Barayevs: the most brutal militants of the Chechen war. Field commanders of Ichkeria Who were the Chechen militants in Soviet times

During the Chechen campaigns, the Barayev clan became widely known for trafficking in kidnapped and captured people. Some experts who have studied the actions of these criminals are inclined to believe that the Barayevs were even more active in this type of activity than directly in military clashes with federal troops.

It is believed that militants of the Islamic regiment "Jamaad", led by Arbi Barayev, in Chechnya, among others, kidnapped the special representative of the Russian President Vlasov, Major General Shpigun, many Russian officers and journalists, as well as four British citizens and one New Zealander. They did not stand on ceremony with the prisoners - when Barayev’s militants were not satisfied with the results of the hostage ransom negotiations, four foreigners had their heads cut off and thrown onto the road.

Arbi Barayev was truly a scumbag, because he always wanted to commit atrocities on his own, uncontrolled by the leadership of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria. In the late 90s, Aslan Maskhadov stripped him of the rank of brigadier general for arbitrariness; in response, Barayev tried to kill Maskhadov himself. Arbi Barayev was also despised by field soldier Ruslan Gelayev, whose relatives were killed by Barayev’s people.

This is how General Troshev, one of the leaders of the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya, characterizes A. Barayev in his book “My War. Chechen diary of a trench general":

“... He was a unique person in his own way: in five years he rose through career ladder from traffic police foreman to brigadier general (analogous to our rank of lieutenant general)! It’s time to be included in the Guinness Book of Records. Moreover, the 27-year-old Chechen owes such a rapid ascent not to his brilliant mind, talents or valor of heart, but to the human blood he shed: since January 1995, he has personally tortured more than two hundred people! Moreover, with the same sadistic sophistication he mocked a Russian priest, an Ingush policeman, a Dagestani builder, and the subjects of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain...”

Arbi Barayev's nephew Movsar participated in both Chechen campaigns, initially in a supporting role. In the second war, on the orders of Shamil Basayev, Movsar Barayev led a sabotage-terrorist detachment, which in October 2002 seized the House of Culture of Moscow Bearing OJSC on Dubrovka, taking over 900 people hostage. According to various sources, as a result of this terrorist attack, from 130 to 174 hostages died, 37 terrorists led by Movsar Barayev were killed by FSB special forces.

First great luck The decapitation of Chechen separatism after the murder of Dzhokhar Dudayev was the capture of terrorist No. 2 Salman Raduev, who was arrested by FSB representatives on the territory of Chechnya in March 2000. Raduev became widely known in 1996, after on January 9, under his leadership, militants attacked the Dagestan city of Kizlyar. True, the “laurels of fame” in Kizlyar went to Raduev “by accident.” At the last stage, he replaced the wounded field commander Khunkarpasha Israpilov, who was the leader of the operation.

The capture of Raduev was carried out masterfully by counterintelligence officers and in such a top-secrecy regime that the bandit “did not expect anything and was shocked,” said FSB director Nikolai Patrushev. According to some reports, Raduev was “tied up” the moment he left his shelter “out of need.” There is a version that Raduev was betrayed by an agent who promised to sell him a large batch of weapons cheaply.

On December 25, 2001, the Supreme Court of Dagestan found Raduev guilty of all charges except “organizing illegal armed groups.” The demands of the state prosecutor - Vladimir Ustinov - were fulfilled, and Salman Raduev was sentenced to life imprisonment. Raduev served his sentence in the Solikamsk penitentiary, in the famous White Swan colony.

In December 2002, Raduev began to complain about his health. On December 6, he developed bruising under his left eye and abdominal pain. A few days later, Raduev became worse, and on December 10, GUIN doctors decided to place him in a prison hospital in a separate ward. Raduev was in the hospital and died on December 14 at 5.30 am. The forensic medical report on death states the following: “DIC syndrome, multiple hemorrhages, retroperitoneal hematoma, hemorrhage in the brain and left eye.”

Raduev's body was buried in the general Solikamsk cemetery.

In April 2002, it became known that the field commander Khattab, who was known as an ideologist and organizer of terrorist activities, was killed in Chechnya. He was liquidated as a result of an “undercover combat operation” by the FSB back in March 2002. The top-secret operation to destroy Khattab was prepared for almost a year. According to the FSB, Khattab was poisoned by one of his proxies. The death of the terrorist was one of the most serious blows for the militants, since after the liquidation of Khattab the entire system of financing gangs in Chechnya was disrupted.

In June 2001, in Chechnya, as a result of a special operation, the leader of one of the most combat-ready units of Chechen militants, Arbi Barayev, was killed. Along with him, 17 people from his inner circle were destroyed. A large number of militants were captured. Barayev was identified by his relatives. The special operation was carried out in the area of ​​Barayev’s native village of Ermolovka for six days - from June 19 to 24. During the operation, which was carried out by the regional operational headquarters with the involvement of special forces of the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, in particular the Vityaz group, one Russian serviceman was killed and six were injured. After Barayev was mortally wounded, the militants carried his body into one of the houses and covered him with bricks in the hope that the federal forces would not find him. However, with the help of a search dog, Barayev's body was discovered.

In November 2003, FSB representatives officially admitted that one of the leaders of the Chechen militants, the Arab terrorist Abu al-Walid, was killed on April 14. According to intelligence services, on April 13, information appeared about a detachment of militants who, together with several Arab mercenaries, stopped in the forest between Ishkha-Yurt and Alleroy. This area was immediately attacked from helicopters, and special forces shot at the bandits’ camp using grenade launchers and flamethrowers. On April 17, soldiers combed the area between Ishkhoy-Yurt and Meskety, and approximately 3-4 kilometers from these villages in the forest they found six killed militants. They were all able to be identified - they turned out to be Chechens. A kilometer from those six corpses they found a dead Arab. On his person, in particular, they found a map of the area made from a satellite and a satellite navigator for moving around the area. The body was badly burned. In April, al-Walid's body could not be identified. The intelligence services did not have the terrorist’s fingerprints, his relatives did not respond to investigators’ requests, and the detained militants who met him could not say with certainty that the body was his. All doubts disappeared only in November.

On February 13, 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, whom Chechen separatists declared the president of Ichkeria after the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev, was killed in Qatar. Yandarbiev's car was blown up in the Qatari capital Doha. In this case, two people from his escort died. The separatist leader himself was seriously injured and died some time later in the hospital. Yandarbiev has lived in Qatar for the past three years and has been on the international wanted list all this time as the organizer of the attack on Dagestan. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office demanded his extradition from Qatar.

The Qatari special services immediately started talking about a Russian trace in the murder of Yandarbiev, and already on February 19, three employees of the Russian embassy were arrested on suspicion of committing a terrorist attack. One of them, who is the first secretary of the embassy and has diplomatic status, was released and expelled from the country, while the other two were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Qatari court, and the court concluded that the order to liquidate Yandarbiev was given by top officials of the Russian leadership. Moscow denied the accusations in every possible way, and Russian diplomats did everything possible to take the unlucky bombers home as soon as possible.

They were sentenced to life imprisonment, which under Qatari law means a 25-year prison term, which could later be reduced to 10 years. A month after the trial, an agreement was reached that the convicted Russians would be taken to their homeland, where they would serve their sentences. The return of Russian intelligence officers actually took place; Anatoly Yablochkov and Vasily Pugachev flew to Russia on a special flight of the Rossiya State Transport Company in December 2004.

In March 2004, it became known about the death of an equally odious militant leader, Ruslan Gelayev, who in May 2002 was again appointed by Aslan Maskhadov as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ichkeria and restored to the rank of “brigadier general.” True, he was killed not as a result of a special operation by the special services, but in a banal shootout with border guards. Gelayev was killed by a border guard consisting of only two people in the mountains of Dagestan on the Avaro-Kakheti road leading to Georgia. At the same time, the border guards themselves were killed in the shootout. The corpse of the field commander was found in the snow a hundred meters from the bodies of the border guards. This happened, apparently, on Sunday (February 28, 2004). A day later, Gelayev’s body was taken to Makhachkala and identified by previously arrested militants.

Thus, only one “odious militant” remains alive among the major Chechen leaders - Shamil Basayev.

Alexander Alyabyev

By the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, a situation had developed that for the majority of Russian residents, the words “Chechnya” and “terrorism” became, if not synonymous, then very close concepts. Chechen separatists carried out numerous terrorist acts as part of the confrontation with the federal center. In this regard, terrorism associated with the Chechen conflict has already become a separate fragment of world terrorism.

How it all started

Terrorism in Chechnya appeared already when no one had really heard of Wahhabism as an ideological basis for opposition to Moscow in the North Caucasus. In the late eighties and early nineties, when the USSR was rapidly moving towards collapse, the central government simply did not have the time and resources to monitor the observance of order on the outskirts. In Chechnya, aggressive nationalist and outright criminal formations took advantage of this, and, moreover, in the conditions of state decentralization, weapons from abandoned army warehouses fell into the hands of them.

All this led to the fact that since 1991, criminal terrorism began in Chechnya, which initially was ordinary banditry. People were kidnapped for ransom in Chechnya itself; in addition, groups of armed criminals traveled outside the republic for the same purposes. Moreover, at that time there was no talk of any political demands. After the start of the first Chechen war in December 1994, the criminal experience gained began to be used by Chechen field commanders for operations against the federal center. This is how the history of terrorism related to the Chechen conflict on Russian territory began in 1995.

Terrorism is not a cheap business

Initially, the question of sources of financing terrorism in Chechnya was not raised. Firstly, the financial resources obtained from the criminal activities of previous years were used at first, and secondly, the number of large-scale actions was small. But as the number of terrorist attacks increased by an order of magnitude after the start of the second Chechen war, experts began to consider the options through which field commanders in Chechnya receive money for their actions. As a result, several main sources were identified:

• funding from abroad (both from international terrorist organizations and as a result of donations from radical Islamists around the world);
• racketeering within Chechnya and in other republics North Caucasus(mostly “tribute” is collected from small businesses);
• making a profit from shares in the oil and gas complex of Yuzhny federal district(according to intelligence services, this industry is generally one of the most criminal in Russia);
• use of profits from enterprises located on Russian territory (certain companies are owned, through front men, of course, either directly by the separatists or by representatives of the Chechen diaspora in Russia associated with them).

Loud successes of terrorists

From 1995 to the present, Chechen separatists have carried out several dozen terrorist attacks. However, among them there are several of the loudest, of particular significance both in terms of the tragedy of the events, in the number of victims, and in terms of the resonance created in Russia and in the world. Some of them:

Successful intelligence operations

It is quite difficult to talk about the successes of the special services in the fight against terrorism - because if a terrorist attack occurs, especially with human casualties, this is already a failure of those units that should be responsible for the safety of the population. Therefore, success in this issue can only be in preventing terrorist attacks, which is difficult for the public to assess, or in eliminating the most dangerous and odious militant leaders. In this regard, Russian intelligence services have a significant list of successfully carried out actions.

Among the Chechen separatist leaders eliminated during special operations are:

• leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev (was destroyed on April 21, 1996, 30 kilometers from Grozny by a strike from aircraft homing missiles);
• one of the most famous field commanders, Salman Raduev (arrested in Chechnya on March 13, 2000, sentenced to life imprisonment, died in a colony in 2002);
• field commander Arbi Baraev (destroyed in the vicinity of Grozny in June 2001; according to one version, he was killed on the spot; according to another, he was captured, interrogated, and then shot by FSB officers);
• Amir ibn al-Khattab, an Arab mercenary, one of the leaders of the separatist military activities (died in March 2002 as a result of a secret special operation; according to some reports, he was poisoned);
• Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, a participant in hostilities against federal forces, served as acting president of Ichkeria in 1996-1997 (killed on February 13, 2004 in the capital of Qatar, Doha, as a result of a car bomb; according to media reports, the action was carried out by FSB officers);
• one of the most famous separatist leaders. From 1997 to 2005, President of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov (destroyed on March 8, 2005 in one of the villages near Grozny, where he was hiding in an underground bunker);
• the most famous of the organizers and leaders of terrorist attacks is Shamil Basayev (killed on July 10, 2006 in Ingushetia as a result of a car explosion).

Alexander Babitsky

The list includes the most notable and significant FSB operations in the entire history of its existence. It does not contain cases about the capture of spies and other little-known operations, due to the fact that from the mid-90s to the present time, the main direction of the FSB has been the North Caucasus. It is the elimination and capture of key opponents in this region that has a decisive influence on the development of the situation in the entire direction. Places are distributed according to the importance of the object of the operation or the situation as a whole.

10. Detention of Magas Ali Musaevich Taziev (formerly known as Akhmed Evloev; call sign and nickname - “Magas”) - terrorist, active participant in the separatist movement in the North Caucasus in the 1990s - 2000s, Ingush field commander, since 2007 year - commander (supreme amir) of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed “Caucasian Emirate”. He was second in the leadership hierarchy of the Caucasus Emirate after Doku Umarov. It turned out that since 2007, Ali Taziev, under the name Gorbakov, lived in one of the private houses in the suburbs of the Ingush city of Malgobek. He introduced himself to his neighbors as a migrant from Chechnya. He behaved quietly and inconspicuously and did not arouse any suspicion. The operation to capture “Magas” began six months before his arrest. Three times he was targeted by snipers, but the order was to take him alive. On the night of June 9, 2010, the house was surrounded by FSB special forces. At the time of his arrest, Taziev did not have time to resist (according to the Kavkaz Center - due to the fact that he was poisoned), the FSB officers did not suffer any losses

9. Elimination of Abu Hafs al-Urdani Abu Hafs al-Urdani - Jordanian terrorist, commander of a detachment of foreign volunteers in Chechnya, took part in battles on the side of the separatists during the First and Second Russian-Chechen Wars. After the death of Abu al-Walid, Abu Hafs replaced him as amir of foreign fighters and coordinator of financial flows from abroad. He led the attack of militants on the village. The attacks in the Shali region in the summer of 2004, as well as many smaller militant attacks. Abu Hafs was valued as a military strategist by Aslan Maskhadov, who planned operations with him. On November 26, 2006, Abu Hafs and four other militants were blocked in one of the private houses in Khasavyurt (Dagestan). As a result of the storming of the house by FSB special forces, all the militants were killed.

8. Elimination of Abu Dzeit Abu Dzeit (known as Little Omar, Abu Omar of Kuwait, Hussein, Moor) is an international terrorist, an emissary of the Al-Qaeda organization in the North Caucasus, the organizer of terrorist attacks in Bosnia and the Caucasus, including Beslan. According to some reports, he personally met with Osama bin Laden. In 2002, he was invited to Chechnya by one of the al-Qaeda emissaries, Abu Haws. He was a demolition instructor in one of the terrorist camps. Then he was sent by Abu Haws' representative in Georgia, to Ingushetia. In 2004, Moor became the leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Ingushetia. He died during an operation to eliminate militants on February 16, 2005 in the Nazran region of Ingushetia.

7. Elimination of Abu-Kuteib Abu-Kuteib is a terrorist, one of Khattab’s associates. He was a member of the Majlisul Shura of Ichkeria and was responsible for propaganda support for the activities of gangs, and was also given the exclusive right to post on the Internet information transmitted by groups of Arab mercenaries from Chechnya. It was he who, in March 2000, organized an attack on a convoy in Zhani-Vedeno, as a result of which 42 riot policemen from Perm were killed. He was one of the organizers of the militant invasion of Ingushetia. On July 1, 2004, he was blocked in the city of Malgobek and, after many hours of fighting, he blew up a “martyr’s belt” on himself.

6. Liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov Aslan Maskhadov is a military and statesman of the unrecognized Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI). In the early 1990s he participated in the creation armed forces ChRI and led the separatists' military operations against federal forces. On March 8, 2005, Maskhadov was killed during a special operation by the FSB in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt (Grozny rural district), where he was hiding in an underground bunker under the house of one of his distant relatives. During the assault, Maskhadov resisted, and the special forces exploded a device, the shock wave of which left the house dilapidated.

5. Elimination of Arbi Barayev Arbi Barayev, a participant in the separatist movement in Chechnya in the 1990s, supported the creation of a “Sharia” state in Chechnya. After the end of the first Chechen war, in 1997-1999, he became known as a terrorist and bandit, a murderer and the leader of a gang of slave traders and kidnappers, at whose hands more than a hundred people suffered in Chechnya and neighboring regions. The liquidation of the Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev was a consequence special operation of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, which took place from June 19 to 24 in the village of Alkhan-Kala. During the operation, Arbi Barayev and 17 militants from his inner circle were killed, many were captured, and federal forces lost one person killed during the operation.

4. Liquidation of Dzhokhar Dudayev Dzhokhar Dudayev is a Chechen military and political figure, leader of the Chechen national liberation movement of the 1990s, the first president of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. In the past, he was a major general of aviation, the only Chechen general in the Soviet Army. According to Russian sources, by the beginning of the first Chechen campaign, Dudayev commanded about 15 thousand soldiers, 42 tanks, 66 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 123 guns, 40 anti-aircraft systems, 260 training aircraft, so the advance of the federal forces was accompanied by serious resistance from Chechen militias and guardsmen Dudayev. On the evening of April 21, 1996, Russian special services located the signal from Dudayev’s satellite phone in the area of ​​the village of Gekhi-Chu, 30 km from Grozny. 2 Su-25 attack aircraft with homing missiles were lifted into the air. Dzhokhar Dudayev died from a rocket explosion while talking on the phone with Russian deputy Konstantin Borov.

3. Elimination of Khattab Amir ibn al-Khattab - field commander, terrorist originally from Saudi Arabia, one of the leaders of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in the territory Russian Federation in 1995-2002. He was an experienced and well-trained terrorist, owned all types of small arms. He understood the mine demolition business. He personally trained the suicide bombers subordinate to him. Organized foreign financing for the purchase of ammunition and the construction of camps for training militants on the territory of Chechnya. Khattab was destroyed in an unconventional way: The messenger delivered a message to the Arab, which contained a horse dose of potent poison. Khattab opened the envelope and died very quickly after that. His bodyguards could not understand what was really happening.

2. Elimination of Shamilya Basayev Shamil Basayev is an active participant in military operations in Chechnya, one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) in 1995-2006. Organized a number of terrorist acts on the territory of the Russian Federation. He was included in the lists of terrorists of the UN, the US State Department and the European Union. According to official data from the FSB, Basayev and his accomplices were killed during the explosion of a KamAZ truck loaded with explosives in the Nazran region of Ingushetia. This explosion was the result of a carefully planned special operation, which was made possible thanks to operational work Russian special services carried out abroad. “Operational positions were created abroad, primarily in those countries in which weapons were collected and subsequently delivered to Russia to carry out terrorist attacks,” Mr. Patrushev said, adding that Basayev and his accomplices were planning to carry out a major terrorist attack in order to exert political pressure on the leadership of Russia during the G8 summit.

1. Capture of "Nord-Ost" Terrorist attack on Dubrovka, also referred to as "Nord-Ost" - a terrorist attack on Dubrovka in Moscow, which lasted from October 23 to 26, 2002, during which a group of armed militants led by Movsar Barayev captured and held hostages from among the spectators of the musical “Nord-Ost”. The assault began at 05.17, when special forces began to launch a special nerve agent through the ventilation shafts. At that moment, several hostages called their friends and said that some kind of gas was arriving at the cultural center, but their speech quickly became incoherent, and then they were unable to say anything at all. The gas suppressed the will of all those present in the hall, and most importantly, the terrorists. If at least one of them had time to press several toggle switches on her belt or connect wires, the bombs would begin to explode one after another, and the building could simply collapse. Within just a few seconds after the gas began to take effect, the snipers destroyed all the female suicide bombers with precise shots to the head, and then the fighters in gas masks moved on to destroy the other bandits who were in the auditorium. One of them was armed with a Kalashnikov machine gun, but did not have time to use it, firing only one unaimed burst. At the same time, part of the special forces who entered the building through the roof dealt with the terrorists in the utility rooms of the second floor, using noise and flash grenades. Most of the bandits were already unconscious, since the gas affected those first of all.

Terrorist nest

The unclear status of Chechnya after the signing of the Khasavyurt Treaty created fertile ground for a double interpretation of the events related to it. The federal center, considering Chechnya its subject, was engaged in “restoring order” on its territory. The Chechens saw Russia as an aggressor, against whom all means were allowed. This circumstance became the cause of mass terror, which the mountaineers considered just a kind of guerrilla warfare.

The recent history of Chechen terrorism is quite rich. Here are just some pages of this “chronicle”.

So, on May 26, 1994, in the area of ​​​​the village of Kinzhal, Stavropol Territory, which is 30 km from Mineralnye Vody, four Chechen terrorists seized the Vladikavkaz-Stavropol regular bus. A class from one of the local schools, who were going on an excursion, was taken hostage. There were about 30 people on the bus along with parents and teachers. The terrorists demanded $10 million, drugs, 4 machine guns, 4 bulletproof vests, a grenade launcher, a night vision device and a helicopter.

Negotiations began with the authorities, during which the bandits released all the children and several adults. The next day, a helicopter with terrorists, as well as three women, a bus driver and three pilots took off and headed for Dagestan. But soon, as a result of a lack of fuel, he changed his flight route and landed near the village of Bachi-Yurt on the territory of Chechnya. An hour later the bandits were neutralized. The leader of the bandits, Magomet Bitsiev, was sentenced to capital punishment, and two other participants in this crime - Temur-Ali and Akhmed Makhmaev - received 15 years in prison. But this case became just one link in a chain of other similar crimes.

Just a month later, on June 28, 1994, three terrorists, two of whom were Chechens, near Mineralnye Vody hijacked a Stavropol-Mozdok bus with about 40 people on board. The criminals demanded 5.8 million US dollars, three machine guns with ammunition, three portable radio stations, two helicopters and a plane prepared for takeoff at Makhachkala airport. But the plan failed. The next day, an operation to detain the terrorists was successfully carried out in the area of ​​the Chechen village of Braguny. Having appeared before the court, all three received 15 years of imprisonment to be served in a strict regime correctional labor colony.

But another month passed, and on July 28, 1994, in the Pyatigorsk region, four terrorists of Chechen nationality again seized a Pyatigorsk-Sovetsky bus with forty passengers and demanded 15 million dollars. The operation to neutralize the criminals was carried out at Mineralnye Vody airport. During the operation, one of the terrorists detonated a grenade inside the bus, as a result of which 4 people were killed and 19 were injured. During the helicopter attack, one terrorist was killed, the rest were captured. By a court decision, they were all sentenced to death.

Thus, even before the entry of federal troops into Chechnya, the Chechens began to practice terrorist acts with the taking of hostages, the purpose of which was not to satisfy the political demands put forward, but the most banal thing - to obtain a ransom. This practice, known since the time of General Ermolov, had nothing to do with the national liberation struggle Chechen people, although it was often passed off as such by the bandits themselves and the forces interested in it.

In a “renewed” Russia this type terrorism has become widespread in the North Caucasus. Receiving ransom for hostages has become one of the most common ways to generate income. Those captives for whom they could not pay were doomed to slavery, and the use of slave labor in some territories of the North Caucasus, and especially in Chechnya, became the norm. It is quite clear that there is no talk about any policy in these cases. we're talking about, and the main goal was only money.

Dead zone

Along with hostage-taking and human trafficking, another type of terrorism appeared in the 90s, associated with the seizure of hostages and objects under the guise of political slogans.

The action carried out in the small Stavropol city of Budennovsk was especially terrible. On June 14, 1995, a group of 40–50 Chechen militants suddenly burst into the city in two trucks. The bandits, firing indiscriminately from machine guns at civilians, rushed through the streets and gained a foothold in the city hospital. Another hundred and fifty Chechens quickly arrived there and were under various types entered the city early.

The terrorists took about a thousand hostages from among medical staff, patients, and local residents and prepared for defense. The Chechens were led by field commander Shamil Basayev. A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Land Management, he easily changed his peaceful profession to a military one. By that time, his “combat” record included the hijacking of a plane from Mineralnye Vody airport in 1991 and fighting in Sukhumi at the head of the Abkhaz battalion in 1992. The Chechen war made Sh. Basayev the third person in D. Dudayev's inner circle. He knew how to fight boldly and brutally, which earned him great popularity among militants and leaders of the criminal world.

The local police only informed the commander of the helicopter regiment stationed on the outskirts of Budyonnovsk about the attack by the militants only at noon. Colonel P. Rodichev sent a group of 32 officers armed with pistols to the city, led by the chief of staff of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Yu. Konovalov. But the pilots turned out to be poor warriors in unusual conditions. The bus with the pilots was easily identified and fired upon by the Chechens. Six officers were killed, two wounded were taken to the hospital, where a little later they also died at the hands of terrorists. One of the two shot in the hospital was Lieutenant Colonel Yu. Konovalov.

Having secured himself in the hospital building by 16:00 and declaring that for each killed militant ten hostages would be shot, and five for the wounded, Basayev put forward political demands. The main ones boiled down to the immediate withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya and the start of negotiations between the Russian government and Dudayev.

As one would expect, the federal authorities turned out to be completely unprepared for operational work to counter such a large-scale terrorist attack. Only by the end of the next day, units of special troops were pulled into Budennovsk. The Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Viktor Erin, and the Director of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, Sergei Stepashin, also arrived there to lead the operation to free the hostages. The city hospital was surrounded by a tight ring, through which only journalists were allowed to meet with Basayev.

For two days, the best special forces forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under the leadership of Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs M. Egorov, prepared for an operation to storm the hospital and free the hostages. At the same time, the tasks of limiting the maneuver of militants, destroying their snipers and providing advantageous positions for units of federal troops were solved.

Decision making at the militants' headquarters

An operation plan was developed. It provided for the initial seizure of the building of the trauma and infectious diseases departments, then the laundry and garages, and only after that a decisive assault on the main hospital building. The actions of the special forces were supported by 14 infantry fighting vehicles, which, in order to ensure surprise, were supposed to arrive 10 minutes after the start of the attack. In addition, to suppress enemy firing points, four armored personnel carriers and a large group of snipers were allocated, who were positioned in advance along the perimeter of the hospital campus. The attack was scheduled for the morning of June 17.

At half past five that day, the assault forces concentrated on the starting lines. 10 minutes before time “H”, under the cover of a distracting fire raid, the first group of “Alpha” men penetrated the territory of the hospital campus and, dividing into subgroups, covered the areas of garages and laundry. By that time, two other groups had approached the trauma and infectious diseases departments, taking aim at the main building and the surrounding area.

At the given signal, the Alpha fighters rushed to the main hospital building. But, as soon as they emerged into the open, they came under heavy fire from enemy heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and machine guns. The Chechens threw hand grenades at those who broke through to a closer distance.

"Alfovtsy" lay down under destructive enemy fire, suffering losses. But for some reason the promised combat vehicles still did not arrive. They only reached the end of the third hour of the battle, when continuing the assault on the hospital building became pointless. The commandos retreated, carrying five killed and more than thirty wounded comrades. No one really knew anything about the losses among the militants and hostages.

As soon as the federal leadership became aware of the unsuccessful assault on the hospital, the question arose about who gave the order to start it. As a result of the “on-site investigation,” it turned out that ministers Erin and Stepashin, who were in Budennovsk, “knew nothing about this action.” It was announced that the special forces began the assault on their own initiative, and therefore were responsible for its failure and for the blood of the hostages.

True, later in some media there was information that Russian President B. N. Yeltsin, who was at that time in Canada at a meeting of the leaders of the Big Seven, admitted that even before his departure the issue of the assault had been resolved with Yerin . But soon they tried to hush up this unpleasant “fact” in every possible way.

Meanwhile, events in Budennovsk developed according to the Chechen scenario. On the night of June 18, Sh. Basayev held a press conference in the hospital building, which was attended by about twenty Russian and foreign journalists. After its end, the terrorists released 186 hostages, leaving about 700 more people in captivity.

At three o'clock in the morning, Russian Prime Minister V.S. Chernomyrdin made a direct telephone connection with the leader of the terrorists. Basayev demanded that three conditions be met for the release of most of the hostages: stop fighting in Chechnya, withdraw troops and begin negotiations with Dudayev. Chernomyrdin agreed to the first two conditions, but categorically rejected the third. But Sh. Basayev did not make concessions and stated that he was ready to continue negotiations at 10 o’clock in the morning.

After another round of negotiations, the Chechen terrorist released another 200 hostages. In return, he put forward an additional demand that his detachment be provided with an aircraft for evacuation from Budennovsk. He also intended to take out up to 200 hostages on it to ensure the safety of his militants.

At 4 p.m., the federal troops stationed in Chechnya were given the command to cease fire. The shooting also subsided in Budennovsk, where the funeral of the victims of terror took place. On this day, over 50 people were buried at the local cemetery; many unidentified corpses remained in the morgue. There has been no talk yet about those killed in the hospital itself.

On the morning of June 19, negotiations began in Grozny between the Russian and Chechen delegations on resolving the conflict in Chechnya. At the same time, at the request of the terrorists, vehicles were sent to Budennovsk to evacuate them from the city. At noon, the Chechens with a small group of hostages began to carefully leave the hospital building and board buses. At 14.20 a convoy of buses left Budennovsk and headed towards Mineralnye Vody. Only after this did the rest of the hostages who were in the hospital building gain their long-awaited freedom. The rest were released on the border with the Chechen Republic.

Basayev and his terrorists managed to escape with impunity to Chechnya, to areas controlled by Dudayev’s supporters. There they were greeted as heroes. The federal authorities silently swallowed the bitter pill, which they tried to “sweeten” with talk about rescuing the hostages. The real result of the events in Budennovsk were 95 Russians who died or died from wounds, another 142 people were injured, and 99 became seriously ill. No casualties were reported among the militants.

The events in Budennovsk once again showed the complexity and contradictory nature of the internal situation in the country, the weakness higher authorities state power. Despite the promises of high officials, the answer to the question of how such a large armed group was able to break into the depths of the Stavropol Territory, “reliably” covered by troops, police and Cossacks, was never found.

The actions of the federal authorities to free the hostages also caused serious criticism. It seems that if there is a conflict in the area large quantity high-ranking commanders, they were carried out without a single leadership, in the absence of a clear plan of action, their comprehensive support, without organizing the interaction of heterogeneous forces and means.

The troops themselves did not perform well, although elite police special forces units were assembled in Budyonnovsk. Poor leadership of personnel, their insufficient combat training, and weak equipment had an effect. The result is illiterate actions and large losses.

In this situation, the top leaders of the Russian Federation also looked unsightly. President B. N. Yeltsin openly distanced himself from the events that took place in Budennovsk. Prime Minister V.S. Chernomyrdin was forced to talk with the leader of the terrorists Sh. Basayev almost on an equal footing, and then agree to the latter’s terms. Thus, Moscow once again, in the presence of a huge number of witnesses, admitted its powerlessness to resist the actions of Chechen militants, carried out in such a brazen manner.

The reaction of some “famous” Russians to the events in Budennovsk can be called strange, if not more so. June 28 deputies State Duma Sergei Kovalev, Alla Gerber and Alexander Osovtsev at a meeting with voters in the Moscow House of Cinema called Shamil Basayev “an extraordinary personality and a Chechen Robin Hood.” They announced a collection of signatures for his amnesty and were the first to put their names.

Erin and Stepashin became the “scapegoats” for Budennovsk, having lost their ministerial portfolios. True, several years after this, S. Stepashin even received the post of prime minister, from which, however, he was soon also removed and appointed head of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. The Kremlin did not surrender its people.

Children of war

The events in Budyonnovsk did not put an end to the bloody showdown between Moscow and Grozny. In Russia, new people were appointed to replace the departed security ministers, who also had no experience in fighting terrorists. This was fully demonstrated in subsequent events.

The Russian government, unable to solve the Chechen problem on its own, tried to find support in local personnel. The ancient principle of “divide and conquer” often turned out to be more reliable military force. The time has come to apply it on Chechen soil.

Federal authorities, wanting to show the strength of the new Chechen government of Doku Zavgaev, on December 18 began an operation to blockade Gudermes, captured by Salman Raduev’s militants three days earlier. At the beginning of this operation, federal troops formed an encirclement ring around this settlement, in which corridors were left for civilians to escape. For five hours, a continuous stream of refugees moved along them from Gudermes to Kortsaloy and cars full of people loaded with household goods drove out. Pedestrians walked along the sides of the road, leading and carrying children, pulling loaded sleds behind them. Columns of armored vehicles and Ural vehicles were moving towards them. Attack aircraft and combat helicopters darted in the sky.

In the afternoon, artillery salvos, explosions of bombs and shells, and machine-gun chatter began to be heard from the direction of Gudermes. Gradually a cloud of black smoke rose over the city. Federal forces launched a decisive offensive.

But S. Raduev’s militants did not defend Gudermes to the last man. True to their tactics, after shooting a little, on December 24 they left the city through numerous gaps in the battle formations of the federal troops. As a result of the action, 267 city residents and 31 Russian servicemen were killed. As usual, there was no exact information about casualties among the militants.

The capture of Gudermes by the federal leadership was presented as another big victory. The actions of the militants in Gudermes were sharply criticized by Dudayev. In one of the radio interceptions, the general’s angry words were heard addressed to an offending relative: “Gudermes should have been a victory! And you are dogs and cattle, because you left Gudermes. I’m giving you one last opportunity to justify yourself.” Then the federal command could not imagine what lay behind these words.

On January 9, 1996, at about 6 a.m., a group of Chechens led by Salman Raduev broke into the Dagestan city of Kizlyar. On the way to it they destroyed a police checkpoint. One of the policemen was killed, the other two were captured.

After destroying the checkpoint, the militants moved to the field airfield of the internal troops, where they burned two helicopters. They then entered the city and secured a foothold in the hospital, driving up to a thousand hostages there from nearby houses.

Federal and local authorities, as in the summer of 1995 in Budennovsk, turned out to be completely unprepared for the attack by the Chechens. A variety of rumors circulated for two days about the number of Dudayevites who attacked Kizlyar. S. Raduev himself said in an interview with journalists that he has 500 people at his disposal. This was not true. No more than 50 people arrived in the city by bus and KamAZ. True, they were joined there by up to 200 more people who had penetrated into Kizlyar in advance. Thus, the terrorist commander named a figure that was twice the reality. But the federal authorities willingly believed in her.

Kilometer after kilometer...

In the evening of the same day, a “strict” analysis by the president of what happened in the presence of security ministers was demonstrated on television in Russia and abroad. For some reason, the director of the Federal Federal border service General A.I. Nikolaev. The angry head of state wanted to know how such a large detachment of Chechens could penetrate the territory of the neighboring republic and capture the city? Nikolaev was guiltily silent, apparently having forgotten or was embarrassed to remind the head of state and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief that the main task of the border troops is the defense of the external borders of the state, and not the borders between its subjects. Therefore, to the president’s stern question, neither then nor after, there was, as usual, no intelligible answer...

At the same time, it became known that military intelligence warned the structures responsible for the security of Russia about the Chechens’ preparations for an attack on Kizlyar as early as December 23. However, for some reason, the data of the specialists of the Main Intelligence Directorate remained unrealized.

Meanwhile, the Russian leadership demanded decisive action from the security ministers. By the end of the day, 739 internal troops and 857 police officers were urgently assembled in Kizlyar. They waited for instructions from the government, which this time decided to show “character” and not directly negotiate with the terrorists. The negotiations were entrusted to the authorities of Dagestan and the command of the federal troops in Chechnya.

Late in the evening, the Chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Dagestan, Magomed-Ali Magomedov, managed to meet with the leaders of the terrorists, Salman Raduev and Sultan Gelikhanov. During the negotiations, the militant leaders demanded the unhindered return of their people to Chechnya. As proof of the honesty of their intentions, by midnight they released a large group of women and children from the hospital.

This time too, local Russian authorities acted according to a previously worked out scenario. By the morning of January 10, at the request of the militants, 11 buses and three KamAZ trucks arrived at the hospital. At 6.45, the Chechens, having put about 170 hostages on buses, left Kizlyar. They named the final destination of the column's movement as the settlement of Novogroznensky, located 50 km east of Grozny.

After the departure of the buses with the militants, Kizlyar summed up the tragedy. Of the civilian population, 24 people were killed and several were injured. The losses of federal troops in this city amounted to 9 people killed and 42 wounded. It was announced that the militants themselves in Kizlyar lost 29 people killed.

At first, the release of the militants took place almost according to Budennov’s scenario. The column reached the Chechen border in the Pervomaisky area without any hindrance. But, as it turned out, the federal authorities decided to act more decisively this time. Unexpectedly, the convoy with militants was fired upon from combat helicopters.

After this, the Dudayevites decided to return to Pervomaiskoye and gain a foothold in this locality. The unit of 36 Novosibirsk riot policemen stationed there, guarding this populated area, as always, turned out to be unprepared to meet the enemy. Not only did they not occupy the previously dug trenches, but they also did not offer any resistance to the militants. Having handed over their weapons at the first request of the Chechens, the riot police, “like sacrificial sheep,” climbed onto the buses. Later, they just as resignedly dug new trenches and communication passages, now improving the Chechen defense of Pervomaisky. Later, a version appeared that the Novosibirsk riot police surrendered in exchange for S. Raduev’s promise to release the captured women and children. Perhaps it was so. But we should not forget that at the same checkpoint there was a large warehouse of weapons and ammunition, which also went to the Dudayevites. The question also arises: who prepared the operation to seize militant buses without coordinating the actions of the helicopters with the actions of the riot police and other forces?

Temporary fortification on the outskirts of a Chechen city

It later turned out that the decision to destroy the gang of terrorists at any cost was made by the authorities shortly before the buses with the hostages reached Pervomaisky. The column of buses was already on the way when 150 paratroopers stationed in Chechnya received orders to prepare to fly towards Pervomaisky. They were given the task of blocking and destroying buses as soon as they crossed the border into Chechnya. First, attack aircraft were supposed to hit the column, then helicopters were supposed to strike, and then the paratroopers had to finish off those who survived. There was no talk about hostages, since it was assumed that the terrorists would have to leave them in Dagestan. But this operation was not destined to happen.

The federal authorities again proved unable to foresee the development of the situation. Their confusion turned into a protracted pause, which allowed the Dudayevites to improve their defense in Pervomaisky. But they did not intend to fight to the death in this locality. The terrorists hoped that the federal authorities would not risk the lives of the hostages and would allow them into Chechnya. Therefore, they were more concerned about political advertising than about the defense of Pervomaisky. This is evidenced by the fact that in the evening of the same day, seven high-ranking volunteer hostages from the Dagestan authorities were released. Returning to Makhachkala, some of them began on local television to denounce the Russian authorities of helplessness and corruption. Under the influence of these speeches, the mood of the Dagestanis began to change quickly. Anti-Russian slogans began to sound not only in the capital, but also in the mountain villages...

Then an epic began in Pervomaisky with the liberation of women and children. The Chechens seemed to let the women go, but they themselves did not want to leave without their husbands. When asked by the leaders of Dagestan to give them a few minutes to negotiate with the captured women, S. Raduev refused.

– The hostages deserved a big plus before Allah, helping the fight for the independence of Chechnya. For them, this is like an opportunity to atone for their sins,” said the leader of the terrorists.

The indecisiveness of the federal command contributed not only to the strengthening of Dudayev’s defense in Pervomaisky, but also to a decrease in the morale of the Russian troops stationed on the approaches to this settlement. The soldiers were too hungry and cold to think about Raduev. Every day and hour they thought more and more about food and warmth. The leaders of the operation did not care at all about their subordinates - the paratroopers were never delivered hot food for three days, and dry rations ran out. On the third day, soldiers and special forces began hunting for cows, goats, geese, and chickens that had fled from Pervomaisky. With the onset of darkness, hungry warriors from units less successful in the hunt went to the nearest villages abandoned by the inhabitants, and dragged from there everything that could be eaten or used as a blanket. "Grandfathers" from the Makhachkala battalion of internal troops quickly found common language with the men who remained to guard their houses, and drank with them “for the victory over Raduev.” Discipline in the ranks of the federal forces was rapidly declining.

On the morning of January 15, by decision of the command, federal troops began the assault on Pervomaisky. It developed extremely slowly - no one wanted to go out into the open, everyone was limited to shooting from long distances. By 16 o'clock it became clear that the operation could not be completed during daylight hours, during which only a few managed to reach the outskirts of Pervomaisky. The militants were able to retreat in an organized manner to the central and southern parts of the village, where they put up stubborn resistance. Once again admitting its impotence, the federal command late in the evening of January 15 stopped the assault on Pervomaisky and withdrew the troops to their starting lines for regrouping.

The assault on Pervomaisky was carried out simultaneously with an attempt to persuade the Dudayevites to surrender through negotiations. To guide them, the director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Barsukov, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia, Anatoly Kulikov, and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Dagestan, Magomed Abdurazanov, arrived in the combat area. However, S. Raduev refused to capitulate.

At the same time, a radio interception of a conversation between the terrorists and Dudayev’s headquarters took place. The Chechen leader warned his subordinate: “Do not conduct long negotiations, every word, every intonation is against you. Prepare the police for execution and warn them about it. You can even shoot some... Keep a tough position. They are coming to your aid... Consider yourself suicide bombers. Prepare to appear before Allah. Forget about everything earthly, then it will be easier for you. Start with the worst."

After deciphering this radio interception, the pointlessness of waiting for negotiations became obvious. By the end of the day, significant forces of federal troops were concentrated in the vicinity of Pervomaisky. They included more than two thousand personnel, a tank, 80 armored vehicles, 32 guns and mortars, 3 Grad installations, 16 flamethrowers. According to calculations, these forces were quite sufficient to prevent the terrorists from breaking through and ensure their rapid destruction in the populated area.

The next day at 11 o'clock a powerful fire attack was carried out on Pervomaisky by combat helicopters. Subsequently, federal forces attacked a Chechen checkpoint located on the southern outskirts of the village. Although this checkpoint was taken, it was also not possible to defeat the Dudayevites in Pervomaisky on that day. Little consolation for the feds was the release of four dozen hostages, despite the fact that more than a hundred unfortunates remained in the hands of terrorists.

The terrorists themselves acted more skillfully. In the middle of the night on January 18, a group of terrorists opened fire from the southern and southwestern outskirts of Pervomaisky. At the same time, from the Soviet side to the rear Russian troops hit a detachment of Dudayevites who came from Chechnya through Nizhny Gerzel. A firefight ensued, which the federal command took as preparation for a terrorist breakthrough. All forces were thrown towards the threatened direction.

In reality, the breakthrough was being prepared from the northwestern side of the settlement. There, at three o'clock in the morning, another group of Chechens, letting hostages lead them, suddenly attacked the soldiers, who were confused by surprise. As a result of quick hand-to-hand combat, about 40 Chechens led by Salman Raduev broke through the weak encirclement ring. They left for the territory of Chechnya, taking with them a group of hostages. Most of them were returned only on January 24, and again for certain concessions from the federal leadership.

The time has come to take stock of the tragic events that occurred in Pervomaisky. According to the Russian president, 153 terrorists were killed and 30 captured in this locality. The losses of federal troops during the assault on the village amounted to 26 people killed and 93 wounded. As usual, no casualties were reported among hostages or local residents.

The events in Kizlyar and Pervomaisky once again showed the inability of the federal authorities to solve the Chechen problem. The actions of the Russian government and local security ministers were chaotic. The reasoning of the President - Supreme Commander-in-Chief B. N. Yeltsin about how hostages should be rescued is striking. “The streets smoke and they run away... And when they run, you know, in a wide front, they are much more difficult to kill...” he said in front of television cameras. It is not necessary to be a great expert in military affairs to understand the weakness of this plan, if not its complete failure. The immediate leaders of the operation looked no better.

What happened in Kizlyar and Pervomaisky highlighted the figure of terrorist No. 2 among the Chechens. He became Salman Raduev. Among the Russian journalists there were people who had met him before. A Moskovsky Komsomolets correspondent wrote about one of these meetings:

“I met him last March (1995). Then, I remember, MK correspondents came to him, Dudayev’s governor, to issue a pass and at the same time interview him. Raduev received us in full wartime armor - under the green banner of Ichkeria, placing a machine gun with a grenade launcher, a walkie-talkie and a pistol on the table in front of him. The real Tiger of the Caucasus...

Road of War

Later, according to the custom of Caucasian hospitality, Raduev invited us to his home on the outskirts of Gudermes... We drove a brand new “seven”, accompanied by two guards, one of whom, the Afghan Mujahideen Habibollah, equipped with a brand new “handbrake”, chanted Surahs from the Koran all the time. At home, having thrown off his “bra” with grenades and body armor, Raduev suddenly turned from a formidable warrior of Allah into a thin teenage man. His wife invited us to the table. Before eating, Raduev and the guards retired to the next room for prayer - it was the last hour of the fifth adhan.

At the table Raduev started talking again, by the way, characteristic feature Many Chechen men are incessantly talkative. Then we found out that he was about thirty, that he had a higher education in economics, graduate school and an almost finished candidate’s thesis. “I am a purely peaceful person by nature,” Raduev muttered hoarsely. “More than anything else, I dream of turning my country, my Chechnya, into a second Kuwait, planting it with gardens, decorating it with fountains, palaces and oil derricks. But now the realization of my dream has been postponed. It's war now. We are being driven into a corner, and if this continues, we will spread the war to the territory of Dagestan. We took money and aircraft outside the republic and now we can fight as much as we want, and we buy weapons in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Sudan, Pakistan and Russia. There are such channels, and one of them is Russian contract soldiers! There are plenty of weapons, even more than people. The last large shipment, no secret, we received through Dagestan. It makes no difference to us where we fight, Russia has declared war on us, which means we will fight everywhere - in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, in Russia itself, just to kill Russian soldiers. Moreover, we now have high-precision weapons capable of hitting objects within a radius of 5–6 kilometers. Which of the Chechens took the side of Russia did not care about the graves of their fathers. The cowards left. A true Muslim is fighting here.

There hasn't been a real war yet, it's coming! Jihad is the path of Allah, and every Muslim is happy to die on this path. President Dudayev and the national congress decided to create special death battalions. There are more volunteers than needed. Such a volunteer is included in the list of heroes of the republic by presidential decree even before his death! His name will be carved on the tablets of the history of the Chechen people! We will raise the entire Caucasus! We will make it Muslim! And in general, I don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for the war, I would probably have been some kind of average official in the economic service, but now I respect myself, I feel like a hero, a true Muslim, the savior of my people and fatherland... »

This, according to the journalist, was Salman Raduev - the main culprit of the tragedies in Kizlyar and Pervomaisky, who once again fooled Russian politicians and generals, forcing them to admit their helplessness. Then, in their materials, in pursuit of the “hot” fact, the Russian media cared little about the prestige of their state, about instilling patriotic feelings among Russian citizens. The terrorist S. Raduev for some time became a significant figure, information about whom could be used to make money. And that was enough.

The January events, apparently, were also assessed ambiguously by the Chechens themselves, in whose upper echelons there had long been an internecine struggle. This time, terrorist No. 2 Salman Raduev and his family became its victims. True, they later wrote that in this way the Chechens took blood revenge for their relatives and comrades, abandoned by this field commander to the mercy of fate, or rather to certain death, during his flight from Pervomaisky. True, there is no documentary evidence of any of the versions. Nevertheless, on the night of March 1, 1996, in Gudermes, the house of Raduev’s father was shot at using “Mukha” grenade launchers and a “Shmel” flamethrower. The inhabitants of the house and its guards died. In the morning, 11 corpses were found at the scene of the tragedy. How many people and who exactly burned in the house remained unknown.

Salman himself, who was away, managed to avoid the fate of his relatives that time. However, a few days later, on March 5, 1996, in the area of ​​the village of Urus-Martan, he was seriously wounded by unknown persons and, according to official Russian sources, died.

True, four months later the “dead” S. Raduev was resurrected and met with Russian journalists. He stated that after receiving a serious injury he was undergoing treatment in Germany, where, among other things, he underwent plastic surgery that changed his facial features. Now, having returned to his homeland, S. Raduev intended to once again actively participate in the struggle of his people with Russia and lead it to a victorious end, mainly using the methods of guerrilla warfare and mass terror. There was no need to doubt this man’s promises.

Some time passed, and the war in Chechnya officially ended. But terrorism could not be eliminated. On December 15, Raduev’s militants captured 22 employees of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were released four days later thanks to the intervention of separatist leaders and Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Boris Berezovsky. At that time, Boris Abramovich was presented in Russia as perhaps the most successful negotiator, who wholeheartedly cared about the fate of the Russians who found themselves in Chechen captivity. Later it turned out that in his activities in the North Caucasus he pursued completely different goals...

This success was soon overshadowed by the shooting on December 17 by a group of Chechen terrorists of six employees of the International Red Cross in a hospital in the village of Novye Atagi. Five of the dead were women and, in addition, citizens of Norway, Holland, Spain, Canada and New Zealand. All of them are at the call of various public organizations voluntarily came to Chechnya to provide medical assistance to its residents. The “gratitude” for this humane act was death...

Soon after this, Salman Raduev was captured by federal troops, sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison. Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, having safely taken billions of dollars out of the country, including those mixed with Russian and Chechen blood, successfully “hid” in London, from time to time making anti-Russian statements on local television. The evil that he caused to Russia and its people as Deputy Secretary of the Security Council has yet to be dealt with.

The Chechen war and Chechen terrorism have shown that these are only visible manifestations of a huge secretive process of struggle for power and money on the ruins of a superpower, which until recently occupied a sixth of the land area of ​​our planet and pursued an independent policy. The empire collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy, which had long ago betrayed all ideals for the sake of material benefit. Kites flocked to the wreckage, greedy for easy prey. Among these kites there were neither “friends” nor “strangers”. They all look the same: cruel, cynical, merciless, completely indifferent to the fate of states and peoples. They have one goal - to snatch more from what was created by Russian and Russian people over centuries of sweat and blood. Soviet people, all its nations and nationalities. And if this required a war, the fleeced people received a war, and for greater fear, terrorist attacks were organized in Budennovsk, Kizlyar and Pervomaisky, explosions were heard in the Rostov region and in Moscow. And this is not surprising; any means for these people justified the goal that they set for themselves.

People once lived in this house

Many asked themselves the question: will the documents signed in Khasavyurt on August 31 by the Secretary of the Russian Security Council A. Lebed and the chief of staff of the armed forces of the separatists A. Maskhadov put an end to the Chechen war and Chechen terrorism? The answer from most experts was negative. The reason for this lay in the difference in the attitude of the parties to this document. The Russian side tried to find a way to end a hopeless war without officially recognizing its defeat. Chechen, according to its leader Yandarbiev, hoped in this way not only to consolidate its victory in the republic, but also to obtain from the defeated side (Russia) compensation for the material and moral damage caused by the war.

But the main thing was different - they needed a source of tension on Russian territory that would distract the attention of its people and allow individuals to rob the state with impunity. The Chechens also did not intend to lay down their arms, hoping in this way to earn support, and most importantly, to receive money from abroad. Therefore, both sides, in order to achieve their goals, decided to postpone the issue of the status of Chechnya until December 31, 2001.

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