for 15 years. They may not reach Moscow in normal condition. Therefore, it is necessary to do everything here.”

The question of building a laboratory remains open. Therefore, in order not to get lost, they decided to make a temporary fence for all the burials. According to experts, the identity of many of the victims can be established without DNA analysis. Before burial, a special commission described the bodies of those killed in detail and hung signs with the serial number. But where the archive is located is unknown.

According to Novaya Gazeta estimates, at least 12,000 military personnel died during the two Chechen wars. Civilians - at least 40,000 The first Chechen war lasted two years. The second Chechen military campaign has been going on for four years now, which...

According to Novaya Gazeta estimates, at least 12,000 military personnel died during the two Chechen wars. Civilians - at least 40,000

P The first Chechen war lasted two years. The second Chechen military campaign has been going on for four years now, which is claiming the lives of Russian soldiers, officers, and civilians every day. Is it even known how many died? Who calculates these irretrievable losses and how?
It turns out that dozens of government and public organizations and various law enforcement agencies are counting the dead. Their list alone would take up significant space in this publication, so I will list only the main ones: Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate (GOMU) of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces; Main Headquarters of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; Military Medical Directorate of the FSB; special logistics department of the Armed Forces; Commission under the President of Russia on prisoners of war, internees and missing persons; 124th laboratory of medical and forensic examination of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation; committees of soldiers' mothers; Russian Information Center; military commissariats at various levels; human rights organizations “Memorial” and “Mother’s Right”; the prosecutor's office of the United Group of Russian Forces in Chechnya; military insurance companies of law enforcement agencies...
But with this diversity and large number of those counting, no one can name an exact and general figure. Some - public human rights organizations - would like to do this, but are not sufficiently informed. Others speaking on behalf of the state, with rare exceptions, are passive and indifferent. And as a result, society in general and the authorities in particular do not know, and sometimes do not want to know, the truth.
At the very beginning of the second Chechen campaign, all information about those killed in Chechnya flowed into the specially created government Rosinformtsentr, which quite regularly announced data on losses through the mouths of official government officials - as a rule, assistant to the Russian President Yastrzhembsky or First Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Manilov. Journalists and human rights activists treated this information differently, mostly with distrust. She really was flawed in some way. In particular, the calculation methodology was not disclosed, no analysis was carried out: losses were not divided into combat and non-combat, and those who died in hospitals as a result of injuries were not taken into account. But still, it was possible to at least somehow build on this information, supplementing it with information from other sources.
The Rosinformtsentr exists to this day, but since April 2001, after changes in the country's leadership and the Ministry of Defense, the RIC has not provided any information about those killed in Chechnya, apparently simply not having it in its possession. In any case, in a telephone conversation, a representative of the center said: “We are not involved in calculating losses in Chechnya.”
Who then generalizes this data, compiling lists for all law enforcement agencies? And no one. Then another question: who should do it?
Logically, since the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya until September 1 of this year, for the last three years out of four, the Federal Security Service, the FSB, was responsible and had to count the losses among everyone involved in this operation. But no, it doesn't count. Moreover, she did not report to Russian society about the results of her leadership activities. And even about the losses among employees of their department - silence.
Well, let's do the math ourselves - for all the power structures performing certain tasks in Chechnya.

Losses of troops subordinate to the Ministry of Defense
The official figure for the total losses in Chechnya of military personnel subordinate to the Ministry of Defense was announced at the end of 2002. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reported that from October 1, 1999 to December 23, 2002, 2,750 servicemen of the Ministry of Defense were killed in Chechnya.
But there is a serious flaw in this information. The fighting against the Basayev and Khattab gangs in the Botlikh and Tsumadinsky regions of Dagestan began in early August 1999. At the end of August - beginning of September, clashes took place with Wahhabis in the villages of Chabanmakhi and Karamakhi in the Buinaksky region of Dagestan. Then, at the same time, in September 1999, the gangs of Khattab and Basayev attacked the Novolaksky district of Dagestan. For some reason, the Minister of Defense did not take into account those whom his department lost during these two months of active fighting.
The losses of units of the Ministry of Defense, internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police (and not only Dagestan police officers, but also combined detachments from various regions of Russia), even according to official data, in August-September 1999 exceeded 300 people. According to our data, taking into account those who died in hospitals and military personnel of various law enforcement agencies in Dagestan, there are more than 500 people. At least half of them are soldiers and officers of the Ministry of Defense.
On July 17 of this year, while in Rostov-on-Don, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced the number of military deaths in his department over the six months of this year: 148 dead. Taking into account those who died during the year due to injuries incompatible with life (we received this information from our own sources, and they certainly cannot be complete. - V.I.), losses of military personnel of the Ministry of Defense during combat operations - with August 1999 in Dagestan to September 2003 in Chechnya - exceed 3,500 people.
Let me remind readers: over the two years of the first Chechen campaign, the official figure for military casualties in the Ministry of Defense units was 3,006 at the end of December 1996. Taking into account the bodies of soldiers and officers identified in the 124th Rostov laboratory of medical and forensic examination, exhumed in Chechnya in later years, who died in hospitals or at home within a year after being wounded, the figure for losses during the first campaign also exceeds 3,500 people.
But all these figures cannot be considered complete and final. According to official data from the Commission under the President of Russia on prisoners of war, internees and missing persons, announced on February 20 of this year at a meeting of the expert advisory council, 832 military personnel are wanted (after two Chechen campaigns). 590 of them are from units of the Ministry of Defense, 236 are from units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and 6 people are from other law enforcement agencies.
Sad experience shows that most of these people are most likely no longer alive.
But that's not all. At the Bogorodskoye cemetery in the city of Noginsk near Moscow, the unidentified remains of 266 military personnel were buried, whom the 124th Rostov laboratory could not identify. 235 of them died in the first Chechen campaign and 31 in the second.
So, let’s summarize: the Ministry of Defense alone lost more than 8,000 people (4,000 for each of the two Chechen wars).

Losses of military personnel of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police
In the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Internal Troops, the accounting of losses in Chechnya is organized much better than in the Ministry of Defense. This is the opinion of not only the author, but also of experts from the Commission under the President of Russia. The facts speak to this.
A special group at the General Headquarters of the Internal Troops keeps a record of casualties in Chechnya. In addition, lists of dead soldiers and officers are published in the departmental magazine “At the Combat Post.” Its editor-in-chief, Colonel Viktor Ulyanovsky, attaches special importance to this work. He specially appointed two officers to deal with the Book of Remembrance. One of them, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kolesnikov, has extensive experience in this work since the time of the first Chechen campaign. In order not to miss a single name, he is in constant contact not only with the command and the General Staff of the Internal Troops, but also with committees of soldiers’ mothers in various regions of Russia, and corresponds with the relatives of the victims. Therefore, we treat official data on the dead servicemen of the internal troops with greater confidence.
But it is still possible to make some adjustments to them. At the end of August, the list of killed internal troops during the second Chechen campaign included 1,054 names. But this does not take into account the many who died within a year of being wounded. In addition, among the 236 servicemen of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who are wanted according to the presidential commission, almost half went missing in the second Chechen campaign, some of them are among the unidentified 26 people who are buried in the Bogorodskoye cemetery. Based on all this, at least 200 people most likely need to be added to the official death toll.
The losses of internal troops during the four years of the second Chechen campaign are actually similar to the losses during the two years of the first war. Let me remind you: according to official data, 1,238 people died in the internal troops during the first Chechen campaign.
While official data on the dead members of the internal troops are known by name, full information on the police officers killed in Chechnya was not reported. Sometimes information was given about the total number of losses among employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - internal troops and police. Knowing the data on explosives, it is possible to determine with a high degree of probability that more than 1,100 Russian police officers died in Chechnya (including Chechen police officers).
The most difficult year for the combined police detachments sent to Chechnya from different regions of Russia was the year 2000, especially its first half, when bandits deliberately ambushed police officers. This is how the Perm, Novosibirsk, and Penza combined detachments died. Some police bases in Chechnya were rammed by trucks loaded with explosives and driven by suicide bombers. On March 2, 2000, as a result of fatal mistakes and criminal negligence of their superiors, a convoy of Sergiev Posad riot police died in the area of ​​Starye Promysly near Grozny.
By 2002, the Chechen police were formed, and the bandits switched to them. Guided land mines, explosions of regional police departments in Grozny and regional centers with dozens of deaths in each case are characteristic of this year.
Summarizing the figures for the losses of internal troops and police personnel, we can conclude that over the four years of the last campaign, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs lost at least 2,350 people in Chechnya.
Accordingly, for two wars - no less than 3850 people.

Losses of other security forces
According to our estimates, at least 100 people - border guards, FSB officers and prosecutors - have died in Chechnya over the past four years. There are no official data on these departments.
The author of these lines turned to the border guards for official information. But after this summer the Federal Border Service was reorganized and became a structural unit of the Federal Security Service, the press service of the border guards advised me to contact the FSB.
I called the head of the Public Relations Center (PSC) of the FSB, Sergei Ignatchenko, and asked for data on losses among border guards and FSB officers. Sergei Nikolaevich politely said that there was no such information officially. But then I corrected myself that it is not given monthly - it is only given at the end of the year. He suggested looking for the figure for 2002 on the FSB.ru website. Alas, this site contains data on the losses of militants in Chechnya: the announced figure is 1000 people. But there is no information about the losses of FSB officers, much less border guards.
Summing up the losses of military personnel of all law enforcement agencies in Chechnya, we can say with a high degree of confidence that during the four years of the second Chechen campaign, about 6,500 people died: about 4 thousand - the Ministry of Defense, at least 2,350 - the Ministry of Internal Affairs (police and internal troops) and at least 100 - from other law enforcement agencies.
During the two years of the first Chechen campaign, at least 5,500 people died.
True, there is an organization that gives different figures - the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers. The co-chair of the union, Valentina Melnikova, told me that, according to their data, at least 14 thousand military personnel died in the first Chechen campaign, and 10-12 thousand in the second. She admitted that these numbers are not provided by the names of the dead (for the second campaign there is a list of only two thousand dead).
As we managed to find out, these calculations are made as follows: the announced official number of wounded is divided by three - based on the fact that, as Valentina Dmitrievna says, according to the method established throughout the world, for every three wounded there is one dead. (This is exactly what they thought during World War II.)
I don't think these calculations are correct. The specifics of combat operations in Chechnya and Afghanistan are different than during large-scale, total wars. Medicine now has other possibilities. Even if we take specific military operations as an example, they in no way fall under the scheme of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers. Near Ulus-Kert at the end of February 2000, bandits destroyed 86 Pskov paratroopers from the famous sixth company - only four remained alive. Similar things happened in the first campaign - for example, the death of seventy-six out of more than a hundred servicemen of the 245th motorized rifle regiment who were ambushed on April 16, 1996 between the villages of Dachu-Borzoy and Yarysh-Mardy. There are also directly opposite cases, when a large-scale military operation took place with almost no losses, but was accompanied by a large number of wounded.
In no way do I want to offend the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers - their attempts to find out the truth deserve the deepest respect and are understandable: after all, official information about losses is either flawed or completely hidden. It is the position of the leadership of the law enforcement agencies and the country as a whole that gives rise to myths, and sometimes various speculations about the losses of the Russian military in Chechnya.

About the dead and missing residents of Chechnya
There is much less clarity and truth in this issue than in the issue of dead and missing servicemen.
In reality, no one counts the dead residents of Chechnya. According to the State Statistics Committee of Russia, from 30 to 40 thousand inhabitants died in Chechnya during the first war (even statistics give approximate figures!). Over the four years of the second campaign - from 10 to 20 thousand people. According to the Memorial human rights center, already in the spring of 2000, the number of Chechen residents who died in the second war exceeded 6 thousand people, and today it is over 10 thousand. One of the leading employees of Memorial, Alexander Cherkasov, told me about this. At the same time, the list of names compiled by Memorial based on statements from relatives of the victims included only 1,259 names as of September 1 of this year.
Novaya Gazeta correspondent Mainat Abdulaeva received from the Minister of Health of Chechnya Musa Akhmadov in April of this year a different number of civilian deaths - 3,500 people.
As for the missing residents of Chechnya, the information also varies.
Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen government Movsar Khamidov said that more than 2,800 people were missing. The Prosecutor's Office of the Chechen Republic, based on statements from citizens, gives a different number of missing people - 1900. The list of missing people in Chechnya for the first campaign alone consisted of 1523 names.

Action
Another issue that has become the subject of speculation, primarily from the leaders of the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya, is the number of living and killed militants.
Our security forces speak about two to three thousand fighting militants every year. At the same time, if we proceed from the figures announced by them of killed militants and bandits, these two or three thousand overlap many times over.
One thing is certain: our military voices the losses of militants much more often and more willingly than data about their own dead soldiers and officers, and they count the enemy’s losses more confidently.
The methodology for calculating losses remains unclear to the public and therefore does not inspire any confidence. True, high-ranking generals did let slip on this matter several times.
Former commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Colonel General Gennady Troshev, when asked by journalists how the military counts the losses of militants in Chechnya, reported his original method: a helicopter rises, flies around Chechen cemeteries, and the military counts fresh graves. Their number is given as the number of militants killed.
The then Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia, Colonel General Fedorov, made approximately the same excuse at a hearing in the State Duma on April 6, 2000. He argued that a column of Sergiev Posad riot police was ambushed on March 2, not by their own colleagues, but by militants. At the same time, he said: the attacking militants were destroyed. And they were counted in the same way - based on fresh graves in the cemetery.

AND the latest on the topic of losses in Chechnya. No one is looking for those who disappeared in Chechnya between 1996 and 1999. I am writing about this at the request of the mothers of missing Russians: captain of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Dmitry Bobryshev, journalist Vladimir Yatsina and Moscow physicist Mikhail Kurnosov.
Almost every day Nadezhda Ivanovna Yatsina, the mother of an ITAR-TASS correspondent who was kidnapped by bandits and disappeared in Chechnya, calls me at the newspaper and repeats the same phrase: “Is the fate of our children really indifferent to everyone?” And she herself answered for the last time: “The next elections of State Duma deputies and the president are coming soon. The authorities need us only as an electorate.”

P.S.. We expect to continue working to clarify the number of dead and missing residents of Chechnya. If it is not needed by those who govern our state, then it is needed by those who live in it. So that decades later history teachers do not tell their students shamefully approximate figures - plus or minus so many thousands, as they say now about the Great Patriotic War: 20-30 million.

In September-October 1996, figures for the losses of the Russian army and internal troops in the Chechen war were made public; the Ministry of Defense and the Main Directorate of the Commander of Internal Troops published martyrologies. It would seem that the issue has been clarified and a line can be drawn. However, a simple comparison of these figures suggests otherwise.
On October 2, 1996, speaking in the State Duma, Secretary of the Security Council A. LEBED stated:

The losses of the federal troops, according to official data, were 3,726 killed, 17,892 wounded, and 1,906 missing.

In issue 236/237 of "Red Star" dated October 12, 1996, the "List of servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces who died in the Chechen Republic (as of October 4, 1996)" was published, which lists the surnames, first names, patronymics and military ranks of 2941 Human. In the "Book of Memory" this list is published indicating military units - but there are 2939 people in it.
According to the Information Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, released on September 23, during the fighting from December 11, 1994 to September 1996, 921 servicemen of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation were killed, about 4,500 were wounded, 279 were missing, and 50 were forcibly detained. In the issues of the newspaper "Trud" dated November 11–14, 1996, a list of the dead military personnel of the Internal Troops was published as of October 20, which listed the last names, first names, patronymics and dates of death of 941 people.
According to information from the headquarters of the United Group (Khankala), as of October 13, 1996, the losses of the federal forces amounted to 4,103 killed (2,846 - Moscow Region, 1,257 - Ministry of Internal Affairs), wounded - 19,794 (13,280 - Moscow Region, 6,514 - Ministry of Internal Affairs). The wanted lists, which included prisoners, missing persons and some who left without permission, included 1,231 people (858 - Ministry of Defense, 366 - Ministry of Internal Affairs, 7 - Federal Border Guard Service).
As of November 11, 1996, the 124th LSU received more than 815 bodies of the dead, of which 368 were identified.
These figures provide material for many comparisons.
Let's compare only two of them: information on the number of killed Defense Ministry personnel from the headquarters of the Joint Group (2846) and from the list published in Red Star (2941). The reasons for the discrepancy become clear when analyzing the second list.
In March 1996, in response to a request from the State Duma Commission, First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation M. KOLESNIKOV provided lists of killed, missing and captured Russian military personnel during the armed conflict in the Chechen Republic. The list of the dead was then classified as “Secret”. A later version of this particular list was published in Krasnaya Zvezda on October 12, 1996. Analysis of the spring list revealed about 100 entries that duplicate each other with minor discrepancies: while the first name, patronymic and military rank are the same, there are minor differences in the spelling of surnames. In the publication of "Red Star" this feature of the March "secret" list is preserved; it contains 114 supposedly overlapping personalities. The numbers of military units according to the “Book of Memory” list in these cases also often coincide. For example, lieutenants ANCHENKO Oleg Konstantinovich and PANCHENKO Oleg Konstantinovich (military units 65364 and 65264), majors BABKO Alexander Ivanovich and BOBKO Alexander Ivanovich (both - military unit 54607), privates BABUCHENKO Eduard Robertovich (military unit 54607) and BOBUCHENKO Eduard Robertovich (military unit 61931 - 324 msp), BEKEYEV Tukhtorbay Abdulaevich and BIKEYEV Tukhtorbay Abdulvalievich (both military unit 66431 - 693 msp), BASTALAKY Mikhail Sergeevich and PASTALATY Mikhail Sergeevich (both military unit 34605 - 255 msp), BAZD sailors YREV Andrey Alexandrovich (military unit 81285) and BUZDIREV Andrey Aleksandrovich (military unit 72148).
A similar situation usually arises when the final list is compiled not on the basis of an array of personal files or a file cabinet, but by repeatedly combining a number of lists. Errors arise most often when transferring information from list to list, especially when lists that already contained erroneous information about individual people were brought together. The secrecy of this final list summing up the losses of the Russian Defense Ministry for external observers excluded the possibility of correcting errors or simply noticing duplication. Secrecy and lack of control allowed the compilers not to check the list at all. In addition, the “secret” list of the dead was inaccessible, in particular, to the officers directly involved in the search for missing and captured military personnel, which made it difficult to clarify the real fate of the soldiers.
Reconciling the lists of dead was difficult not only organizationally, but also technically. In the Red Star list, the surnames are arranged almost alphabetically (for example, SAPLIN comes after SIDELNIKOV), while with automatic computer sorting, strict ordering occurs. An explanation for this was found in television reports about the work of the Ministry of Defense's Hotline with appeals from relatives of military personnel. There one could see the “database” used - an alphabetical list in the Lexicon text editor, the reconciliation of which was carried out almost manually, despite the use of a computer.
Let us note another feature of the official list of the dead of the RF Ministry of Defense: although duplication of personalities increased the official number of dead by three to five percent, in reality the total number of dead may be underestimated. A systematic comparison of the lists of military personnel killed in Chechnya with official lists received from the regions in Komsomolskaya Pravda, carried out in the spring and summer of 1996 as part of the “Search” project, revealed the following pattern: from ten to fifteen percent of the personalities from the regional lists were absent from the federal list. This systematic error, however, could be due to the slowness of departmental correspondence. Now, after the end of hostilities, it is necessary to repeat this comparison.
The first responses to the published list also indicate serious shortcomings. Thus, the commander of one of the divisions that took part in the fighting in Chechnya stated that the division lost 287 people in Chechnya, of which 30 were not included in the Red Star list, and the names of 43 were distorted.
Some military personnel were listed both on the lists of the dead and on the lists of missing persons and prisoners.
The lists of dead military personnel of the Armed Forces, Internal Troops and Federal Guard Service, which we publish in the appendix to the report, contain more than 4,300 personalities.

To make it clear how people disappeared during this war, we will provide detailed evidence of three tragic soldiers’ destinies.

The death of special forces of the 218 ODShB Special Forces of the 45th separate regiment of the Special Forces of the Airborne Forces in January 1995 in Grozny.

Back on January 6, 1995, the 45th Airborne Special Forces Special Forces, together with the USO FSK, occupied the complex of GNI buildings. At this moment, the regiment was engaged in the fight against snipers, so it can be assumed that similar events were planned and carried out in the area of ​​the Council of Ministers. Be that as it may, on the morning of January 8, soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd companies of the 218th Special Forces DShB left the area of ​​the cannery. The special forces were deployed in at least three groups. At about 11:30 they came under mortar fire on Oktyabrskaya Street (besides this street, other places were also named - Gospitalnaya Street, etc. Revolutions between the State Tax Inspectorate and the Council of Ministers)

1st group: 3rd company 218 ODShB Special Forces Airborne Forces.

Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Vitalievich Palkin
Sergeant Valery Afonchenkov
Private Yuri Khazov
Sergey Babin and others.

Sergeant Valery Afonchenkov from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces: “That day we were going to storm the Council of Ministers. And before the rush through open terrain, Lieutenant Zelenkovsky sent me earlier, and left Sergei Tumaev with him. I told them that I would not go anywhere without them , but they don’t argue with the commanders. I managed to reach the building with the first group, but they were delayed a little. Then explosions were heard, both near us and there, but we still didn’t know that the whole group was covered.” Private Yuri Khazov from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces: “We ran across the square and disappeared into the basement. The shelling was such that it seemed that the entire building would collapse on us, everything was shaking. The second group, where Sergei Tumaev was, got in touch: they are waiting "The end of the mortar attack. Then communication with the group was lost. After some time, another group of paratroopers reported on the radio that they were covered with mines. The operation was canceled, and we returned."

2nd group: 2nd company 218 ODShB Special Forces Airborne Forces

Senior Lieutenant Sergei Nikolaevich Romashenko
Lieutenant Andrey Andreevich Avramenko
Lieutenant Igor Nikolaevich Chebotarev
Ensign Dmitry Vitalievich Lakota
Sergeant Maxim Nikolaevich Kislichko
Contract sergeant Alexander Yuryevich Polikarpov
Private Sergei Petrovich Putyakov
Private Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Wenzel
Captain Andrei Viktorovich Zelenkovsky from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces
Private Sergei Vladimirovich Tumaev from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces
Lieutenant Vladimir Mikhailovich Artemenko from 218 Special Forces

From the description of the battle: “Romashenko’s unit was moving behind Palkin’s group. Suddenly the words of Sergei Romashenko cut through the air: “A strong mortar shelling has begun, let me wait!” Romashenko did not get in touch again. As it became known later, he was strongly shell-shocked, but managed to report the situation to the command and controlled the unit until the end."

Major Sergei Ivanovich Shavrin from the USO FSK: “They had to overcome the area, and at that time the first test mine arrived, then a series of four... One hit our Tunguska anti-aircraft installation, the ammunition detonated, three officers servicing the installation were killed at once ". Behind the Tunguska, a dozen and a half soldiers with full weapons were hiding. Plastic and flamethrowers began to burst. 8 people immediately died, the rest died from wounds. A paratrooper, senior lieutenant Igor Chebotarev, was with us as the commander of an armored personnel carrier. That day he was in this group. He Both legs were torn off, and the officer died from loss of blood."

According to the mother of Private Tumaev, at the site of the group’s death an armored personnel carrier was hit, the fuel from which began to leak and burn.

Group 3 (only version for now!)

Major Alexander A. Skobennikov
Perhaps in the same group were Senior Lieutenant Konstantin Mikhailovich Golubeev and Private Vladimir Vitalievich Kareev from the 901st Special Forces, who died on January 8.
Major Alexander A. Skobennikov from the 45th Special Forces Regiment: “I myself barely survived. We advanced to a new frontier. We moved in small groups - three people at a time. We will run across open space, gather in some gateway or in a remote yard and forward again. The radio operator was following me. I heard him scream. I returned to him, he was sitting among the broken bricks and groaning - he had sprained his leg. While he was taking off his boot, he was setting the dislocation - there was an explosion ahead. We walked forward - a crater. As it turned out, the guys were hung with explosives and "Bumblebees", and all this detonated from the explosion of a mine. If the radio operator had not tripped, he and I would have ended up with the guys in this crater..."

Identification and evacuation of the dead

Deputy commander of the 901st Special Forces, Lieutenant Colonel V. Lozovoy: “After the end of the mortar raid [at about 14:00 hours13], an additional group of the 901st battalion and one of the combined arms units with a first aid detachment came to the location of the group to provide assistance. After inspecting the area, everyone the wounded and dead were taken to the collection point on the territory of the 2nd city hospital." Sergeant V. Afonchenkov from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces: “Then there was an identification of the corpses, or rather what was left of them. Two were missing and one could not be identified. There was no Zelenkovsky, Tumaev and Wenzel. If you think that then Zelenkovsky was found and buried, then this is not so. The funeral was fictitious, with an empty coffin - so that the mother would pay the insurance. Me and Yura Khazov and another from our group [Sergei Babin] had to identify the remaining corpse. And we identified it. These were the remains of Sergei Tumaev "

Private Yu. Khazov from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces: “When the remains were unloaded at the cannery, we recognized all but three bodies. Then we identified two more, and one was taken to Mozdok unidentified. The body was completely burnt, with the exception of a small piece on back. In the burnt remains of clothes lying around here, Valera and I found a piece of the sweater that Seryoga was wearing. And I also noticed one detail that no one paid attention to - even from the day of conscription it struck me that Sergei had one half of the upper teeth were exactly chipped off. It was this very tooth that I noticed on the burnt skull. We also saw Sergei’s weapon - a piece of twisted metal, and he never let it go from his hands." (Subsequently, a tag with Wenzel’s last name was mistakenly attached to Tumaev’s body. He was buried under his own name only on March 19, 2001, and Wenzel has been listed as missing since that time...

Losses in the 218 ODShB Special Forces Airborne Forces.

Major S.I. Shavrin: “After several days of fighting, in one of the companies of the 45th Airborne Regiment, three people remained out of twenty-seven who entered Grozny.”

“In the 3rd company of Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Palkin, four people remained safe and sound. All the officers were out of action, only two survived.”

Lieutenant of the Airborne Forces Avramenko Andrey Andreevich, born on 02/06/1970 in the village of Brinkovskaya, Primorsko-Akhtarsky district, Krasnodar Territory. Graduate of NVOKU 1993

He took part in hostilities in Chechnya from December 1994. He died during the storming of the Council of Ministers of Grozny on January 8, 1995 as part of the 218th Separate Special Forces Battalion of the 45th Airborne Division.

Awarded the Order of Courage (posthumously). He was buried in his native village.

PYASETSKY Nikolai Nikolaevich

Private Nikolai Nikolaevich PIASETSKY On January 1, 1995, he was in airborne combat vehicle number 785, which entered Grozny along Staropromyslovskoe Highway in the column of battalion 106 of the Tula Airborne Division. Here is the story of another crew member, Sergei Fedorovich RODIONOV:

At approximately 18.00, when we were breaking through to the railway station, our column was fired upon by the Chechens, and two Nonas caught fire in front of our car. When they exploded, we drove around them, drove straight, and lost our way and were ambushed by the Chechens. Our car was hit by a grenade launcher<...>I got out of the tower and rolled away, I was about 6 meters from the car, and there were already Chechens at the car, they were shooting the wounded at point-blank range, they didn’t notice me in the dark, after 3-5 minutes they took their weapons and left the car.

The survivors were privates RODIONOV, BYCHKOV and the wounded junior sergeant RAZIN:

They crawled to the car, examined the dead SHCHELKUNOV, GONCHARENKO, TUSHIN, BARINOV, PIASETSKY, I took out documents from senior lieutenant PUSHKIN, then climbed into the car, AKTUGANOV, GOLENKO remained there, they were killed by shrapnel, foreman SAENKO was torn apart by shrapnel in the airborne compartment.

As of August 30, 1995, the official lists of the Search Group included Dinar AKTUGANOV, Nikolai PYASETSKY and Vladimir SAENKO as prisoners. Here are excerpts from the story of Anna Ivanovna PYASETSKAYA:

Only on January 11 was I able to contact the Tula division with a demand to return the body of my deceased son. The division responded that Nikolai Pyasetsky was listed as missing. Again calls to the Airborne Forces headquarters. Answer: “Wait, all the bodies are being collected in Rostov-on-Don, the body of your son will be transported to Moscow.” Next call to military unit 41450. Please inform me under what circumstances my son died.<...>The exact place of death has not been established.<...>

On the night of February 1-2, I flew to Rostov. In the commandant's company of the hospital, she looked through all the books for registering the dead. Koli was not among them. They explained to me that only 40 percent of the total number of dead had been identified. Then we had to inspect all the cars located in Rostov.

The carriages were filled with the bodies of Russian soldiers. Many could no longer be identified: gnawed by dogs, torn into pieces, burned. After all, more than a month has passed since the start of the war. Rostov was not able to cope with this endless stream of death. In addition to the carriages, there was also a tent city on the territory of the hospital; the tents were also completely filled with bodies.<...>I walked around the carriages and tents, examining each boy, his face, hair, and if there was no head, his arms and legs. My Kolya is noticeable; he has a mole on his right cheek.

Other mothers walked with me. One of them examined all the carriages, and then in the farthest tent she found her boy, but he was listed under a completely different name.

Anna Ivanovna continued her search in Mozdok:

Giving permission for the search, a person from the headquarters said: “Woman, you understand that this spectacle is not for the general public. You are the first who was officially allowed to inspect the carriages.” The bodies in the carriages were not lying on stretchers, as in Rostov, but on the floor. There were only 4 carriages here. I couldn’t find my Kolya again.

On February 9, I left for Grozny.<...>I lived in this unreal city for three weeks, walked around all the streets adjacent to the presidential palace, and here and there I came across uncleaned corpses. It was possible to establish that the son’s car was hit on Mayakovsky Street, between the Friendship of Peoples monument and the Press House. According to eyewitnesses, about 600 Russian soldiers were lying in this place.<...>I met paratroopers, the remnants of Kolya’s company.<...>out of 50 people, only 5 remained in the ranks, the rest were killed or wounded.

Anna Ivanovna continued her search - among prisoners, in the mountains, in territory controlled by the Chechen side.

On April 4 last year, together with other 20 mothers, I reached Vedeno, where Aslan MASKHADOV’s headquarters was located and where, as we thought, there were lists of prisoners of war. We were accommodated for the night with Chechen families. I and three other Russian mothers - Svetlana BELIKOVA, Tatiana IVANOVA and Olga OSIPENKO - lived in Vedeno for almost two months. We traveled to many mountain villages in search of our children, but in vain.

There was a hospital in Vedeno where both Chechen militias and Russian soldiers were treated. I often had to go there - I looked after a seriously wounded Russian soldier after a complex operation. Chechen Musa was being treated next to Misha SERGEEV; in my absence, he looked after Misha, and I prepared food for both Musa and Misha.

In May, information arrived that some of the prisoners were in the mountains in the Shatoi region, and my son’s name was mentioned. Soon we were received by Aslan MASKHADOV. A truce and an exchange of prisoners were being prepared. The front was approaching Vedeno more and more rapidly, and bombings became more frequent.

At the time when Nikolai’s mother was rushing around mountain villages under bombing, the above testimonies of PYASETSKY’s surviving comrades were already collected. And Anna Ivanovna could have found her son’s body even earlier:

On March 3, I was next to my son, only at that time he was not lying in a carriage, but in a nailed-up coffin. Having mixed up his last name and not paying attention to the signs, Kolya was prepared to be sent to someone else’s parents in Altai. The man at the computer was simply mistaken when he told me that Nikolai

Pyasetsky is not listed on the computer. The soldier who identified my son as his fellow soldier Zhenya Gilev was also mistaken, although they were not similar in appearance, much less wore different military uniforms. Kolya is a paratrooper. Zhenya is a motorized rifleman.

When “cargo 200” arrived in a distant Altai village, Zhenya’s parents opened the coffin, but it was no longer possible to identify the body, so they buried my son instead of theirs. And six months later they had to bury a second time, but this time their own son. After all, he, poor Zhenya, was lying in carriage number 162, lying with a cartridge case in which there was a note that he was Zhenya GILEV.

On September 18, 1995, the body of Evgeniy GILEV was identified and then sent to his parents. PYASETSKY's body was returned to Rostov. One of the mothers was there, looking for her son in the mountains along with Anna Ivanovna:

Tanya IVANOVA<...>I identified not only my Kolya, but also my Andrey<...>Experts based on a photograph of the skull, chest and blood type determined that it was her son: the whole body was burned, it was impossible to recognize Andrei.<...>

For a long time, the Ministry of Defense did not have the money to transport Kolya to Moscow. On October 15, I finally met my son in Moscow.

It remains to add that Olga OSIPENKO’s son, Private Pavel Yurievich OSIPENKO, was released from captivity on July 12, 1995, but in the spring his father went missing while looking for his son. The body of Vladimir Petrovich SAENKO was identified on March 3, and Dinar Nurmukhammedovich AKTUGANOV - on July 15, 1996. The son of Svetlana BELIKOVA, warrant officer Oleg Borisovich BELIKOV is still listed as missing.

TUMAEV Sergey Vladimirovich

Tumaev Sergey (03/15/1975 - 01/08/1995)

Private Tumaev Sergei Vladimirovich, reconnaissance officer of the 218th separate airborne infantry battalion of the 45th special purpose airborne unit.
Born on March 15, 1975 in the city of Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad region, in the family of a military man.
In 1990, he graduated from secondary school No. 66 in Nizhny Novgorod, and then in 1993, VPU No. 5, where he received the specialty of a general machine operator. On December 5, 1993, he was called up for military service in the Russian Army.
Since November 1994, Private Tumaev served on the territory of the Chechen Republic.
Died on January 8, 1995 in a battle in Grozny. By mistake, Tumaev’s body was sent to the Altai Territory and buried there. Only in 2001, the dead soldier was reburied in his native land.
Private Yu. Khazov from the 3rd company of the 218th Special Forces: “When the remains of the dead were unloaded at the cannery, we recognized all but three bodies. Then two more were identified, and one was taken to Mozdok unidentified. The body was completely burnt, with the exception of a small piece on the back. In the burnt remains of clothes lying around here, Valera and I found a piece of a sweater that Seryoga was wearing. And I also noticed one detail that no one paid attention to - even from the day of conscription, it struck me that Sergei had "One of the upper teeth was exactly half chipped off. It was this very tooth that I noticed on the burnt skull. We also saw Sergei's weapon - a piece of twisted metal, and he never let go of it." (Subsequently, a tag with Wenzel’s last name was mistakenly attached to Tumaev’s body. He was buried under his own name only on March 19, 2001, and Wenzel has been listed as missing since that time.)
By decree of the President of the Russian Federation of January 25, 1995, Private Tumaev was awarded the Order of Courage (posthumously).

Sergei TUMAEV died on January 8, 1995. Here are excerpts from letters from Sergei’s colleagues to his mother:

<...>We were going to storm the Council of Ministers.<...>before rushing across open ground, Lieutenant A.Z. sent me earlier, and left Sergei with him. I managed to reach the building with the first group, but they were a little delayed. Then there were explosions, both near us and there. We returned the same way we went<...>What we saw there is something you won’t see in any horror film. The place where the group died was a complete mess of dirt, blood and the remains of human limbs. At that moment A.Z. and Sergei were together, preparing to rush across the square, but found themselves at the epicenter of the explosion. Even their weapons melted. When the remains were unloaded at the cannery, we recognized all but three of the bodies. There were no A.Z., TUMAYEV and E.V. — two were missing, and one was unidentifiable.

The soldiers identified the burnt body:

<...>these were the remains of Sergei. The body was completely burned, except for a small patch on the back. In the burnt remains of clothing, we found a piece of a sweater that Sergei was wearing.<...>Sergei has one of his upper teeth exactly half chipped off. It was this very tooth that I noticed on the charred skull.

But our doctor, having learned about this, began to shout that he was taken to the hospital, that he personally saw it and wrote down his name.

Only a year later, the unit commander informed his parents that TUMAEV was included in the list of wounded by mistake - from the medical record of Private TULIEV.

<...>The cards were filled out hastily and in illegible handwriting.<...>We, of course, were glad that we were “mistaken,” and since Seryoga was in the hospital, it turned out that only E.V. was missing. We wrote his name on the tag.

There was no opportunity to correct the mistake - medical records, photographs and descriptions of the missing special forces soldiers were not sent to the 124th LSU. Sergei’s body was sent to E.V.’s parents. and was buried there on January 14th.
Soon the mother of A.Z. They brought a body from Rostov, which she did not identify, and it was sent back. On February 3, 1995, a symbolic funeral nevertheless took place - the coffin was empty.
TUMAYEV's parents were informed that their son was sent to the hospital. It was not possible to find him either in hospitals or, later, in captivity. Sergei's father returned home after several months of fruitless searches and soon died of cancer.
The mother, who continued the search, did not find her son in the 124th LSU, but identified there the body of Senior Lieutenant A. AVRAMENKO, who also went missing during the storming of the Council of Ministers. His posthumous fate almost coincides with the fate of TUMAEV: his wife was informed that AVRAMENKO was sent to the hospital.
Although TUMAEVA and A.Z. The Ministry of Defense put them on the list of missing persons, in part both were recognized as dead, presented posthumously for awards, and their portraits in mourning frames were placed in the Museum of Military Glory.
Only in the spring of 1996 did TUMAEV’s mother manage to collect the above testimonies from Sergei’s colleagues, and on August 5 her son was declared dead by a court decision.
The body of TUMAEV, resting in the grave of E.V., has not yet been exhumed. His name does not appear in the lists of the dead published in Krasnaya Zvezda.

When Lyubov Ivanovna Tumaeva received the news that her son was wounded in Chechnya, she immediately began searching for him. She lost count of how many long-distance calls there were to hospitals in Mozdok and Rostov-on-Don. Then it suddenly turned out that her Sergei was not in the hospitals where Russian soldiers wounded in Chechnya were being treated. Instead, another one was recorded with a similar surname. Then the mother was informed that Private S. Tumaev had gone missing on January 8, 1995. This was during the heaviest battles in Grozny.
L. Tumaeva managed to find Sergei’s fellow soldiers, who had already demobilized by that time. She did not know that her son ended up in Chechnya; there was not a single letter from him from there. He served in the elite 137th Airborne Regiment in Moscow.
The first to respond was a fellow soldier of Sergei Tumaev from the Saratov region. He said that on November 28, 1994, their unit was put on combat readiness, and on November 30 they were transferred to Vladikavkaz. The paratroopers moved to Grozny on December 10. We entered the first battle near Asinovskaya. “It was difficult, but we kept our heads down and moved forward,” writes Yu. Khazin. He described in a letter how they destroyed 3 vehicles with militants, how they recaptured a farm from bandits, and covered the advance of their columns. “Helicopters and cars carried away the dead and wounded by the dozens,” he writes. “But we rejoiced at the victories.” In January 1995, part of them entered Grozny.
On the morning of the same day, January 8, Sergei looked downcast. Either he didn’t get enough sleep, or maybe he had a presentiment of something. He was silent and indifferent,” his friend writes to his mother.
Yu. Khazin described in detail the last day of S. Tumaev’s life: “We ran across the square and disappeared into the basement. The shelling was such that it seemed that the whole building would collapse on us, everything was shaking. The second group, where Sergei was, got in touch : waiting for the end of the mortar attack. Then communication with the group was lost. After a while, another group of paratroopers reported on the radio that they were covered with mines. The operation was canceled, and we returned."
Yu. Khazin described the place of S. Tumaev’s death: “A mess of dirt, blood, remains of human limbs and clothing.” The remains were collected for identification. “Everyone was recognized immediately, except for three, then two more were identified. One remained unknown. His body was completely burned, with the exception of a scrap on his back,” writes Yu. Khazin. “In the burnt remains of clothes, Valera and I found a piece of Sergei’s sweater. The skull was burnt. They recognized Sergei by his chipped tooth; he had such a mark.”
The soldiers reported this to the officers, but the head of the unit responded that S. Tumaev was one of the first to be sent to the hospital, he saw it himself. Then the officers and the company sergeant-major spent a long time looking for Sergei in hospitals. It turned out that a soldier with a similar name had been admitted to the hospital. He was mistaken for S. Tumaev. When they figured it out, the officers listed him not as dead, but as missing.
Sergei’s mother also received a letter from his second friend. “Sorry in advance, but I won’t write anything good,” warned V. Afonchenkov from Smolensk. He also described Sergei’s last day. “What we saw cannot be seen in any horror film,” writes V. Afonchenkov, “we identified him with Yura Khazin, but the doctor, having learned about this, began to shout that he was taken to the hospital.”
Friends of S. Tumaev are sure that his remains were taken to Altai, mistaking him for another soldier. He was buried by someone else's mother. He could not have been captured, his friends believe, because there were his own people around.
“Sergei died, and I have nothing more to say” - these are the last lines of V. Afonchenkov’s letter to his mother.
According to available documents, S. Tumaev, however, is still considered missing, that is, possibly alive. The military prosecutor's office could not figure out this terrible story, and S. Tumaev's mother is now forced to seek legal recognition of the fact of her son's death through the court. How difficult it is to change a line once written down on a piece of paper... It turns out there is no mechanism, they explained to Sergei Tumaev’s mother, by which her son would be declared dead.

BUDKIN Alexey Evgenievich

Junior sergeant of the 21st Sofrinsky operational brigade of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation BUDKIN died on April 7, 1995 in the village of Samashki.
Alexey's father, Evgeniy Vladimirovich BUDKIN, was sent a telegram about his son's death, which, in particular, said: “We will inform you about the delivery of the body.” The body was not delivered either to the place of residence or to the place of permanent deployment of the unit. At the point of reception and identification of the dead in Vladikavkaz, Evgeny Vladimirovich was presented with two bodies, neither of which he identified as Alexei. The same was confirmed by the examination. The bodies were sent to Rostov and registered there under numbers 299 and 300. Evgeniy Vladimirovich suggested that the body of his son was sent to the parents of one of these two unidentified people.
Here is the painting restored by my father:

According to the deputy commander of the unit, Colonel V. TATSITOV, “at approximately 19:00<...>BUDKIN received a perforating head wound incompatible with life<...>At approximately 20:40, BUDKIN's body was taken to the command post, where it was examined by a doctor, and the fact of death was recorded."

The clerk of the unit, who registered the dead for shipment, said that he personally removed the body armor from the dead Alyosha and took his military ID, in return putting a note in his pocket indicating his last name and other data.

The father continued his investigation:

<...>I found soldier CHECHULIN, who delivered the body in his armored personnel carrier from the village to the railway, and warrant officer MUKHIN, who took the body from CHECHULIN and delivered it, again in an armored personnel carrier, to the helipad. The helicopter with the “200 load” has already taken off<...>They brought new dead, and two soldiers guarded them and Lesha until the morning. And my father also met with them<...>they confirmed -<...>he and others were loaded into a helicopter, but were sent without accompanying persons who knew the victims.

The body was taken to the PPOP in Vladikavkaz. According to the author of the cited article, Larisa ALIMAMEDOVA,

many dead are delivered to the reception and identification point without a single document, and often without accompanying persons who personally know them. Their military IDs are confiscated before departure, and in return they put a note with data in their pocket, put it in their boot, or somewhere else. It all depends on whether this piece of paper is saved or lost. Upon arrival at the site, everyone is undressed before dissection, throwing bloody clothes into a common pile, and a tag with a number is tied to their leg or arm. The note is not always found. Sometimes it falls out of a boot or pocket, but by that time the clothes are already in the general pile<...>In doubtful cases, they come for identification<...>colleagues, but sometimes the officer returning from the unit does not know the face of the deceased. As for the entries in the so-called “workbook”, there is such confusion in it, so much crossed out, corrected, hastily and illegibly written, that sometimes the “scribes” themselves cannot read it.

Evgeniy Vladimirovich was never able to find the body of his son, but narrowed the search to 17 dead, with whose bodies the body of his son could be confused.
From the photograph we were able to identify “body number 299”:

Private Alexei CHELPANOV, being wounded, was sent to the Vladikavkaz hospital, where he died without regaining consciousness. His body from the emergency room<...>was moved to the point of reception and identification of the dead - just a hundred meters away<...>And since he did not have any documents with him, he became the nameless “body number 299.”

“Body number 300” has not yet been identified. Although, according to various sources, up to 16 military personnel and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs died near Samashki on April 7–8, 1995, these are not the only bodies mixed up there.

Let us note that the reasons why dead soldiers became “missing in action” are always the same - bureaucratic. Although in the first case hundreds of difficult-to-identify bodies of servicemen from different units who died at different times were simultaneously removed from Grozny, in the second there were three bodies, of which the remains of two were unsuitable for visual identification, and one could be identified by special signs, and in the third all the bodies were suitable for visual identification, all were identified and provided with accompanying notes, but in each of these cases the registration technique was such that the “scribe’s error” became irreparable.
The fact that a significant number of bodies suitable for visual identification have been in the 124th LSU for a long time, but have not yet been identified, in combination with the above facts, suggests that other bodies have ALREADY BEEN BURIED under their names, and the relatives have stopped searching. These “mistakes,” as we see, are discovered regularly, but, as a rule, only by relatives.
The structures involved in the search and identification of the bodies of the dead cannot correct these mistakes, since they are deprived of the opportunity to compare information on individual episodes, firstly, about unidentified bodies, secondly, about the circumstances of the disappearance of the “missing” and, thirdly , about the dead, identified and buried.
For almost two years, it was impossible to even simply compare information about the missing with the “secret” general list of the dead. Now it is ineffective due to the errors accumulated during this time in both lists.
Despite the fact that in the episodes that resulted in servicemen being “missing in action,” military investigators conducted a survey of the surviving participants in these episodes (the completeness and reliability of the information received is a separate issue that we do not consider here), this work had practically the only result: recognition of the missing soldiers as “missing in action.” The information obtained during the survey remained in the district structures of military justice, that is, this array is decentralized and the officers directly involved in the search do not have the ability to quickly access it.
In all this confusion there are also errors of a different kind.
The body, unsuitable for visual identification, arrived at the 124th LSU in December 1995 from near Gudermes and registered under number 384, on March 2, 1996, was identified as the corpse of private military unit 3673 Yuri Vitalievich MALININ and sent to his parents. MALININ, meanwhile, did not die near Gudermes, but was captured and kept in the village of Zandak. On April 23, 1996, he was handed over to his father.

Although soldiers no longer die in the Chechen war, and the list of those killed has been published, it cannot be considered closed. It will be replenished: hundreds of unidentified bodies lie in the Rostov laboratory, rest in unmarked graves on the territory of Chechnya, hundreds of dead soldiers are listed as missing.

In practical terms, they were used for two purposes: redemption or exchange. For ransom, they were often purposefully captured - they caught or lured unwary soldiers - at checkpoints, in troop locations... Information about who and how much could pay for whom was quickly learned - there are Chechen diasporas in any major Russian city. As a rule, they demanded about 2 million non-denominated rubles per head (data from 1995).

The prisoners were resold to other gangs or to Chechens whose relatives were under investigation or imprisoned. This was a very widespread and highly profitable business - relatives of prisoners sold their apartments and cars, in general, everything that was valuable in order to free their sons. There were cases when mothers themselves were captured when they came to Chechnya to save captured children.

The commercial component almost always came to the fore - if the militants knew that a prisoner’s relatives could get a good deal for his rescue, they took advantage of it. Prisoners could be exchanged for the corpses of dead militants, especially if they were field commanders.

They say that during the First Chechen War it happened that the command of the Russian armed forces gave the militants an ultimatum: do not release the prisoners, we will wipe the village into dust. And this threat was effective - the captured servicemen were released.