And there are no impossible tasks

On March 6, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his memorable speech in Fulton. This day is now considered the beginning of the Cold War. Really, it's not like that. It seems to me that the "cold war" began with the last salvo of "hot". The confrontation began when the Red Army liberated Eastern Europe. The conflict of interest was obvious.

From 1946 to the beginning of the 50s is not such a long time. And when the flywheel of the "cold war" began to spin at full power, the parties to the confrontation remembered the special forces.

The Americans are hastily recreating the special forces. Already in 1952, the 10th special Forces group was formed, and the following year the 77th group was formed.

In 1957, the 1st Special Forces Group was formed at the US military base in Okinawa, part of whose personnel served as advisers to the South Vietnamese army.

The British already in 1947 transform the regiment of the territorial army "Bohemian Riflemen" into the 21st SAS Regiment. In 1952, the 22nd SAS Regiment also appeared in the British armed Forces.

During this period, the Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, came to the Politburo with a proposal to create special reconnaissance and sabotage detachments in the border military districts, which in the event of a military crisis could work behind enemy lines.

Zhukov dreamed of creating a special purpose corps, but Khrushchev was afraid. Later, Nikita Sergeyevich will reproach the Minister of Defense with the creation of special forces. Moreover, it will accuse him of political ambitions allegedly supported by military force. It was as if Zhukov lacked military strength even without special forces.

However, the special forces survived their persecutors. Separate special forces companies will be consolidated into battalions, and later into brigades. So there were now known to the whole world special purpose brigades. The first was a brigade stationed in the city of Chuchkovo, Ryazan region.

How do our special forces live today? About them, about the first and oldest Chuchkovsky brigade of special purpose further narration.

..In 1984, the "peaceful" stage of the life of the special forces brigade ended. It has entered the war zone. First it was Afghanistan, then Tejikistan and Chechnya. For 12 years now, with some interruptions, the Chuchkovsky special forces have been at the front. Medals "For bravery in a fire" were replaced by military orders.

In war, there are no losses. This tragedy has not spared the families of soldiers and officers of the special forces brigade. In Chechnya, as a result of a prepared sabotage and explosion in the building, the unit lost many soldiers and commanders. It happened on January 24, 1995.

...And it all started with an entry in the historical form: on the basis of a separate special forces brigade, a separate special forces unit was formed and sent to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to provide international assistance.

There are many legends about how the special forces fought in Afghanistan. The battle, which I was told about in the Chuchkov brigade, has long been a "heroic epic" of military intelligence. And therefore it is impossible not to tell about it. This battle was fought near Kandahar in October 1987 by a special forces unit under the command of Major Udovichenko. One of the groups included in the detachment was commanded by Captain Khamzin, the other by Senior Lieutenant Tur.

A squad of four dozen special forces killed 150 Mujahideen led by foreign instructors.

Forty minutes later, Udovichenko's group, which included half of the squad (since the other group, Tura, was located three hundred meters to the east, on the paths of the likely approach of enemy reserves), was violently attacked by the Mujahideen.

Several attacks were repulsed. Fighters Gorobets and Konstantinov were killed.

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Heavy fire from recoilless guns and rocket-propelled grenades raged. 10 dushmans-grenade throwers fired at once.

The Mujahideen, intoxicated with drugs, rushed forward again and again shouting "Allahu Akbar".

Special forces soldiers and officers performed miracles of heroism. One of the fighters took on the fire of three Mujahideen. He managed to take down two of them, but the third hit him dead.

A direct hit from a grenade launcher tore off the arm of machine gunner Sergeant Andrey Goryachev. A military doctor, himself wounded in the chest, carried Goryachev out of the battle. He was still alive and, despite the fatal wound, controlled with one right hand, fired a machine gun, covering the retreat of his comrades. He fought, almost dying.

The soldiers of the squad under the command of Sergeant Asanov, surrounded by superior enemy forces, left the last grenade to blow themselves up.

8 grenades thrown by the Mujahideen hit the room from which Asanov himself was fighting. But the wounded sergeant continued to fight.

The group of Senior Lieutenant Alexander Tur also fought heroically. The fighters destroyed several heavy trucks and did not allow the Mujahideen reserves to break through.

The detachment suffered heavy losses. Major Udovichenko was killed, and Captain Khamzin was seriously wounded.

After this battle, our listeners repeatedly recorded Dushman radio intercepts, in which they warned each other:

"Attention, special forces!"

Who does the special forces rely on?

An officer who has served for a quarter of a century is hardly surprising in the army. That's what I thought when I went to Chuchkovo. However, even the first steps in this garrison were accompanied by pleasant surprise, if not delight. Lovingly well-groomed territory of the unit, the soldiers are fit, strong and, surprisingly for today's times, salute with pleasure. And not only visiting colonels from Moscow, but also local ones, their own, and lieutenants.

A non-military person can hardly understand my admiration. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about what I said. Let me clarify right away: it wasn't there before. Now all this is oh so rare. What can we say about the distant garrison, now in the capital, except under pain of punishment, you can force a soldier to greet a senior officer.

Of course, the current problems and the general collapse of the army have reached Chuchkov. However, they are not felt so sharply and dramatically here. And if in other districts, formations, many units have turned more into paramilitary formations, a sort of VOHRs with shoulder straps, then the special forces brigade, in spite of everything, is an army.

On whom does this army in dalny Chuchkov rely? In public. Really, in many ways on amazing people with difficult destinies.

The fact that there are no officers who have not passed the front has already been mentioned. In the service of each of them was either Afghanistan, or Tajikistan, or Chechnya. Most often, everything combined.

In their military service, there will be a lot of different things - both glory, and grief, and meanness.

After the tragedy in Chechnya, when officers and soldiers were killed under the rubble of a building that collapsed from an explosion, and a letter came to Chuchkovo with the words: "We did not lose heart and will continue to carry the honor of our brigade high", one of the central newspapers issues another dirty fake, Writes that Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Sergeev, who is loved and they know not only in the Chuchkovsky special forces, it turns out that he was drunk and therefore did not die with the others under the rubble. The newspaper used a favorite dirty trick of some unbridled media outlets in the Chechen war-a reference to some unknown doctors who gave an opinion: allegedly drunk special forces blew themselves up. But those who died were generously forgiven by journalists, while the survivors were not.

And Evgeny Sergeev is the same Sergeev who was the first to capture the American " Stinger "in Afghanistan, who passed all the tests.

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possible and impossible hot spots and miraculously survived in Chechnya, as he was scooped out of the rubble while still alive.

If there were one such hero in another part, his fame would be enough for everyone, but in Chuchkov there are many like Sergeev. Each of them distinguished himself in his own way.

In the brigade, I was introduced to Valentin Nikolaevich Zakharov. Here is a living legend of the special forces! I started serving here when the entire Chuchkov garrison consisted of two houses and two barracks. When we went to the soldiers ' canteen for lunch in two shifts.

Ten brigade commanders were escorted by Zakharov: some for promotion, some for retirement. He remembers many colonels and generals from the district as green lieutenants. Valentin Nikolaevich is not only a master of radio communication, but also an excellent skydiver.

To be honest, my business trip to Chuchkovo was rich in meeting interesting people.

One evening two men came to my hotel. They can be called like this: teacher and student.

The teacher is a master of sports who made 5 thousand jumps, Alexander Pokachalov. His student is also a paratrooper, a former subordinate, a soldier of the Chuchkov brigade.

Suffice it to say that Alexander Alekseyevich Pokachalov has trained 23 international-class masters of sports in parachuting. Among them are world, European, and Russian champions, as well as famous names.

Pokachalov has, I would say, quite rare world achievements on his account. For example, when back in 1967 they jumped from a height of 100 meters, and later mastered the 85-meter line, Alexander Alekseevich still remembers the mouths of foreign guests, special forces specialists, opened in surprise.

These are the men who serve here. Garrison women - wives of officers and ensigns-can match them. They keep up with their husbands, successfully master weapons, and skydive.

I was told that they dream of jumping together - to use this technique in exercises, in reconnaissance. After all, it's really a good idea: a couple under the legend of husband and wife raises much fewer questions than two or three men.

Perhaps this idea will only cause a skeptical smile, but the point here is in the approach of officers to service. Today, our army, tired of lack of money, humiliation and endless war, is often in a state of hopeless indifference to the main task of its life. No matter how scary and wild this may sound, but it's true. Few people today want to truly serve, few people try to think, work, and search.

It just so happens that there is no time to think about the service. They think about how to feed the family, which, against the background of the well-being of well-fed and plentiful stalls, sometimes simply goes hungry. For the service provides almost nothing for "food", especially in large cities.

But Chuchkovo is not even a small town, but a small village. And here, while the officers are thinking about the cause they serve.

...They say special forces are always at war. This is not a common phrase, and the first Chechen War was no exception: the brigade fought. She fought bravely.

In the battle, face to face with Chechen militants, it lost two of its fighters - Lieutenant Litvinov and Sergeant Zernov. As a result of a dastardly terrorist act, 45 special forces soldiers were buried under the rubble of a collapsed house.

A terrible tragedy. Whatever was written about this case in our press!.. And no one believed it: how come the special forces overlooked it? No one overlooked anything. The mine in this house was laid in advance, and people, as you know, are not gods. They cannot foresee their own fate. It happens that even the most experienced, most courageous fighter dies. So it turned out this time.

In Chechnya, a separate special forces detachment from Chuchkov did everything that was ordered. Less often your job as a scout. More often-a motorized rifle, paratrooper, guide, security guard. In short, the special forces soldier in the Chechen war was both a Shvets and a reaper.

They were told so directly on the first day: are you a SWAT team? Special forces. You will perform the tasks that the infantry performs. Also added: our regimental commanders here almost go to the bayonet.

Indeed, they had seen such regimental commanders - unkempt, overgrown. You can't immediately tell if he's a colonel or a contract soldier.

The first impressions were supplemented by the state of our military equipment. As you know, the special forces soldier has all the equipment - a machine gun, a pistol, and therefore on arrival they were given armored personnel carriers. In these vehicles, the scouts traveled for a day to Beslan. And it's only a hundred kilometers to go. From Beslan to Grozny we traveled the same amount.

We got there. And then-go ahead, attack, storm buildings, engage in cleaning floors. And they did. Sometimes, the infantry did not enter the house until it was cleared by special forces.

At times, special groups were also used in intelligence. The commander of one of the groups was assigned the task: to scout the routes of departure of the motorized rifle division units to the Andreevskaya Valley. And even though the valley is large for one group, she plowed through it thoroughly in three days. They report that there are no militants in the valley. They visit in small groups, once every three or four days.

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It would seem like a good time to enter and occupy the valley. However, the division commander did not believe the reports of the special group. Finally convinced.

A special forces battalion commander told me: "I think, well, now they will quickly start preparing for the nomination. I've tuned in to the divisional radio frequency, and I'm listening. They seem to have started preparing, checking each other out, but soon everything stopped. I went to the division headquarters and asked: when will you start? Well... three hours later, the reconnaissance company will go, they answer. Why send a scout company? Send your troops. Our scouts are already working there. No, they didn't listen. Then the division's reconnaissance company spent several hours searching for a group of special forces."

That's how the impression was created: the intelligence that the special forces delivered was not needed by anyone.

Perhaps this is a subjective opinion, and the senior manager for whom the scouts work is not obliged to report to them about the use of data. However, it seems to me that the doubts of the special forces were not born out of thin air.

In short, they were the first to pass routes and bring out units of a motorized rifle division, marines of the Pacific Fleet, an amphibious assault battalion of the Baltic Fleet, ensure the hoisting of the Russian flag over the Presidential Palace, get reliable data on the situation at the oil refinery, calculate the load capacity of bridges for the passage of equipment.

It happened that special forces in Chechnya performed truly fantastic tasks. Today it is already known that in those tragic hours when the 131st Maikop brigade was dying on the streets of Grozny, no one was able to come to its aid. With the exception of one small group of scouts from the Siberian Military District, who rushed to the rescue of motorized infantry.

Special forces of one of the brigades also found themselves in the main breakout area of a large, well-armed gang of terrorists Raduyev, locked up in Pervomaisky. A little over three dozen scouts met the terrorists with fire, and many of them were permanently buried in Dagestan.

What happened in Chechnya is also the classic case that special forces get during exams: a witness, an outsider, came out to the group. Your actions? The group that worked in the area of the oil refinery was contacted by a Chechen girl. Fortunately, the special forces managed to take cover and wait it out. Although there was not much time to wait - the militants were on the tail.

So don't paint the Special Forces as soulless killer monsters without a heart. These are really excellent guys who serve not for money (what money the officers have now!), but for conscience ' sake.

That's all I wanted to tell you about the Chuchkov Brigade , the oldest special-purpose brigade in the Armed Forces.

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