One Soldier's War In Chechnya

by Arkady Babchenko

  In mid-March they moved our battalion to Gikalovsky, which is not far from Chernorechye, one of Grozny’s suburbs. It’s the same place where Shamil Basayev got his leg blown off. It was at the end of winter, when the storming of Grozny was coming to an end and the Russians had clearly taken the city. Basayev, who had no wish to die in a city that was surrounded, took fifteen hundred of his men and left Grozny via a dried-up riverbed. The wadi was mined so well that not even one person stood much chance of getting through, let alone a group of fifteen hundred. They’d just dumped anti-personnel mines out of helicopters, nasty little things that don’t kill but tear off your foot, or just half of it, crippling you instead. But Basayev made it through. Some say a warrant officer in the FSB sold him a map showing the path through the minefields for about two thousand dollars.

  They were moving at night, carrying all their stuff, weapons and wounded with them. They moved in absolute silence, right under the noses of the federal forces, slipping between two army units and passing within one hundred metres of our positions. They would have passed by entirely unnoticed if they’d been a tiny bit luckier. But near Chernorechye, where the gap was only a metre or so wide, one of the rebels stepped on a mine. A burst of automatic rifle fire echoed from the nearby infantry positions, although they had no idea yet what they were firing at. The Chechens walked right into it, and then there was another blast. Realizing they had been spotted, the rebels tried to re-group, and then the mines started going off one after the other. Seeing a crowd of rebels illuminated in the light of the explosions right under their noses, our infantry sounded the alarm and brought down a hail of fire. Some self-propelled guns joined in from up on the heights, and then came the mortars, creating an inferno on the river plain that lasted the whole night. Basayev managed to escape, but he lost half of his men in the valley.

  I had heard about this but hadn’t seen the place until one day my platoon leader and his deputy supply officer came up with the idea of going fishing around there. They’d heard rumours that the fishing was excellent, and that the mountain streams were packed with metre-long trout, fattened up in the absence of anglers and multiplying in unbelievable numbers. We decided to go the very next morning in two carriers, and instead of rods we’d take rocket launchers, the best fishing equipment there is - one shot upstream and you get a bucket full of stunned fish right away; you just have to make sure you scoop them out in time. Olga decided to go with us.

  But things went wrong from the start. After we’d created Armageddon upstream, using up a week’s supply of rockets, we didn’t catch a single fish. As we cavorted back and forth between the Chechen lakes and streams we didn’t even notice that we’d ended up in Chernorechye. And in an instant, our happy, holiday-making mood died like the wind.

  There was no earth under our feet, just metal; everywhere was strewn with shards of different calibre shells, from little pea-sized ones, tiny splinters of under-barrel grenades, to enormous casings the size of two fists from 152-mm self-propelled guns. There wasn’t a single tree left standing; all of them had had their tops cut off and been shredded, and their branches were scattered like torn-off arms, the white flesh of the wood showing at their stubs. And craters, craters and more craters. The whole river valley was made up of craters as far as you could see.

  And between the craters, on the other riverbank... we couldn’t make it out at first, what was that? Had there been a rubbish dump here or something? There were rags and bits of junk strewn all over it among the boughs of trees and bushes churned up from the soil by the explosions.

  Looking closer we realized that these weren’t rags; this wasn’t a rubbish dump. The rags weren’t rags at all, but people. They lay a long way off, maybe three hundred metres away, and they were hard to make out. It’s hard to distinguish what’s what or who’s who in the jumble left behind by a shelling, but some of the corpses were pretty clearly visible. One was sitting up, his dead arms hugging a metre-wide tree stump that had been blown apart by a direct hit. His head was missing; it had rolled down the slope and was lying about fifteen metres to one side. Another hung headfirst from a small precipice, his arms dangling into the water, playing in the current, bending and flexing at the elbow. Beside him lay his legs, just two torn-off legs, one in an army boot and the other bare.

  It started to get a bit creepy, and an unpleasant chill appeared at the back of my stomach. The sense of death in this valley was so strong, almost palpable, and weighed heavily on our minds. We felt a kind of listless fatigue. These dead people lying here were the enemy and we didn’t feel any kind of pity for them, nor could we, but we still felt wretched at the realization of what can happen to the human body. And the knowledge that we were no exception, that we too could be scattered in a valley like this with our entrails hanging out and our heads rolling down slopes, had a shocking effect.

  We jumped down from the carriers and walked across to the dam that blocked the river. We stepped carefully as it had not yet been de-mined, and none of us wanted to join the Chechens lying here. As it was, the death rate was way above the norm, even by military standards. Try as they might, the engineers could not remove all the charges. They had worked at night and hurried, and it had ended with one of them blowing himself up. His bloodied hat and bits of his belt were still lying beside the crater. The blast had detonated the grenades that hung from his belt and there was nothing else left of him.

  As we stepped onto the dam we felt a pleasant sense of relaxation in our muscles; we were no longer standing on the treacherous earth, where death lurked beneath the surface. Beneath our feet now there was just plain, honest concrete, and we knew we could cross the smooth hardness without danger.

  We had gone only a few metres when we came across the remains of two women. I had heard of them; they were Russians who’d become snipers for Basayev, and had left Grozny with the rear guard. They were both over thirty, and I remembered that one was from Volgograd and the other from St Petersburg.

  The woman from Volgograd was called Olga. She was identified by a young infantryman, and when he came out on the dam and saw her, his hair stood on end. He said later that he’d never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. The woman had lived on the same floor of his building, and he had been a guest in her home more than once.

  The women lay next to each other. Death hadn’t disfigured them too badly; even now they were still different from men. Their poses were coquettish and their long hair was spread on the concrete. We stood over them and looked at their dead female bodies. Then Olga came over to us. I don’t know if this was a coincidence or not, or if she felt something, but she went straight to the one from Volgograd, the one called Olga, and paid no attention to the other. She stood silently over her, not saying anything, just standing and looking, and at that moment her eyes acquired an incredible depth; all the secrets of the universe were mirrored in them, as if she had suddenly understood the meaning of life.

  I looked at these women, the living and the dead, and thought that they were very similar. Both were petite, both in camouflage, both had chestnut-coloured hair, both sharing the same name. It was as if Olga were standing above herself, like in dreams when you see yourself from the outside. Then she silently turned and went back to the carrier without looking at anyone. We all just stood there by the dead women and watched the living one walk off, and none of us made a single sound.

  24/ Traitors

  They also fought in the Chechen war, only on the other side.

  In war a person doesn’t get better or worse. War is like an emery board - it strips off everything that’s affected and superficial and exposes the core, the real you. And if the core is strong to start with, then it becomes stronger in wartime, it toughens up. That sort of person can take anything and won’t break. If the core was rotten, like a wormy nut, then war will destroy him once and for all, crush him and abandon him to the rot of fear. And in order to save his life he will go to any lengths.

  From criminal case
documents:

  On 21 November 1995, Private K. M. Limonchenko deserted combat positions in the region of Orekhovo in the Chechen republic. On 22 November Limonchenko, in agreement with one Kryuchkov, stole a box of 7.62-mm cartridges and ten RGD-5 grenades and defected to the rebels.

  Konstantin Limonchenko had been thinking about deserting for quite a while. He badly wanted to live, not die in this unnecessary and corrupt war. If the generals wanted to fight, let them do so - he wanted to go home. But it wasn’t so easy to go home. Konstantin’s health was excellent; this native Siberian hadn’t been ill since he was a kid, and faking pneumonia or dysentery so that he could serve out his time in hospital hadn’t worked out for him. Of course, he could have inflicted an injury on himself, he could have shot himself in the arm or leg, but he was terrified of pain and loved himself too much to resort to that. Maybe he’d run away? But if he got caught he’d be jailed for desertion. Recently the deputy political officer had read them the criminal code and dwelled on this article in particular. There was nowhere to run to anyway. There were just Chechens and more Chechens all around. Of course, why hadn’t he thought about that before?!

  His decision to cross over to the side of the rebels came unexpectedly, of its own accord. Limonchenko immediately understood that this was his only real chance to save his life, with just a little blood and without self-mutilation or prison. The Chechens are strong and they always win, and when Chechnya gets its independence he will be in another country altogether. True, he’d probably have to bloody his hands, but that wasn’t so bad - it’d be someone else’s blood, not his.

  That same night Limonchenko and Kryuchkov, another guy who thought it was too soon for him to die, grabbed boxes of cartridges and grenades, vaulted over the front of the trench and headed in the direction of Stary Achkhoi.

  From the criminal case documents:

  In August 1996, during the interrogation of soldier Vladimir Denisov who escaped from Chechen captivity, we received information that he had been held in a school building in the village of Stary Achkhoi, guarded by two Russian soldiers of the parachute corps. One had changed his name from Konstantin to Kazbek (sometimes they called

  him Limon), the other was called Ruslan. Both voluntarily converted to Islam.

  Private Roman Makarov, former prisoner of war:

  I knew Limonchenko and Kryuchkov. I met them in Stary Achkhoi when I was a prisoner there, in the dug-out where they kept us. They were also prisoners at first, but later, in February, they converted to Islam.

  Limon was pissed off. The Chechens had not welcomed him quite as he had expected, and at the beginning they’d stuck him in a big pit with the other prisoners and construction workers who had been taken hostage. Later they’d noted his servility and let him out of the pit, and before long they’d singled out this respectful Russian from the rest of the prisoners, brought him closer to them and allowed him to convert to Islam. They even gave him a machine-gun and let him guard the other prisoners. But the Chechens still didn’t trust him like one of their own, and Limon understood that they would betray him at the drop of a hat, casually expending him if the need arose. He gave the matter some thought. ‘I’ll have to show these damned Chechens that I can be useful, merge with their herd: I really have to become Kazbek, and not Konstantin,’ he concluded.

  But how? Go to the front lines and prove himself by fighting? No thanks, he could have stayed with the Russians - front lines are the same on both sides. His position as a guard in the rear was good enough for him. So he decided to perform a ‘feat of valour’ back there in the rear, far away from all the shooting.

  As his first victim he chose a captured lieutenant colonel of the FSB intelligence service. He had nothing against him personally, the colonel was simply the most suitable candidate -the Chechens especially hated the FSB.

  At first he didn’t get any particular pleasure out of tormenting the man and beat him without enthusiasm, simply because he had to. But then Limon started getting into it. He liked this feeling of control over someone else’s life. He began to derive pleasure from the beating, and even cut a small club off a tree so he could spare his fingers. He punched and kicked him, and then held him while two Chechens, Isa and Aslambek, worked him over, and then he took over again. When the colonel died from a brain haemorrhage, he turned his attentions to another FSB prisoner, a warrant officer.

  From the criminal case documents:

  In mid-March they gave Limonchenko a weapon with which to guard the prisoners and mete out punishment at his discretion. Together with a Chechen called Isa he beat unconscious a builder from Saratov, who showed signs of psychological disturbance, so that he would be quiet and not shout.

  Beating up this weedy builder gave him particular pleasure. He was so ridiculous when he ran away, cowering from the club and squealing so amusingly, shielding his head with his arms when Limon threw him to the ground and started to kick him in the stomach. It would buck up his mood every time and he couldn’t stop laughing. The builder was his favourite toy, and Limon played with him a lot as he wrestled with boredom in the camp. When the builder’s head swelled up massively, Isa banned people from beating him because he was becoming unfit for work. Limon was to leave the guy in peace. But when Isa wasn’t watching, Limon would allow himself to smack him about a bit - not hard, just a couple of blows to knock him over, although that wasn’t as much fun.

  Private Oleg Vasiliyev, former prisoner of war:

  I was taken prisoner in December 1996. When they brought us to Stary Achkhoi, Limonchenko and Kryuchkov were already there. They had gone over to the Chechens and converted to Islam. They wanted me to convert too, but I refused. The Chechens stopped feeding me after that, so I ate what I could find, ramsons, nettles, and survived.

  How did Limonchenko look? Burly, about one eighty tall, strong as a wild boar. But he didn’t beat me, maybe because he was a conscript himself. He generally beat the conscripts less than the contract soldiers, officers or civilians. But the young boys died faster anyway. The contract soldiers got it worst of all; they were beaten with extreme cruelty, told that they had come to Chechnya to kill for money. I spent nine months in captivity, and Limonchenko and Kryuchkov were with us the whole time, guarding us. Occasionally they went off on trips somewhere but I don’t know where they went.

  One day at the start of June 1996, these new mujahideen with Russian faces went off to shoot some prisoners.

  Limonchenko, Kryuchkov and a Chechen called Zelimkhan took sixteen contract soldiers and a Chechen teacher from the prisoners in Stary Achkhoi, put them in a truck and drove them out of the camp. In the steppe Limon ordered them to get out of the vehicle and dig graves.

  ‘Put your backs into it, you are working for yourselves,’ he said, mocking his victims.

  The stony ground was hard to dig and the prisoners were happy about this. A sunny June day, full of the intoxicating aromas of the steppe, was too beautiful for death, and every stone they had to loosen from the earth prolonged their existence. They worked at their leisure, with fatalistic indifference, no longer paying any attention to the shouts of their guards.

  When the graves were ready, Limon gave each of them a knife. Not understanding what he wanted from them, the men twirled the long wide-bladed Caucasian daggers and waited tensely. Limon spat and pronounced their sentence: ‘So bastards, do you want to live? Is that what you want, you animals? We’ll give you a chance. You will now kill each other, and whoever refuses will be shot. Whichever one of you survives will be set free.’

  They wouldn’t kill each other. So Limon, Kryuchkov and Zelimkhan shot them as promised. They told the Chechen teacher to bury the bodies, having spared him for the task.

  Before the war, the teacher had worked in Stary Achkhoi where he was now being held hostage. They tortured him in the same classroom in which he’d taught kids reading and writing. The Chechens called him an FSB spy, beat him and demanded that he tell them who could pay a ransom for him, and how much. />
  Recently he’d been feeling very poorly. Three weeks earlier the rebels had taken them to a fortified site in the mountains that had been destroyed by Russian planes. Limon had ordered them all to get out of the bunker and form up outside, adding: ‘If you don’t manage to get out in thirty seconds you’re going to get a good beating.’

  The teacher didn’t make it in time, and Limon set about him while he was still in the bunker and continued outside, in the fresh air, as he put it. First, he beat him with his fists, trying to hit him in the jaw every time, and then, when the teacher lost consciousness and fell, he kicked him and clubbed him in the stomach, in the kidneys and the groin, so that he could no longer move and his kidneys were damaged. The teacher didn’t recover from that session; he limped and started to forget who he was and what he was doing there.

  Once he’d buried the prisoners, the teacher went over to the truck where Limon was smoking on the cab step. Seeing that the work was finished, Limon told him to go and collect the spades. When the teacher turned round, he shot him in back of the head.

  Dmitry Groznetsky, former prisoner of war:

  In August they exchanged me and some other prisoners in Grozny for some Chechens the federals had been holding. Limonchenko and Kryuchkov were riding with us then, but refused to be exchanged. Their parents came and visited them and talked to them, begging them to come home, but they went back with the Chechens.

  But Limon had been right. He didn’t become one of the Chechens, the Caucasian name Kazbek didn’t stick and they did give him up in the end, forcefully turning him over to the FSB in exchange for one of their field commanders. The exchange took place in October 1996 in Grozny.

  Oleg Vasiliyev, former prisoner of war: