The list of Soviet military personnel missing in action now includes 264 people. One of them is a native of the Odessa region. Journalists managed to shed light on the circumstances of the soldier’s disappearance.
Denis Kornyshev and Oleg Konstantinov write about this in Dumskaya.
When we first started developing this topic, we planned to time the publication of the article to coincide with the next “Afghan” date - say, the anniversary of the withdrawal of troops from the mountainous republic. It seemed to us that a story about a rarely remembered category of victims of that war - prisoners of war - would not be at all out of place. After all, sometimes their stories are an example of real courage. Take, for example, the famous uprising of Soviet prisoners in the Badaber camp, which ended with the destruction of the Pakistani base. What if, we thought, looking for the guy’s colleagues, fellow villagers and relatives, sending out requests for information, it would suddenly turn out that he was not just “missing”, but a forgotten hero, whom God himself ordered to tell the public about.
Alas, when the editors received more information about our fellow countryman, it became clear that the material would not turn out to be “heroic” for a number of reasons, which are discussed below. For the same reasons, we decided to change the first and last name of the person involved, and also not to indicate the locality from which he was drafted and where his relatives still live. “Dumskaya” could not refuse the publication completely - after all, the facts we obtained cover one of the many blind spots in the history of the local conflict in the DRA. In addition, there is every reason to believe that Alexander N. (as we will call the serviceman) is still alive, although he is unlikely to be eager to return to his homeland... But first things first.
“RED TULIPS”, HARE HUNT AND LIST-92
The fact that our prisoners of war remained in Afghanistan became known to the general Soviet public only a year after the withdrawal of the “limited contingent”. Before this, the topic of “missing people” was modestly ignored, statistics were not made public, and only combatants and relatives of the “missing” knew that such a category of losses existed at all.
The information vacuum began to be filled in 1990. The first to shoot was the departmental “Red Star”, which, without naming names, spoke about the uprising in Badaber. At the same time, the press began to publish terrible evidence about the fate of those captured. The fragile psyche of Soviet citizens was traumatized by stories about how the unfortunate had their arms and legs cut off, their tongues cut out, their eyes gouged out, or they were made into “red tulips” - they cut the skin on the stomach, pulled it up and tied it over the head, after which the person died in terrible agony .
Igor Rykov and Oleg Khlan in a prisoner of war camp, 1983. Soldier Of Fortune Magazine
A little later, information appeared that some soldiers and officers ended up in the hands of the Mujahideen of their own free will. Some fled out of political convictions, some from hazing, and some from criminal prosecution when facts of theft and other illegal actions were revealed.
The highest-ranking fugitive is the chief of intelligence of the 122nd regiment of the 201st motorized rifle division, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Zayats. During one of the operations, he shot two members of the Afghan security service KHAD. The officer was removed from duty, an investigation began, but he stole a BRDM and drove it to the enemy’s location. Then it became known that the intelligence officer was killed by the Mujahideen. According to one version - for refusal to cooperate. However, in his memoirs former boss intelligence of the 201st division, and now a professor at the department of intelligence National University Defense of Ukraine Nikolai Kuzmin claims that Zayats not only collaborated - he led some of the enemy’s operations. And they “slapped” him when Soviet troops blocked the zone where the traitor was located.
“They tried to take the hare to the mountains several times, but it didn’t work,” writes Kuzmin. - It became clear that its capture by ours was a matter of time. The council of leaders decided that since it was impossible to get him out, and he had been with them for almost 1.5 months, had seen many of the leaders, their bases and caches, then it was advisable to eliminate him as an unwanted witness. Which was done immediately. He was taken to the river bank. Kunduz, shot, the body was stripped naked and thrown into the river. Now, after 1-2 days, it would no longer be possible to identify him: the heat, fish and crayfish will do their job. And there were plenty of ownerless corpses in the rivers of Afghanistan in those years. This is how Lieutenant Colonel Zayats disappeared and died.”
Be that as it may, neither Hare nor other deserters can be called criminals, since in 1988 The Supreme Council The USSR, “guided by the principles of humanism,” issued an unprecedented decree that exempted from criminal liability all persons who committed crimes during the passage military service on the territory of Afghanistan. Regardless of the nature of these crimes! This amnesty is comparable only to the mass release of prisoners by Kerensky and Beria.
In February 1992, the same “Red Star” finally published full list missing persons. By that time, public and government structures were already working hard to return the prisoners. Many - like, for example, the future vice-president of Russia and leader of the anti-Yeltsin opposition, General Rutskoi - were ransomed, while some were handed over to the militants for free. To coordinate this activity, the Committee for the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers was formed in the CIS (unofficial name - Committee-92). Over the first ten years of work, employees of this organization found 29 former military personnel, 22 of whom returned to their homeland, and seven remained to live in Afghanistan.
Last, but hopefully not the last, in March of this year we managed to find a private of the 101st motorized rifle regiment, Uzbek Bakhretdin Khakimov, who went missing in Herat province in September 1980. In a battle with the dushmans, he was seriously wounded and was unable to withdraw with his unit. Local residents picked him up and took him in. The former soldier remained to live in Afghanistan. Gradually, he learned the secrets of herbal medicine from the elder and himself became a respected physician under the name Sheikh Abdullah. I didn’t want to go back...
MISSING ON NEW YEAR'S NIGHT
But let's return to our fellow countryman. Junior Sergeant Alexander Mikhailovich N. was born in 1964 in a small village on the border of Odessa and Nikolaev regions. Graduated from a local school. Join the ranks Soviet army the guy was called up on March 27, 1982. In August of the same year, he ended up in the artillery division of the 122nd motorized rifle regiment of the 201st Gatchina division, which was stationed in the province of Kunduz.
Alexander N. Photo from the conscript’s personal file, website salambacha.com
According to official data, from December 31, 1983 to January 2, 1984, serviceman N. went missing. For 30 years now there has been no word about him. His old mother and sister are still waiting for him.
“Immediately after school I joined the army. I wanted to serve myself. No one was forced there at that time. Sasha was one of three who were called up from the entire region to Afghanistan. A good, strong and kind person. Mom dreams of him every night and says that he will return soon,” says sister N. Valentina Mikhailovna.
When the family learned about the disappearance of the soldier, the mother traveled to Kyiv and Moscow, wrote numerous letters to all authorities, but the answer was the same: “There is no information about your son.” And only in 1992 did they find out that Sasha was alive, but in captivity. Neither they nor local authorities were not reported. To this day, every February 15 - the day of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan - junior sergeant N. is mentioned at official events in the region as a hero.
Unfortunately, he was not a hero, as evidenced by both the criminal case closed after the announcement of the “Afghan” amnesty and the testimony of his colleagues.
“Sergeant N. is a traitor who left the Ak-Mazar garrison (until the end of 1985, there was a control platoon and three guns of the second fire platoon of the 3rd howitzer battery of the regiment’s artillery division - Ed.) My platoon stood three kilometers from them. I remember very well how the search for him went, what intelligence information came in and how negotiations were conducted with the spirits about his extradition, although unsuccessfully,” says former platoon commander Sergei Polushkin.
According to him, junior sergeant N. was the commander of the gun crew. His unit guarded the Termez-Kabul highway in the area of the city of Aibak, Samangan province (and not in Kunduz, as indicated in the Red Star list).
“Artillerymen, unlike motorized riflemen, were involved in operations only when it was necessary to shell the territory within the radius of destruction of howitzers - about 15 kilometers. The rest of the time, the artillery battalion’s fighters sat on the high-rise without moving out and had no contact with other units. No one knew what was happening there,” recalls the commander of the 3rd battalion of the regiment, Mikhail Teteryatnikov.
“He left on New Year’s Eve and was declared missing on January 2. I talked to a soldier who saw the guy just a few minutes before his escape. Alexander was absolutely calm. He took with him a machine gun and six magazines, two of which he put in his boots. Why he ran away is unclear. Anything could have happened - from hazing to ideological convictions. But it was a shock to everyone when he left. The Uzbeks and Tajiks were leaving, and here was a Slav! I can say one thing: he did this intelligently, because after that he fought against us,” says Sergei Polushkin.
Artillerymen of the 122nd MRR, photo from 1985
Alexander N. defected to a gang of Mujahideen that acted against the regiment.
“After his desertion, the enemy group sharply became more active, they began to behave quite daringly - the traitor knew our tactics and could predict our moves. He spoiled a lot of blood for us. Whether he personally killed Soviet soldiers or not, I don’t know. We need to ask him if this creature is alive,” Polushkin does not hold back his emotions.
Other veterans of the 122nd regiment say that N. worked for the Mujahideen for quite a long time. He taught them to lay mines, attack transport convoys and other military wisdom. He took an active part in military clashes. Sometimes he would break into the air using a walkie-talkie and mockingly invite his former comrades to surrender.
Viktor Rodnov, who served in the communications company of the 122nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, says that immediately after the sergeant disappeared, the entire regiment was sent out to search for him:
“I don’t know of a single case when we abandoned our own. Even corpses were taken out of gorges and prisoners were sometimes ransomed. But only those who want to be free can be freed. N. himself came into radio contact with us during the battle on those frequencies that only his own knew, and cursed at us. The fact that because of him the spirits then calmly passed our posts and laid mines is a fact,” says the veteran.
“KHAD employees negotiated with the Mujahideen to hand over the deserter - at first there was hope that this was an accident. But when Alexander refused the transfer, everything became clear. The group sent to recapture him was ambushed. Several people were injured,” adds Polushkin.
Dumskaya's sources in the Ukrainian special services confirmed that in their archives there are references to the escape of Sergeant N. For some time, despite the amnesty, he appeared in the orientations as a particularly dangerous criminal, during whose arrest weapons can and should be used. However, in the early 1990s, according to our interlocutors, the man was taken to Canada by CIA officers, and since then his trace has been lost. Whether Alexander is alive now is unknown. The motives that prompted the young man from a small Ukrainian village on the shore of the Tiligul estuary to forget about the oath also remained unclear...
About the fate of prisoners in Afghanistan. Ex-boss talks special department KGB of the USSR Limited contingent of Soviet troops in the DRA, retired Major General Mikhail Ovseenko:
*****
Mikhail Yakovlevich, why exactly did military counterintelligence officers do this work?
– The fact is that initially the participation of Soviet troops in hostilities on the territory of Afghanistan was not envisaged. It was assumed that they would provide humanitarian assistance to the population, assist in the construction of a number of economic facilities, and the creation and strengthening of bodies state power and power structures of the republic. But in reality everything turned out completely differently. Considering the instability of the situation, the inability of the old Afghan army to resist bandits and the growing threat of invasion from outside, the command of the 40th Army had to begin active fighting together with units of the Afghan army to defeat the armed opposition. There were irretrievable losses and prisoners. It was logical in the context of the KGB tasks to organize events to search for missing servicemen specifically by special officers. But this activity was not regulated from above, so military counterintelligence officers began to petition their leadership to include special department. So in 1983, the 9th group of the special department of the KGB of the USSR for the 40th Army was created.
– What were the tasks of the new unit?
– Their range of work was quite voluminous. I will name just a few tasks:
– search and release of Soviet military personnel who were in gangs in Afghanistan, as well as in Pakistan and Iran;
– search and determination of the whereabouts of missing persons. In the event of the death of some of them, obtaining reliable information about their death, as well as their burial places;
– coordination of investigative activities with representatives of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the DRA.
– accounting and search for stolen weapons.
– Is it known? specific number military personnel captured by militants? Data on this matter in various sources vary.
– In the list I have, prepared by the 9th group, there were 310 missing people in 1987, more than a hundred of them died, over sixty were identified in gangs, including in Pakistan and Iran.
We had a file for each missing serviceman: characteristics, under what circumstances he disappeared. Somewhere around eighty percent were captured helpless, wounded, or running out of ammunition. But there were also cases of indiscipline among our soldiers and insufficient control on the part of officers in relation to their subordinates. For example, one of the privates wanted to cool off in the river that flowed outside the garrison, another decided to wash clothes in the river, again outside the checkpoint, a group of four soldiers decided to eat apples in the garden of a neighboring village. One of the officers went jogging outside his unit every morning. In all these cases the ending was tragic. Some were killed, some were taken prisoner.
Our file cabinet was constantly replenished with information obtained during the filtering of captured dushmans and our military personnel removed from gangs, through interviews with village elders, through the agents of the state security agencies of Afghanistan.
We knew that in the Dushman dungeons the prisoners were kept in the most terrible conditions, subjected to brutal torture, forced drug injections, forced study of the Koran, the local language, constant humiliation. Sometimes, with the help of notes transmitted through trusted agents, it was possible to contact our military personnel who were with the rebels.
Until 1989, 88 Soviet military personnel were withdrawn from gangs. Eight of them, as the audit showed, were recruited by the enemy and returned through an exchange channel to the territory of the USSR to carry out reconnaissance missions. Yes, there were some. Some could not stand the bullying, broke down and became unwitting accomplices of the bandits. Materials regarding them were sent by a special department of the 40th Army to local authorities security.
In addition, military personnel who settled in the USA, Switzerland, France, Iran, Canada, Germany and other countries, who were in gang formations in Pakistan before the withdrawal of Soviet troops, were later identified. Of these, 21 people were identified during my service.
How did they manage to free him from captivity?
– To remove our compatriots from the gangs, they mainly used exchanges for dushman authorities, relatives of the leaders of the rebel groups, functionaries of opposition parties, and foreign advisers of Arab origin. For one of ours, as a rule, they demanded five or six of their prisoners. We agreed.
In general, each liberation operation was original in its own way and sometimes took several months. Let me give you an example. Private D. did not stand out in any positive way in his service and was noted for using soft drugs. After one of the violations of discipline, he disappeared from the unit with a weapon. Literally a few days later, based on intelligence information, we learned that he was in one of the gangs in the province of Kunduz. It later turned out that after checking and appropriate processing there, he was entrusted with repairing small arms. Over time, he began to actively participate in the torture of captured Afghan army soldiers, which earned him the trust of his new owners. They began to attract him to hostilities, married a local girl, and appointed him as the bodyguard of the gang leader. The cruelty of the former Soviet soldier amazed even the dushmans. His authority increased even more after he executed his father-in-law, suspecting him of sympathizing with government troops. Considering that Private D. had become an odious figure, the special forces were given the task of bringing him to territory under our control. The rebels rejected ransom and exchange even for the most serious Afghan authorities. Then, according to a developed plan agreed upon with the Ministry of State Security of Afghanistan, a false gang was organized from among the secret service employees. The commander of this “unit” sent two representatives to D. with a request for help in smelting iron from Soviet NURS for the manufacture of landmines. So the traitor ended up in the hands of military counterintelligence. The military tribunal sentenced him to capital punishment.
I would like to note that the command of the 40th Army has always provided us with great assistance in terms of finances and personnel. After all, although infrequently, ransoms had to be paid when military personnel were released - sometimes considerable ones. They also ransomed those who were later brought to justice.
– The success of the operation was preceded by big job?
- Certainly. But despite the recommendations of a special department of the army to coordinate all issues relating to the release of captured military personnel, it happened that unit commanders did this without permission. Sometimes out of emotion, sometimes in the hope of luck. For example, in one city, representatives of gangs kidnapped 16 Soviet civilian specialists who were traveling by bus to their place of work in the morning. The Afghan residents of the city, who were kind to us, were also involved in the search. For almost three months there was no information about our compatriots.
Chance helped. A teenager who arrived from a remote village, in a conversation with the dukan-man, mentioned Russian prisoners. Having received this information, the commander of one of the units alerted two helicopters with troops on board and ordered, without any preliminary preparation follow to the point indicated by the teenager. We landed a few tens of meters from the adobe hut. The prisoners, seeing the saviors through the window, unanimously leaned on the wall, squeezed it out and rushed to the helicopter.
The guards managed to kill three and seriously wound one. He died on the helicopter. Our military quickly dealt with the bandits who were near the house, took on board the living and dead compatriots and flew off. Before they had time to gain altitude, the spooks opened fire on the car strong fire. Fortunately, everything ended well. But it could have turned out differently if the Mujahideen had a clearly established security and surveillance service.
– Tell us how our servicemen behaved in captivity?
– Carrying out search activities, we received information about many heroes. There were many such examples. In 1982, junior sergeant S.V. Bakhanov was captured during the clash. During interrogation, he refused to give the enemy information about the Bagram airfield and was shot on the orders of Ahmad Shah.
Privates P.G. Vorsin and V.I. Chekhov was kept under guard in a cave in 1984. They managed to remove two sentries and, having taken possession of their weapons, tried to break through to their own. But they were surrounded by dushmans, they shot all the ammunition and, not wanting to surrender, rushed into the abyss.
Private R.V. Kozurak was captured in 1982. He was brutally tortured to obtain information about the Kabul airfield. Shot while trying to escape.
Ensign N.V. Khalatsky, while in captivity, attacked a sentry, wounded him and ran away from the gang. However, the dushmans overtook him, and he, clutching a heavy stone with his hands, threw himself into the abyss.
The most striking example of unbroken will while in captivity are the events in the Badaber camp controlled by the Islamic Society of Afghanistan in Pakistan. Under him, a “Training Center for Militants” was organized, where members of gangs were trained under the guidance of foreign military instructors.
On April 26, 1985, 12 imprisoned Soviet soldiers neutralized six sentries, freed prisoners from the DRA armed forces, seized a weapons depot and held the camp in their hands for two days. Only through the joint efforts of the armed units of the Mujahideen and Pakistani regular troops was it possible to suppress the uprising. All the rebels died.
But the bandits also suffered losses: about 100 Mujahideen, 90 Pakistani regular troops, 13 representatives of the Pakistani authorities, six American instructors were killed, three Grad installations and 40 pieces of heavy military equipment were destroyed.
Since all the prisoners, as usual, were given Muslim names, and their original documents were confiscated and classified by the Pakistani authorities, it is still not possible to establish the surnames of our compatriots. But according to available data, the organizer of the uprising was a Russian officer named Victor. Unfortunately, he failed to implement his escape plan due to the betrayal of a soldier from his entourage.
– Last year in funds mass media It was reported that former Soviet soldier Bakhretdin Khakimov, who went missing in September 1980, has been found in the western Afghan province of Herat. He leads a semi-nomadic lifestyle and collects medicinal herbs.
“Although a lot of time has passed, the search for missing servicemen in Afghanistan and the burial places of those killed in order to return the remains to their homeland does not stop. And those who started families or committed serious crimes settled in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed, along with the selfless fulfillment of military duty, there were also cases of cowardice, cowardice, leaving units with and without weapons in search better life.
The destinies of such people, as a rule, did not turn out the way they wanted. For example, in July 1988, it became known about one of those “Afghan” soldiers whom foreign journalists managed to take to the West - Private Nikolai Golovin. He voluntarily returned to the Soviet Union from Canada immediately after the statement by the USSR Prosecutor General Sukharev that former servicemen who were prisoners in the DRA would not be subject to criminal prosecution.
On June 29, 1982, Golovin left his military unit. He hoped to get to Pakistan with the help of the Afghans, and from there he was going to go to the West. But he experienced all the torments of Afghan captivity. For a year and a half he was brutally beaten, humiliated, and forced to perform hard work. In a word, his dreams of prosperity vanished immediately and forever.
– Did the special department interact with any organizations in the search for missing servicemen?
– In the 1990s, publications began to appear in some media about the involvement of individual journalists and public organizations to the withdrawal of our military personnel from the gangs. This is not true. The only organization whose services military counterintelligence officers resorted to was the International Red Cross before the trips of its representatives to Pakistan. We introduced them to information that could be useful. But, unfortunately, their efforts did not give positive results.
– After the withdrawal of the Limited contingent of Soviet troops and the disbandment of the 40th Army, who is searching for the missing military personnel in Afghanistan?
– Since 1991, this issue has been dealt with by the Committee on the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers.
Probably write about such terrible things in new year holidays- this is not entirely correct. However, on the other hand, this date cannot be changed or changed in any way. After all, it was on New Year’s Eve 1980 that the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan began, which became the starting point of the many years of Afghan war, which cost our country many thousands of lives...
Today, hundreds of books and memoirs have been written about this war, and all kinds of other historical materials. But here's what catches your eye. The authors somehow diligently avoid the topic of the death of Soviet prisoners of war on Afghan soil. Yes, some episodes of this tragedy are mentioned in individual memoirs of war participants. But the author of these lines has never come across a systematic, generalizing work on the dead prisoners - although I very closely follow Afghan historical topics. Meanwhile, entire books have already been written (mainly by Western authors) about the same problem from the other side - the death of Afghans at the hands of Soviet troops. There are even Internet sites (including in Russia) that tirelessly expose “the crimes of Soviet troops, who brutally exterminated civilians and Afghan resistance fighters.” But practically nothing is said about the often terrible fate of Soviet captured soldiers.
I didn’t make a reservation - precisely a terrible fate. The thing is that Afghan dushmans rarely killed Soviet prisoners of war doomed to death right away. Lucky were those whom the Afghans wanted to convert to Islam, exchange for their own, or give as a “gesture.” good will» to Western human rights organizations, so that they, in turn, glorify the “generous Mujahideen” throughout the world. But those who were doomed to death... Usually the death of a prisoner was preceded by such terrible tortures and torments, the mere description of which immediately makes one feel uneasy.
Why did the Afghans do this? Apparently, the whole point is in the backward Afghan society, where the traditions of the most radical Islam, which demanded the painful death of an infidel as a guarantee of entering heaven, coexisted with the wild pagan remnants of individual tribes, where the practice included human sacrifice, accompanied by real fanaticism. Often all this served as a means psychological warfare, in order to frighten the Soviet enemy, the dushmans often threw the mutilated remains of prisoners to our military garrisons...
As experts say, our soldiers were captured in different ways - some were on unauthorized absence from a military unit, some deserted due to hazing, some were captured by dushmans at a post or in real battle. Yes, today we can condemn these prisoners for their rash actions that led to the tragedy (or, on the contrary, admire those who were captured in a combat situation). But those who accepted martyrdom, have already atoned for all their obvious and imaginary sins by their death. And therefore, they - at least from a purely Christian point of view - deserve no less bright memory in our hearts than those soldiers of the Afghan war (living and dead) who performed heroic, recognized feats.
Here are just some episodes of the tragedy of Afghan captivity that the author managed to collect from open sources.
The legend of the "red tulip"
From the book of American journalist George Crile “Charlie Wilson’s War” (unknown details of the CIA’s secret war in Afghanistan):
“This is said to be a true story, and although the details have changed over the years, the overall story is approximately in the following way. On the morning of the second day after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Soviet sentry noticed five jute bags on the edge of the runway at Bagram airbase outside Kabul. At first he didn’t attach much importance to it, but then he poked the barrel of the machine gun into the nearest bag and saw blood coming out. Bomb experts were called in to check the bags for booby traps. But they discovered something much more terrible. Each bag contained a young Soviet soldier, wrapped in his own skin. As far as the medical examination was able to determine, these people died a particularly painful death: their skin was cut on the abdomen, and then pulled up and tied above the head."
This type of brutal execution is called “red tulip”, and almost all the soldiers who served on Afghan soil heard about it - a doomed person, injected into unconsciousness with a large dose of a drug, was hung up by his hands. The skin was then trimmed around the entire body and folded upward. When the effect of the dope wore off, the condemned man, having experienced a strong painful shock, first went crazy and then slowly died...
Today it is difficult to say how many of our soldiers met their end in exactly this way. Usually there was and is a lot of talk among Afghan veterans about the “red tulip” - one of the legends was cited by the American Crile. But few veterans can name the specific name of this or that martyr. However, this does not mean that this execution is only an Afghan legend. Thus, the fact of using the “red tulip” on private Viktor Gryaznov, the driver of an army truck who went missing in January 1981, was reliably recorded.
Only 28 years later, Victor’s fellow countrymen, journalists from Kazakhstan, were able to find out the details of his death.
At the beginning of January 1981, Viktor Gryaznov and warrant officer Valentin Yarosh received the task of going to the city of Puli-Khumri to a military warehouse to receive cargo. A few days later they set off on their return journey. But on the way the convoy was attacked by dushmans. The truck Gryaznov was driving broke down, and then he and Valentin Yarosh took up arms. The battle lasted about half an hour... The ensign's body was later found not far from the battle site, with a broken head and cut out eyes. But the dushmans dragged Victor with them. What happened to him later is evidenced by a certificate sent to Kazakh journalists in response to their official request from Afghanistan:
“At the beginning of 1981, the mujahideen of Abdul Razad Askhakzai’s detachment captured a shuravi (Soviet) during a battle with the infidels, and called himself Viktor Ivanovich Gryaznov. He was asked to become a devout Muslim, a mujahid, a defender of Islam, and to participate in ghazavat - a holy war - with infidel infidels. Gryaznov refused to become a true believer and destroy the Shuravi. By the verdict of the Sharia court, Gryaznov was sentenced to death penalty- red tulip, the sentence has been carried out."
Of course, everyone is free to think about this episode as he pleases, but personally it seems to me that Private Gryaznov committed real feat, refusing to commit betrayal and accepting a cruel death for it. One can only guess how many more of our guys in Afghanistan committed the same heroic deeds, which, unfortunately, remain unknown to this day.
Foreign witnesses say
However, in the arsenal of the dushmans, in addition to the “red tulip,” there were many more brutal ways of killing Soviet prisoners.
Italian journalist Oriana Falacci, who visited Afghanistan and Pakistan several times in the 1980s, testifies. During these trips, she finally became disillusioned with the Afghan mujahideen, whom Western propaganda then portrayed exclusively as noble fighters against communism. The “noble fighters” turned out to be real monsters in human form:
“In Europe they didn’t believe me when I talked about what they usually did with Soviet prisoners. How they sawed off the Soviets' arms and legs... The victims did not die immediately. Only after some time the victim was finally beheaded and the severed head was used to play “buzkashi” - an Afghan version of polo. As for the arms and legs, they were sold as trophies in the bazaar...”
English journalist John Fullerton describes something similar in his book “The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan”:
“Death is the usual end for those Soviet prisoners who were communists... In the first years of the war, the fate of Soviet prisoners was often terrible. One group of prisoners, who were flayed, were hanged on hooks in a butcher's shop. Another prisoner became the central toy of an attraction called “buzkashi” - a cruel and savage polo of Afghans galloping on horses, snatching a headless sheep from each other instead of a ball. Instead, they used a prisoner. Alive! And he was literally torn to pieces.”
And here is another shocking confession from a foreigner. This is an excerpt from Frederick Forsyth's novel The Afghan. Forsyth is known for his closeness to the British intelligence services, who helped Afghan dushmans, and therefore, knowing the matter, he wrote the following:
“The war was brutal. Few prisoners were taken, and those who died quickly could consider themselves lucky. The mountaineers hated Russian pilots especially fiercely. Those captured alive were left in the sun, with a small incision made in the stomach, so that the insides swelled, spilled out and were fried until death brought relief. Sometimes prisoners were given to women, who used knives to skin them alive...”
Outside human mind
All this is confirmed in our sources. For example, in the book-memoir of international journalist Iona Andronov, who repeatedly visited Afghanistan:
“After the battles near Jalalabad, I was shown in the ruins of a suburban village the mutilated corpses of two Soviet soldiers captured by the Mujahideen. The bodies ripped open by daggers looked like a sickening bloody mess. I have heard about such savagery many times: the knackers cut off the ears and noses of captives, cut open their stomachs and tore out their intestines, cut off their heads and stuffed them inside the ripped peritoneum. And if they captured several prisoners, they tortured them one by one in front of the next martyrs.”
Andronov in his book recalls his friend, military translator Viktor Losev, who had the misfortune of being captured wounded:
“I learned that... the army authorities in Kabul, through Afghan intermediaries, were able to buy Losev’s corpse from the Mujahideen for a lot of money... The body of a Soviet officer given to us was subjected to such desecration that I still don’t dare to describe it. And I don’t know: whether he died from a battle wound or the wounded man was tortured to death by monstrous torture.The chopped remains of Victor in tightly sealed zinc were taken home by the “black tulip”.
By the way, the fate of captured Soviet military and civilian advisers was truly terrible. For example, in 1982, military counterintelligence officer Viktor Kolesnikov, who served as an adviser in one of the units of the Afghan government army, was tortured to death by dushmans. These Afghan soldiers went over to the side of the dushmans, and as a “gift” they “presented” a Soviet officer and translator to the mujahideen. USSR KGB Major Vladimir Garkavyi recalls:
“Kolesnikov and the translator were tortured for a long time and in a sophisticated manner. The “spirits” were masters in this matter. Then both their heads were cut off and, having packed their tortured bodies into bags, they were thrown into the roadside dust on the Kabul-Mazar-i-Sharif highway, not far from the Soviet checkpoint.”
As we see, both Andronov and Garkavy refrain from detailing the deaths of their comrades, sparing the reader’s psyche. But you can guess about these tortures - at least from the memories former officer KGB Alexander Nezdoli:
“And how many times, due to inexperience, and sometimes as a result of elementary neglect of safety measures, not only internationalist soldiers died, but also Komsomol workers seconded by the Komsomol Central Committee to create youth organizations. I remember the case of a blatantly brutal reprisal against one of these guys. He was scheduled to fly from Herat to Kabul. But in a hurry, he forgot the folder with documents and returned for it, and while catching up with the group, he ran into the dushmans. Having captured him alive, the “spirits” cruelly mocked him, cut off his ears, ripped open his stomach and filled it and his mouth with earth. Then the still living Komsomol member was impaled and, demonstrating his Asian cruelty, was carried in front of the population of the villages.
After this became known to everyone, each of the special forces of our team “Karpaty” made it a rule to carry an F-1 grenade in the left lapel of his jacket pocket. So that, in case of injury or a hopeless situation, one does not fall into the hands of the dushmans alive...”
A terrible picture appeared before those who, as part of their duty, had to collect the remains of tortured people - employees of military counterintelligence and medical workers. Many of these people are still silent about what they saw in Afghanistan, and this is understandable. But some still decide to speak. This is what a nurse at a Kabul military hospital once told the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich:
“All March, cut off arms and legs were dumped right there, near the tents...
The corpses... They lay in a separate room... Half naked, with their eyes gouged out,
Once - with a carved star on his stomach... Previously, in a movie about a civilian
I saw this during the war.”
No less amazing things were told to the writer Larisa Kucherova (author of the book “KGB in Afghanistan”) by the former head of the special department of the 103rd airborne division, Colonel Viktor Sheiko-Koshuba. Once he had a chance to investigate an incident involving the disappearance of an entire convoy of our trucks along with their drivers - thirty-two people led by a warrant officer. This convoy left Kabul to the Karcha reservoir area to get sand for construction needs. The column left and... disappeared. Only on the fifth day, the paratroopers of the 103rd division, alerted, found what was left of the drivers, who, as it turned out, had been captured by dushmans:
"Mutilated, dismembered remains human bodies, dusted with thick viscous dust, were scattered on the dry rocky ground. The heat and time have already done their job, but what people have created defies any description! Empty sockets of gouged out eyes, staring at the indifferent empty sky, ripped and gutted bellies, cut off genitals... Even those who had seen a lot in this war and considered themselves impenetrable men lost their nerves... After some time, our intelligence officers received information that that after the boys were captured, the dushmans took them tied up around the villages for several days, and civilians with frantic fury they stabbed defenseless boys, distraught with horror, with knives. Men and women, old and young... Having quenched their bloody thirst, a crowd of people, overcome with a feeling of animal hatred, threw stones at the half-dead bodies. And when the rain of stones knocked them down, dushmans armed with daggers got down to business...
Such monstrous details became known from a direct participant in that massacre, captured during the next operation. Calmly looking into the eyes of the Soviet officers present, he spoke in detail, savoring every detail, about the abuse to which the unarmed boys were subjected. It was clear to the naked eye that at that moment the prisoner received special pleasure from the very memories of torture...”
The dushmans really attracted the civilian Afghan population to their brutal actions, who, it seems, eagerly participated in mocking our military personnel. This is what happened with the wounded soldiers of our special forces company, who in April 1985 were caught in a Dushman ambush in the Maravary gorge, near the Pakistani border. The company, without proper cover, entered one of the Afghan villages, after which a real massacre began there. This is how the head of the Operational Group of the Ministry of Defense described it in his memoirs Soviet Union in Afghanistan, General Valentin Varennikov
“The company spread throughout the village. Suddenly, from the heights to the right and left, several large-caliber machine guns began firing at once. All the soldiers and officers jumped out of the courtyards and houses and scattered around the village, seeking refuge somewhere at the foot of the mountains, from where there was intense shooting. It was a fatal mistake. If the company had taken refuge in these adobe houses and behind thick duvals, which cannot be penetrated not only by large-caliber machine guns, but also by grenade launchers, then the personnel could have fought for a day or more until help arrived.
In the very first minutes, the company commander was killed and the radio station was destroyed. This created even greater discord in the actions. Personnel rushed about at the foot of the mountains, where there were neither stones nor bushes that would shelter from the lead shower. Most of people were killed, the rest were wounded.
And then the dushmans came down from the mountains. There were ten to twelve of them. They consulted. Then one climbed onto the roof and began observing, two went along the road to a neighboring village (it was a kilometer away), and the rest began to bypass our soldiers. The wounded were dragged closer to the village with a belt loop placed on their foot, and all those killed were given a control shot in the head.
About an hour later, the two returned, but already accompanied by nine teenagers aged ten to fifteen years and three large dogs - Afghan shepherds. The leaders gave them certain instructions, and with screams and shouts they rushed to finish off our wounded with knives, daggers and hatchets. The dogs bit our soldiers by the throat, the boys cut off their arms and legs, cut off their noses and ears, ripped open their stomachs, and gouged out their eyes. And the adults encouraged them and laughed approvingly.
Thirty to forty minutes later it was all over. The dogs were licking their lips. Two older teenagers cut off two heads, impaled them, raised them like a banner, and the entire team of frenzied executioners and sadists went back to the village, taking with them all the weapons of the dead.”
Varenikov writes that only junior sergeant Vladimir Turchin remained alive then. The soldier hid in the river reeds and saw with his own eyes how his comrades were tortured. Only the next day he managed to get out to his people. After the tragedy, Varenikov himself wanted to see him. But the conversation did not work out, because as the general writes:
“He was shaking all over. He didn’t just tremble a little, no, his whole body trembled - his face, his arms, his legs, his torso. I took him by the shoulder, and this trembling was transmitted to my hand. It seemed like he had a vibration disease. Even if he said something, he chattered his teeth, so he tried to answer questions with a nod of his head (agreed or denied). The poor guy didn’t know what to do with his hands; they were shaking very much.
I realized that serious conversation it won't work with him. He sat him down and, taking him by the shoulders and trying to calm him down, began to console him, talking good words that everything is already behind us, that we need to get into shape. But he continued to tremble. His eyes expressed all the horror of what he had experienced. He was mentally seriously injured."
Probably, such a reaction on the part of a 19-year-old boy is not surprising - even fully grown, experienced men could be moved by the sight they saw. They say that even today, almost three decades later, Turchin still has not come to his senses and categorically refuses to talk to anyone about the Afghan issue...
God is his judge and comforter! Like all those who had the opportunity to see with their own eyes all the savage inhumanity of the Afghan war.
IV. At war
Our company's combat operations took place in the vicinity of Kabul, near Charikar, Jebal Ussaraj, Bagram and Gulbahar, three operations in Panjshir, fought twice in the Togap Gorge, in the Sarobi region, near Jalalabad in the Tsaukai Gorge, beyond Kunar near the Pakistani border, near Gardez and in other places.
I didn’t feel hatred for the enemy and there was nothing to take revenge for. There was a fighting passion, a desire to win, to show oneself. When losses occurred, a feeling of revenge was mixed in, but in battle the combatants are equal. It’s bad when some people take out their feelings of revenge for their fallen comrades on civilians.
At first, no one really knew who we had to fight with; we were aware that the enemy was cruel and insidious. During the war, the Mujahideen began to be taken more seriously; they knew that they could commit bold, unexpected and desperate acts of sabotage. For example, they seized several regular buses on the road, disembarked the passengers, and drove through the checkpoints to the center of the village, shot and... left.
In designating the enemy, the well-known Central Asia The name “Basmachi”, but then they were most often called “Dushmans”, translated from Afghan as “enemies”. By the way, it’s almost the same in Mari. This is where the derivative form “perfume” comes from. Very fortunately, they, like spirits, could appear from anywhere - from the mountains, from underground, from a village, from Soviet or Afghan units. Some dressed up in Soviet clothes military uniform and spoke Russian better than our Turkmen and Uzbek fighters. The name “Mujahideen” (fighters for the faith) was known, but was not popular. Afghans called Russians “shuravi” from the word “shura” (council) in the meaning Soviet.
I saw leaflets and caricatures of enemies, they were Afghan leaflets, I still have one. I also saw posters with portraits of dushman leaders. The most common portrait was of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who led the Islamic Party of Afghanistan (IPA).
There are two reasons for our participation in that war. The main thing was to support the pro-Soviet regime and an additional reason was to protect our southern borders. Observing the poverty of the bulk of the population, we sincerely believed that we needed to raise their standard of living to ours, help overcome difficulties, protect them from rebels and foreign interference. That's how it was understood then.
The first battle took place on February 23, 1980, near the road north of Charikar, somewhere in the area of the Bayani-Bala village. Fighters for the faith approached the road and harassed the passing columns with shelling. We parachuted out of combat vehicles and, under the cover of machine guns, went on the attack in a chain. The rebels, firing back, began to retreat. We ran through fields and rolled down terraces. They have many terraces, since the country is mountainous and there is little flat terrain, and even fertile one. We didn’t catch up with them then and retreated according to orders; the commander did not want us to move away from the road. The most difficult thing then was to hold the chain, not to run ahead and not to lag behind. A group of fighters took a roadside house. Although they are made of clay, they are built like fortresses, and it is not always easy to take them with small arms. The house was the key of defense for the spirits. Sergeant Ulitenko shot an old man with a gun there. Initially, the dushmans were poorly armed: flintlock and hunting rifles, English “Boers”, and then in small quantities; there were few automatic weapons. Not everyone even had bullets; some were shooting with shotgun pellets. They fought with whatever was at hand - with an ax, a stone, a knife. It’s bold, of course, but reckless with such weapons to go against artillery, machine guns, machine guns and rifles. In this battle we were dealing with a disorganized, untrained and poorly armed militia. Then four of our soldiers almost died: Vladimir Dobysh, Alexander Bayev, Alexander Ivanov and Pyotr Markelov. They did not hear the order to withdraw and went so far into the village that, in the end, they were attacked by superior forces of dushmans, who fired at them from behind a duval (clay fence). They did not have grenades, and they could not throw them at the dushmans through the duct, and bullets from machine guns did not pierce it. Only sniper Sasha Ivanov pierced the blower with his rifle and hit at least one. The rest of the guys, using their advantage in automatic equipment, lay down behind a pile of rubble and shot at any head that appeared above the fence. The appearance of the Afghan vehicle saved us. The soldiers stopped her, sat down and left the battlefield. The dushmans did not shoot at their villagers. The Afghan took our guys very close and, citing a breakdown, stopped, but this was enough to break away from his pursuers. The fighters left the car and, holding their weapons at the ready, walked through the bazaar. The driver deceived him; as soon as the soldiers left, he drove away, but without him the guys could have died. They reached their home safely. Everyone was wounded. Bayev was hit in the back by a bullet, Dobysh received a through wound to the shoulder, and the rest were scratched. Markelov received several pellets under the eye. We later joked that they wanted to shoot him like a squirrel in the eye, so as not to spoil his skin.
The hardships of the war were perceived as written in the oath: “they steadfastly endured all the hardships and hardships military service" A person gets used to everything: bad weather, inconvenience, and constant danger.
The losses and injuries were depressing. In two years, 17 people from our company died, and every 6th was wounded. In reality, the losses were greater, since I do not count the deaths of the signalmen, mortarmen, sappers, tank crews, air controllers, artillery spotters, etc. assigned to the company.
Many of those I wrote about above died. As written in the “Book of Memory”, December 16, 1980 from severe infectious disease Alexander Bayev died. You can write it this way if drug overdose is classified as an infectious disease. I was an orderly at the time and was the first to discover during the climb that he had died. One of the soldiers with whom we tried to “wake up” Bayev shouted to the others that he was cold. Sergeant M. Alimov, not understanding the meaning, said: “Let’s bring him here to the stove, we’ll warm him up.” The doctor came running, but it was too late; the rescue was about 30 minutes late.
Deputy Ensign A.S. On June 6, 1981, on the road to Sarobi near the village of Gogamund, Afanasiev’s skull was blown apart. I remember one warrant officer medic. When he first arrived from the Union and asked me how it was here, I said that they were shooting and killing. He cheerfully responded to this that, as a medic, he would not participate in battles. But in war, everyone has their own destiny. One has been constantly in battle for two years without a single scratch, the other dies at headquarters. In the same battle, when an armored personnel carrier was hit by a grenade launcher, this ensign’s head was torn off, only lower jaw hung on her neck.
When we were standing on the Bagram road in the Karabagh region in the spring of 1981, such an incident occurred. Staff officers met the cryptographer at the Kabul airfield. He studied for six months in the Union and was supposed to work at the headquarters. We hurried, did not wait for escort, and five of us drove to the unit in a UAZ: a sergeant driver, a cryptographer, a senior lieutenant, a captain and a lieutenant colonel. The dushmans seized a ZIL on the road, overtook a UAZ, blocked the road and shot at the approaching car. The driver and cryptographer were killed, the senior lieutenant was seriously wounded. The captain and lieutenant colonel ran away. The first was shot in the back, but survived, the second was not injured. The Mujahideen cut the throat of the wounded senior lieutenant and went into the green area. The car, riddled with blood and spattered with brains, stood at the post for several days, recalling the proximity of death and the need for vigilance and caution. The cryptographer served in Afghanistan for several hours without even being included in the unit lists.
On September 27, the driver of the armored personnel carrier, Urusyan Derenik Sandroevich, died along with two soldiers. Their car fell into the abyss. It was completely by chance that I did not go with them. Company commander Senior Lieutenant Kiselyov and platoon commander Senior Lieutenant Gennady Travkin and tanker Senior Lieutenant Valery Cherevik died in the same armored personnel carrier on November 7, 1981 in Sarobi. Soldier Mikhail Rotary from Moldova had his leg torn off at the knee by a mine, and we took him down from the mountains. Then I corresponded with him. He was given a prosthesis, and he worked at the military registration and enlistment office.
Each injury and death is a separate sad story.
In between fights, of course, they remembered home. IN hard time Memories of home and plans for the future strengthened the spirit.
When they went on the attack, they didn’t shout anything. When you run through the mountains in thin air, you can’t really shout, besides, we tried to listen to commands and sounds of battle, in the mountains the sound can be misleading due to the echo. We did not have psychological mass attacks on the enemy, and there was no need to shout. Most often, clashes took place in the form of skirmishes at long or medium distances; when moving forward, the enemy, as a rule, retreated. Another form of combat is action in the village and “greenery”, where contact with the enemy even reached hand-to-hand combat. Close combat also ensued when being ambushed or in the event of an unexpected collision or detection of the enemy.
I had to participate in events that were reflected in specialized and memoir literature. I came across one fact in the memoirs of Colonel General B.V. Gromov "Limited contingent". In 1980, he was the chief of staff of our 108th division. The general writes that at the end of May, in the middle of the day, 181 regiments were fired upon by dushmans and that as a result of the shelling, almost all warehouses with food and ammunition supplies were blown up, the regiment almost lost its battle flag, an officer and five soldiers were killed, the tank in which they climbed up. Gromov notes the professional shelling and writes that even now he does not know what weapon it was fired from - the dushmans did not yet have artillery, rockets - and even more so, and only mortars were used. The general suspects the Afghan military, whose training ground was nearby. This event was noted in other publications. V. Mayorov and I. Mayorova write this: “It was the last day of the second ten days of May. The shelling of the 181st Motorized Rifle Regiment began at noon in bright sunshine, when it was difficult to determine where the shooting was coming from. Almost all the ammunition and food depots were blown up into the air, and the regiment almost lost its battle flag.” It is further noted that an officer and five soldiers died while trying to fight the fire with tanks. The authors are also perplexed as to the cause of the explosion: “It was unclear who opened fire: “spirits” from the surrounding mountains or Afghan soldiers from tank brigade?»
Chief of Staff B.V. Gromov, of course, received official information in the form of a report, most likely from the commander of the 181st motorized rifle regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Nasyrovich Makhmudov. I can clarify something in this matter as a witness, although I cannot vouch for the final truth.
The doubts of the general and other authors are justified; it was not easy to blow up the warehouses. They were located in a hollow between the hills (by Afghan standards they cannot be called large, but for the inhabitants of the plains they would seem impressive). It was impossible to fire at the warehouses with direct fire; our units were stationed everywhere on the approaches, the area around was clearly visible - a relatively flat desert without any vegetation, only thorns. The shelling could only be carried out from a very long distance and from a mortar.
At this time, I was sent to carry out the combat mission of protecting and defending a repair battalion (rembat), which was located in front of the Afghan training ground and was engaged in the repair of Afghan equipment; in fact, there were two repair battalions. They had their own internal security around the perimeter, but external security at extended posts was carried out by motorized riflemen. There was also barbed wire, cobwebs and minefields. At the time of the incident, I was on duty and, sitting on the armored personnel carrier, conducted observation, because. it was with him better review. There was a rembat behind us and we only had to look towards the warehouses and our other units, located at a distance of 1-1.5 km. I saw and heard the first fairly strong explosion in the area of the warehouses immediately, because at that moment I was looking there. It was quiet for some time, then shells began to explode, scatter to the sides and, the further, the stronger. We have increased our vigilance just in case. The shell explosions began to get closer, but the warehouses were not close and they were protected by mountains, so not all the ammunition flew beyond them. However, several shells exploded at a distance of 500 m, and one 300 m from us.
Now my thoughts. I have a very big doubt that spooks or the Afghan military are to blame for the explosion of warehouses. As I already said, they could not get close to the warehouses, especially during the day. From a long distance and with one mine, it is extremely difficult to immediately hit a target hidden in a ravine. In addition, the mortar is not an accurate weapon. I did not see any flying mine (the flight of the mine can be traced). If we assume that the Afghan military was shooting from the firing range, then I did not hear the shot, and the firing range was located behind the rembat behind my back.
I cannot completely rule out the version of the shelling, but there are no facts to confirm it. A version of the explosion in the warehouse as a result of careless handling of weapons spread among the soldiers. It was based on the stories of those who were in the warehouses or near them. I listened to different fighters many times, and they said approximately the same thing. The storekeepers, out of curiosity or some other consideration, began to dismantle the NURS (Unguided Rocket Projectile), which led to an explosion, which in turn caused detonation and a fire. The heated ammunition began to explode. The disaster was aggravated by the fact that almost all the warehouses were located together: with ammunition, provisions, and things, and there was also a regimental hospital there. It was convenient to protect and use the warehouses, but it also burned down all at once. Subsequently, the warehouses were located separately. I was later at the scene of the explosion, walked on the scorched earth and saw a burnt tank. Indeed, the tanker tried to prevent the fire that had started, but did not have time.
If the regiment commander had reported the destruction of warehouses as a result of ordinary negligence and violation of discipline, he could have been punished, which is why they attributed everything to the dushmans. If you deal with all sorts of emergency situations in Afghanistan, it will be revealed that the dushmans performed many “feats” unknown to them. In war, it is convenient to attribute any incidents to combat losses. A soldier drowned - they reported that he was killed by a sniper, a car fell into an abyss due to a drunk driver - shelling from a grenade launcher from an ambush. One of our Uzbeks, having nothing better to do, began to sharpen an electric detonator with a file and caused a spark, and two of his fingers were torn off and both himself and the person sitting next to him were cut with fragments. The wounds were given out as the result of a mortar attack, otherwise it could have been classified as a crossbow. Physics should have been taught better at school. I was looking through the “Book of Memory of Soviet soldiers who died in Afghanistan” and became convinced that the death of many, whose deaths I know for sure, was described completely differently from what actually happened. In the posthumous award submission, it was required to state the circumstances of the feat, so the staff composed it. Moreover, even in those cases where death occurred in battle, it is described in a completely different way.
In battle, most often they did not think about death and wounds, otherwise fear would bind all movements and then trouble would not be avoided. They thought about possible death only when there were losses and shortly before transfer to the reserve. There was no fear of the commanders; we were not sent on obviously disastrous missions. There were, of course, officers who thought more about awards than about soldiers. For example, when another company of our battalion destroyed a group of dushmans in a gorge, the chief of staff, Captain Aliyev, examined the weapons near the dead through binoculars and began to say: “Let’s go down, they have mortars there, let’s collect weapons.” The presence of captured weapons clearly demonstrated success, and one could count on rewards. To this, battalion commander Zimbolevsky told him: “You need it, you go down,” and did not give the order to go down into the gorge. In the mountains, those on the crest always have a huge advantage over those below in the hollows. We rarely went down into the ravines, and if we did, it was only with cover. They almost always moved along mountain ridges.
In June-July 1980 we fought in the Gardez area. Then the first close meeting with the dushman took place. Most often, the enemy was invisible - he would shoot from a distant line or from a vineyard and retreat. If you saw it, it was out of reach of small arms, 1.5-3 km away - in the mountains visibility is good due to the clean thin air. There were cases when dushmans could not withstand the approach of significant forces and, like hares from under the bushes, ran away from ambushes, throwing away their weapons. Most often it was not possible to shoot such “hares”; several mines were sent after them. We were then on the first raid and unsuccessfully pursued the gang. We climb one mountain, they are already on another, we are on that one, and they are already on the third. “And the eye sees, but the tooth numbs.” In the vanguard there were only light small arms, the mortars were behind. When they drove out the dushmans, they themselves descended from the mountains into the valley. As always, we walked along the path in a chain. I was fourth from the bottom in the platoon. Suddenly an unexpected shot sounded, and the bullet hit very close to his feet. the last soldier. He thought that one of our people had fired an accidental shot and began asking loudly. Everyone stopped and began to look at each other in bewilderment - no one shot. These are spirits, we decided, and we began to examine the rocks above. So, they probably would have left without finding anyone, but the shooting dushman miscalculated. The fact is that they often attacked the latter, and those walking in front, not seeing where the shot came from, could not understand who was shooting. In our case, the last one was not the last; another platoon followed us with a small gap, and the soldier who came out from behind the rock managed to notice where the shot was fired from. Dushman was not sitting on the mountain, as we thought, but under our feet in a small cave near the path. The soldier who saw him opened fire and began throwing grenades. Everyone immediately lay down. I found myself in the line of fire above the cave and, sprawled among the stones, watched as fragments clicked around the stones and bullets ricocheted off; I didn’t want to die from my own people. Dushman managed to fire another unsuccessful shot and was killed. The corpse was pulled out of the cave. Grenade fragments tore his body and knocked out his eye. It was a boy of about 17 years old with a large-caliber old Winchester. He was a brave fighter, but he was unlucky.
In August, he had to participate in the second Panjshir operation against the formations of Ahmad Shah Massoud. The Afghan company and I approached the mountain to the right of the entrance to the Panjshir Gorge. Very close we saw a man quickly climbing the mountain. They started shouting at him to stop, but he didn’t pay attention and quickly got up. He could have been shot, but no one shot. They opened fire only when he began to hide behind the rocks, but it was too late; the mines fired in his wake did not hit him either. It was a messenger with a message about our advance, and he managed to warn his people.
There were no people in the nearest villages and no weapons were found either. Before sunset they fired at us from rifles. We saw a group of dushmans moving on a nearby mountain and even aimed a helicopter at them. The bomb exploded spectacularly at the very top. We calmed down and acted very carefree. The soldiers basked in the rays of the setting sun on the western illuminated side of the ridge. When a sniper bullet hit near one soldier, everyone was blown away by the wind - we ran to the eastern shadowy slope and opened fire back. The night in the mountains was cool. In the morning they shot at us from a house on the slope. We aimed helicopters at him and they dropped a bomb. It exploded 100 meters to the left of the dushmans’ position. The aircraft controller corrected and the next bomb fell... another 100 meters closer to us. The officer explained once again where to throw the bomb and it flew... towards us. The soldiers from the affected area ran incredibly fast, hearing the approaching howl of the bomb, then lay down. No one was injured from the explosion, but they did not explain the target location to the helicopter pilots any further. It was in my memory the only case With such inept interaction between the helicopter pilots and the aircraft controller, the helicopters usually helped us out a lot.
Occasionally engaging in skirmishes, we went to the river in the gorge and crossed it. Then for several days they advanced deeper into the valley. Sometimes they sat on the mountains, insuring the advancing units, and monitored the progress of the battle, then changed roles. When we passed through occupied villages, we saw killed dushmans and residents who just happened to turn up, smoking houses and other traces of recent battles.
Then came the order to leave. This often happened - they came in, crushed or drove out the rebels, then they left and the dushmans returned there again. The soldiers joked: "People's power has been established - expel the people." If Afghan troops remained in the occupied territory, they could not hold out for long without our help. Our troops could not stand as garrisons throughout the country - the contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was indeed limited.
While leaving the gorge they fired at us, we responded with hurricane fire. The dushmans were mining the road, but a tank with a trawl was ahead of us and cleared the way. However, the ambulance UAZ still blew up - its bridge width was narrow, it did not fall into the rut and, in the end, ran over a mine. The wounded driver was pulled out, and the doctor and the orderly were burned to death. By evening everything had calmed down and there were only a few kilometers left before leaving Panjshir. We were about to go to bed in the armored personnel carriers, but then the column stopped. Dushmans blew up the road. There were rocks on the right, a raging mountain river on the left, and a failure tens of meters ahead. The only good thing was that it was night and the dushmans could not shoot. On the radio we heard a short order from battalion commander Zimbalevsky: “Soldiers, to the mountains.” I really didn’t want to get out of the cozy armored personnel carriers and climb these boring mountains. It was very dark and only the silhouettes of the mountains could be distinguished against the background of the starry sky. For every peak they strived for, a new one opened up, and so on. It had rained since evening and the stones were slippery. Someone said that climbers are prohibited from climbing at night, especially after rain, but that’s for climbers. In my group, I crawled first and kept peering into the stones, waiting for the flash of a shot from the entrenched dushmans. At dawn we occupied the ridge of the surrounding mountains, built shelters from stones and began to wait. They knew that the dushmans would come to fire at the stuck column. In the morning a flock of sheep with three shepherds came towards us. They did not expect to meet Russians there, they tried to escape, but several bursts of fire left them on the rocks. Using shepherds for reconnaissance was a well-known enemy technique. Unfortunately, we were not able to fully enjoy the joy of victory. A group of 20 dushmans was noticed through binoculars as soon as it began to rise. The officers called helicopters from the nearby Bagram airfield, and they shot them in the middle of the slope, when they had nowhere to hide. However, the dushmans walked without weapons. The officers concluded that it was somewhere near us on the mountains. We tried to search, but to no avail. Only on the third day was the order to descend when the sappers restored the road. The battalion immediately left the ridge and ran down, loaded onto the vehicles and safely drove out of the gorge. We worked then clearly and successfully; Ahmad Shah’s plan to lock us in the gorge and cause damage did not come true.
The Afghan historian Abd al-Hafiz Mansur in his book “Panjshir in the Age of Jihad” writes that Russian and government troops were defeated and lost more than 500 people in this operation, while the Mujahideen allegedly lost only 25 soldiers, but this is a very strong distortion. Our company had no losses at all during the Second Panjshir, and I also did not observe any significant damage in other units.
We had no cases of betrayal or capture. People died and disappeared without a trace - it happened. In Panjshir, a tall, thin Russian guy from the commandant's platoon from Tbilisi went missing. He had poor eyesight, and after the regiment was attacked and retreated into the gorge under the cover of artillery from the mountains, he was missing. For several days they took the villages and surrounding mountains in battle, searched through the ravines, lost several people dead and wounded, but this soldier was never found.
One incident of crossing a ravine must be related. In September 1980, we fought in the Tsaukai Gorge area in Kunar province, not far from Pakistan. The retreating dushmans were pursued along the ridge, and there were short skirmishes. We spent the night on the slope. In the morning, helicopters arrived and dropped us food and, for some reason, ammunition. We had more than enough of our own; these were extra, but we had to take them. When the company had already set out, a soldier came up to me and said that he had found zinc and ammunition in the bushes. We carried him up the mountain. It was a heavy and awkward to carry rectangular box containing a 1080 5.45 mm AK-74 round. Several times we wanted to throw away this zinc, because of which we were considerably behind our company and were already in the rearguard of the battalion. But every time, after a short rest, they grabbed him and carried him up the mountain. We knew that dushmans were following us, and even if we hid the zinc, they could find it and these bullets would fly at us and our comrades. So, sweating profusely, we brought the cartridges to the top, where the battalion was gathering. There the company soldiers dismantled the cartridges.
By evening we found ourselves in front of a ravine. It would have taken at least a day to get around it; we needed to go to the opposite ridge. The climate in the Kunar and Jalalabad area is subtropical and the mountains are covered with forests, which made operations even more difficult. The battalion commander risked crossing the ravine in a straight line. The battalion moved in parts. When the first company was already on the opposite ridge, the Afghan company was below, and our third was still on this side. The problems started when we went down and started getting water. They started shooting from the slope we had just left. We quickly began to climb the opposite slope. At first they fired back, then they stopped - it was still impossible to see where to shoot. It was getting dark quickly, the nights were dark in the south. Among the trees and in the twilight we were almost invisible. Our uniform was new and therefore dark, it did not have time to fade. The Afghan soldiers, whose company acted with us, wore faded, almost white uniforms. Our people started shouting: “Don’t get close to the Afghans, they are clearly visible. Indeed, only one soldier was wounded among us; there were three soldiers among the Afghans. Our soldier’s wound was not serious, but unpleasant - he was shot in the buttocks. They carried him in their arms, and everyone wanted to help. With the onset of darkness, the dushmans also stopped shooting. When we were already in the middle of the slope, night fell, and lights were lit on the opposite slope, where the dushmans were. We had just passed there and knew for sure that there were no buildings there and there was nowhere for the lights to come from. This was done to put psychological pressure on us - look, Russians and be afraid, we, your enemies, are nearby. But there was also a practical purpose. Dushman put a flashlight on the stone, took a position to the side and watched for the flashes of gunfire. If an inexperienced Soviet soldier starts shooting at the flashlight, the Dushman sniper will have the opportunity to hit him. We knew this trick and didn’t shoot, because even if you hit a cheap Chinese lantern, the spook sitting on the side won’t get hurt. Sometimes the lights moved; most likely, the dushmans, wanting to tease the Russians, hung lanterns on the donkeys and let them go down the slope. A year later, when we were on duty and we were tired of these wandering lights on the top of the mountain, we extinguished them with a shell from a tank, the lights no longer appeared there.
Having crossed the ravine, we safely occupied the ridge and stopped for the night. On a dark southern night it is impossible to move through the forest in the mountains. The Afghan company commander approached and asked Captain Zimbalevsky to order his soldiers to go down and pick up his three wounded soldiers. Surprisingly, the dushmans, with rare exceptions, always carried away not only their wounded, but also their dead, but these ones left theirs. The Afghan company acted somehow uncertainly, sluggishly, slowly trailing behind, lagging behind. When our battalion commander made a remark to the Afghan company commander, their officer replied that Russian soldiers walked very quickly. It was surprising for us to hear this; there were few mountaineers among us; lowlanders predominated. Even the Armenians, of whom there were several, said that although they lived in the Caucasus, they had not climbed the mountains that much. Most likely, the Afghan company did not really want to fight and was serving its military service.
The battalion commander refused the Afghan's request and told him to send soldiers of his company for his wounded and promise only fire cover. None of the Afghans ever went down to collect the wounded. In the morning the exit was delayed, Zimbolevsky harshly told the Afghan officer that if they did not bring their wounded by such and such a time, then our battalion would leave. The Afghans dejectedly went down and by the appointed time they lifted the wounded up the mountain, we moved further along the ridge. From the wounded they learned that the dushmans were approaching them and wanted to finish them off, but they said that they were mobilized and also Muslims. The dushmans just took their weapons and left. This happened, but if they found wounded Afghan officers, they did not spare them. At night they approached our military outpost, but did not dare to attack; we were waiting for an attack and were ready to fight back, setting up positions of stones along the slope.
There weren't many cowards. We had one such soldier. During the shelling, he was seized with panic, he lay down among the stones, and no amount of persuasion could force him to move. The fighters had to run to him through the bullet-ridden terrain and drag him by the arms under the bullets. Luckily there was one in singular. But among officers, manifestations of cowardice were observed more often. The commander of the mortar battery, senior lieutenant, was often in battle and upon his return talked a lot about his exploits. I thought with envy and delight: “What a hero, I wish I could do that.” In mid-October 1980, we fought in the Togap Gorge. The battalion moved through the village along the stream, while dushmans walked parallel along the other bank. We were the first to notice them, but did not pay attention - they were in civilian clothes with red bands on both sleeves - this is how “populists” usually identified themselves. These were self-defense units, i.e. people's militia who fought on the side of government troops, usually near their places of residence. We realized that these were dushmans only after their nerves gave way and they started running. Several soldiers opened fire belatedly and killed or wounded someone - blood was found on the stones. During the shooting, I lay down in the ditch and looked out, looking for the target. At this time, the mentioned senior lieutenant kept crawling and crawling towards me, his eyes stunned with fear. So he crawled back somewhere, and not at all in order to organize the actions of his battery. Belarusian Nikolai Kandybovich made everyone laugh. When they stopped shooting, he came out from somewhere in the rear and began asking loudly: “Well, did you take anyone prisoner, did you capture the weapons?”
I can explain the courageous behavior of most soldiers not so much by courage, but by the disbelief of 19-year-old boys in death and confidence in their own strength. For us, for a long time, Afghanistan was more war game, and not a real brutal war. Awareness of the seriousness of what was happening came over time with the losses and injuries of comrades.
In the same Togap Gorge we cleared villages, and from time to time there were skirmishes. When we were on guard duty, we met a group of ours and Afghan sappers who were blowing up the houses of gang leaders. Then I thought: “Why blow up houses, will this make their owners stop fighting?”
In the villages, the Mujahideen would jump out from somewhere, fire a few shots and quickly disappear. When checking houses, a soldier was always left at the entrance. When a section of our company entered the next house, two dushmans with knives immediately jumped from behind the fence on the soldier Ildar Garayev from Kazan who remained at the door. They knocked the machine gun away from him and tried to stab him, he fought back with his bare hands, which were already covered in cuts. Then they managed to throw Ildar into the ditch, and they began to drown him in the water, without shooting, for fear of attracting attention. At the last minute he was saved by soldier Bikmaev, who saw what was happening from the window. The fighters jumped out into the street and shot the Mujahideen. Then I approached them and saw that their faces had been blown away by an abundant flow of lead. Ildar, bloodied and in a state of shock, was brought to the village square. There, at that moment, three elders of the village diligently proved to the commander of our company, Peshekhonov, that there were no dushmans in the village. As soon as Ildar saw them, he immediately shot everyone, miraculously not hitting any of his own; our platoon commander Alexander Vorobyov, who was passing near the Afghans at that moment, almost fell under the bullets. We later condemned Ildar among ourselves, but not for killing old people, of course, but for dangerous shooting.
It was scary to go on the attack when they didn’t shoot at us, because you don’t know where the enemy is and how many there are, what kind of weapons they have, whether a machine gun is going to hit you at point-blank range. When they started shooting, it was already possible to decide how to act.
I had to see the enemy alive often, almost every day. Guerrilla warfare lies in the fact that the enemy is everywhere and nowhere. Eastern mentality is special. The people there are so friendly and welcoming that it seems that there is no one better for him than you, and they will treat him, and give him a gift, and say good words. If you believe and relax, then trouble will creep up unnoticed. "They lay down softly - sleep hard." The same person with whom you recently had a nice conversation can poison you, shoot you, or stab you to death, or commit another hostile act.
To turn into a peaceful peasant, Dushman only had to get rid of his weapons. For example, they are shooting from a village. We burst in there, and local residents, when asked: “Dushman ast?”, always invariably answered: “Dushman nest.” I think that even without translation the meaning of the dialogue is clear. Experience sometimes made it possible to identify dushmans among the peasants. For example, traces of powder gases, a dirty mark from a butt on the shoulder, they did not always have time or forgot to get rid of cartridges in their pockets, etc. One day we were checking out villages along the road to Kabul near Jalalabad. A young man of about 16 was captured in the village with cartridges in his pocket. They brought him onto the road. An old mother followed him, sobbing, and tearfully asked to let her son go. The officers did not know what to do and released the young dushman. The soldiers were unhappy, because he had recently fired at us. The major reproachfully said that there was no need to take him to the road. When an Afghan boy passed near us, one of the soldiers pushed him in the side with his butt. He stopped and looked carefully at the departing soldiers, trying to figure out who hit him. Behind him, sobbing, walked his mother, a simple old Afghan woman who had fulfilled her maternal duty and saved her son from death. The young Afghan man went into the village, not paying attention to the crying woman trailing behind. Our soldiers were also unpleasantly surprised by this.
One more episode. When moving through the village, Tajik Sergeant Murtazo (Name is not in the printed version - approx. Author) Alimov drew attention to a woman in a burqa sitting on her haunches and watching us. The woman was unusually broad-shouldered, which aroused suspicion. Perhaps it was a man hiding under a burqa - a Dushman intelligence officer. Alimov told the Afghan lieutenant about this. The conversation was conducted in Farsi, but I understood that the Afghan refused to check the “woman”. The Soviet sergeant and the Afghan lieutenant first argued, the further, the more furiously, and then they began to fight. We immediately separated them, otherwise we would have had to beat up half the Afghan company to the delight of the Dushman scout. Our officers were not nearby and, in order not to aggravate relations with the allies, we did not check the broad-shouldered “woman” in a burqa.
The fate of the captured dushmans was different. It depended on the orders of the commanders and the general mood of the soldiers. If it was ordered to take a “tongue,” if the unit’s actions were successful and without losses, the prisoners were treated quite humanely and were often handed over to the Afghan authorities. If there were no clear orders regarding prisoners, and the raid group suffered losses in killed and wounded, then nothing good awaited the prisoners. Prisoners were usually forced to carry our heavy load, and were killed on the way to the deployment site. It all looked creepy. A group of soldiers surrounded the unfortunate man and beat him to death with their hands, feet, rifle butts, and knives, then a control shot. There was no shortage of performers. I didn’t like all this, and tried to get away so as not to hear the inhuman howl of the man being killed. Horrors of war. Well said about the war, he fought a lot American writer Ernest Hemingway: “Do not think that war, however necessary and just it may be, cannot be criminal.”
In addition, I was not always sure that the captured people were really dushmans. But the dushmans, as the officers explained to us, were rebels, and they were not subject to the status of prisoners of war, therefore such actions towards them were justified. Even when they executed obvious spooks who killed and wounded our soldiers, it still looked disgusting. Maybe we should have shown more respect for the enemy and shot without cruelty. Cruelty begets cruelty, they dealt with our prisoners more sophisticatedly, where can we Europeans compare with Asians - they knew sophisticated methods of torture and execution and were inventive.
I witnessed how the regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel V.N., interrogated prisoners in the Togap Gorge. Makhmudov. At first he spoke to them, then he began to beat them with his own hands, since they were silent. In general, Afghan prisoners, as a rule, endured interrogations, torture and execution steadfastly, as befits partisans. Success in interrogating prisoners was achieved not so much through torture as through basic knowledge of the mentality of the Muslim and Afghan people. The Afghan is not afraid of death, since he is on the path of Allah - the holy war with the infidels “jihad” and after death he goes to heaven. But he must shed blood at the same time, and the threat of hanging terrified the prisoners, and they could give out information.
Dead dushmans and already beginning to decompose were also found, although Muslims rarely left their own, only when they could not bear it, and if the entire detachment died.
In the Tsaukai Gorge outside Jelelabad, one was captured. He sat on a rock with two old broken guns behind his back and offered no resistance. We got the impression that this was some kind of village fool, whom the spirits had deliberately left on the way to delay our progress. They succeeded. The prisoner said that he was not a spook and did not kill anyone. Perhaps this was so. We were in good mood and they fought successfully, so there was no bitterness, this eccentric was not killed or beaten, and the gun was not even removed, and in this form he was presented to the regiment commander to the general laughter of the battalion.
In early October they passed along the Pakistani border beyond Kunar. We spent the night near one large village. The residents showed extreme excitement, and it seemed to us that they were ready to attack us. We waited all night; noise was heard in the village, but no attack occurred. All the small villages along the border were empty, the population had fled to Pakistan. October 2 (the printed version erroneously printed “August” - approx.. Author) in one place we met a small detachment, actually not even a detachment, but a family. The Afghan military negotiated with them, but they were the first to start shooting from sniper rifle and a hunting rifle. Then we lost one Kazakh soldier from the 1st company and from our company sniper Alexander Ivanovich Palagin from Cheboksary. The death of our fighters predetermined the fate of the Afghans. In the end, they were asked to surrender.
I also had to talk to an Afghan soldier who had previously fought as part of a Mujahideen detachment and then went over to the side of the government forces. He told how he sat on the mountains with the dushmans and smoked hashish, and then they cheerfully shot at Russian and government columns.
Exactly 30 years ago, at the end of July 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the imminent withdrawal of six regiments of the 40th Army from Afghanistan, and there were debates in the government about whether it was necessary to completely withdraw troops from the DRA. By that time, Soviet troops had been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 7 years, without achieving any particular results, and the decision to withdraw troops was made - after more than two years, the last Soviet soldier left Afghan soil.
So, in this post we will look at exactly how the war went on in Afghanistan, what conscientious soldiers and their opponents, the Mujahideen, looked like. Below the cut are many color photos.
02. And it all started like this - the introduction of the so-called “Limited Contingent” of Soviet troops into Afghanistan began on the eve of the new year, 1980 - December 25, 1979. They introduced mainly motorized rifle formations, tank units, artillery and landing forces into Afghanistan. Aviation units were also introduced into Afghanistan, later attached to the 40th Army as the Air Force.
It was assumed that there would be no large-scale hostilities, and the troops of the 40th Army would simply guard important strategic and industrial facilities in the country, helping the pro-communist government of Afghanistan. However, the USSR troops quickly became involved in hostilities, providing support to the government forces of the DRA, which led to an escalation of the conflict - since the enemy, in turn, also strengthened its ranks.
The photo shows Soviet armored personnel carriers in a mountainous region of Afghanistan; local female residents with their faces covered with burqas are passing by.
03. Very soon it became clear that the “classical warfare” skills that the USSR troops were trained in were not suitable in Afghanistan - both the country’s mountainous terrain and tactics contributed to this. guerrilla warfare", imposed by the Mujahideen - they appeared as if from nowhere, delivered targeted and very painful strikes and disappeared without a trace in the mountains and gorges. The formidable tanks and infantry fighting vehicles of the Soviet troops in the mountains were practically useless - neither the tank nor the infantry fighting vehicles could climb the steep slope, and their guns often simply could not hit targets on the mountain tops - the angle did not allow it.
04. The Soviet command began to adopt the tactics of the Mujahideen - attacks in small strike groups, ambushes on supply caravans, careful reconnaissance of the surrounding area to find the best paths, interaction with the local population. Around 1980-81, the image and style of the Afghan war had developed - roadblocks, small operations in the highlands carried out by helicopter pilots and airborne units, blocking and destruction of "rebel" villages, ambushes.
In the photo - one of the soldiers takes photographs of camouflaged firing positions on flat terrain.
05. A photo from the early eighties - the T-62 tank has occupied a commanding height and is covering the advance of a column of “fillers” - that’s what fuel tankers were called in Afghanistan. The tank looks quite shabby - apparently, it has been involved in hostilities for quite some time. The gun is pointed towards the mountains and the “greenery” - a small strip of vegetation in which a Mujahideen ambush can hide.
06. The Afghans called the Soviet troops “shuravi”, which is translated from the Dari language as “Soviet”, and the Soviet soldiers called their opponents “dushmans” (which is translated from the same Dari language as “enemies”), or “spirits” for short. All movements of the “shuravi” along the country’s roads quickly became known to the dushmans, since they received all the information directly from local residents - this made it easy to set up ambushes, mine roads, and so on - by the way, Afghanistan is still full of mined areas; mines were laid by both Mujahideen and Soviet soldiers.
07. The classic “Afghan” uniform is very recognizable thanks to the wide-brimmed Panama hat, which protected from the sun better than the classic cap of those years used in the SA. Sand-colored caps were also often used as a headdress. What’s interesting is that such panama hats in the Soviet army were not at all an innovation of those years; very similar headdresses were worn by Soviet soldiers during the battles at Khalkin Gol in 1939.
08. According to participants in the Afghan war, there were often problems with the uniform - one unit could wear kits of different colors and styles, and dead soldiers, whose bodies were sent home, were often dressed in old uniforms from the 1940s in order to “save” one set of dress uniforms in the warehouse...
Soldiers often replaced standard boots and boots with sneakers - they were more comfortable in hot climates, and also contributed to less injury as a result of a mine explosion. Sneakers were bought in Afghan cities at dukan bazaars, and were also occasionally taken from mujahideen supply caravans.
09. The classic “Afghan” uniform (with many patch pockets), known to us from films about Afghanistan, appeared already in the second half of the 80s. There were several types - there were special suits for tankers, for motorized riflemen, landing jump suits "Mabuta" and several others. Based on the color of the uniform, it was easy to determine how much time a person spent in Afghanistan - since over time, the yellow “hebeshka” faded under the sun to an almost white color.
10. There were also winter “Afghan” uniforms - they were used in the cold months (it is not always hot in Afghanistan), as well as in high mountainous areas with a cold climate. Essentially, an ordinary insulated jacket with 4 patch pockets.
11. And this is what the Mujahideen looked like - as a rule, their clothes were very eclectic and mixed traditional Afghan outfits, trophy uniforms and ordinary civilian clothes of those years like Adidas sweatpants and Puma sneakers. Open shoes like modern flip-flops were also very popular.
12. Ahmad Shah Masud, a field commander, one of the main opponents of the Soviet troops, is captured in the photo surrounded by his mujahideen - it is clear that the soldiers’ clothes are very different, the guy to the right of Masud is clearly wearing a trophy hat with earflaps from a winter set on his head Soviet uniform.
Among the Afghans, in addition to the turban, hats called “pacol” were also popular - something like a kind of beret made of fine wool. In the photo, the pacol is on the head of Ahmad Shah himself and some of his soldiers.
13. And these are Afghan refugees. Purely outwardly, they rarely differed from the Mujahideen, which is why they often died - in total, during the Afghan war, at least 1 million civilians died, the greatest casualties occurred as a result of bombing or artillery strikes on villages.
14. A Soviet tankman looks at a village destroyed during the fighting in the Salang pass area. If a village was considered “rebellious”, it could be wiped off the face of the earth along with everyone who was inside the perimeter...
15. Aviation occupied a significant place in the Afghan war, especially small aviation - with the help of helicopters the bulk of the cargo was delivered, and combat operations and convoy cover were also carried out. The photo shows a helicopter of the Afghan government army covering a Soviet convoy.
16. And this is an Afghan helicopter shot down by the Mujahideen in the province of Zabul - this happened in 1990, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
17. Soviet soldiers, who were captured - the military uniforms were taken away from the prisoners, and they were dressed in Afghan outfits. By the way, some of the prisoners converted to Islam and wished to stay in Afghanistan - I once read the stories of such people who now live in Afghanistan.
18. Checkpoint in Kabul, winter 1989, shortly before the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The photo shows a typical Kabul landscape with snow-capped mountain peaks near the horizon.
19. Tanks on Afghan roads.
20. A Soviet plane comes in to land at Kabul airport.
21. Military equipment.
22. Beginning of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
23. The shepherd looks at the departing column of Soviet troops.
