“I threw a grenade into the yard of a friend”
There are so many weapons in Russia that recently, judging by the news, only a blind man has not stumbled upon pistols, machine guns or grenades forgotten by someone. So, on March 20, in the city of Kimry, Tver Region, a nurse found grenades after the departure of the tenant to whom she rented an apartment. The police also seized pistols, cartridges and TNT sticks. On March 3, in Novokuznetsk, a package with RGD-5 and F-1 combat grants was found in a bag at a bus stop. And on March 15, in the Odintsovo district, traffic police inspectors detained Akrom Chorshanbiev, a resident of the Altai Territory. Two Kalashnikov assault rifles and cartridges were found in the trunk of his car. The detainee said that he had fought in Ukraine as part of the Wagner PMC and was going on vacation.
Increasingly, Russians, when tipsy, are using assault rifles to shoot in the air for fun. So, on March 16, in the village of Goluboe, near Moscow, on Parkovaya Street, a drunken local resident began firing from a machine gun into the air. They found a Kalashnikov assault rifle and more than 240 rounds of ammunition on him. On March 9, in the city of Dalnegorsk, Primorsky Territory, two drunken mobilized people fired from a machine gun on the street. During interrogation by the police, they said that they just wanted to scare the locals. And at the end of February, a resident was detained in Reutov, who decided to celebrate the wedding by shooting into the air from an AKM. Earlier that month, four Moscow students were detained for firing machine guns into the air.
Entertainment with grants is also gaining popularity among the people. On January 14, on the Tonenkoye farm near Belgorod, mobilized sergeant Dmitry L. threw a grenade on the street as a joke. However, he did not take into account that there was an ammunition depot nearby, and the shells detonated. As a result, three colleagues of the sergeant were killed and 18 more people were injured. Plus, the village club and the school were completely burned down. And on December 25, an explosion thundered in Voronezh, next to the Lyudmila cafe. As investigators found out, the perpetrators of the incident were servicemen of military unit 29760, Sergeant Artem Shapovalov and Private Ivan Kireevsky, who arrived on a business trip from the occupied part of the Kharkov region. According to preliminary data, Shapovalov and Kireevsky, who had drunk heavily, pulled out the pin from the grenade, but could not insert it back. Then they threw a grenade into the garbage can. As a result of the explosion, a passer-by was injured and the cafe building was damaged.
Of course, there are those Russians who use weapons that fall into their hands not for entertainment. So, on March 6, in Domodedovo, police detained a 38-year-old citizen who was found to have an F-1 grenade. According to the police, he was going to blow up the local military enlistment office. As it turned out, the detainee was mobilized in October last year and was trained on the territory of the Kursk region, but escaped from the military unit.
Most often, military weapons are used by Russians in domestic conflicts. Recently, a resident of the village of Severny, Belgorod District, received a five-year sentence. Last year, having drunk, he decided to sort things out with an acquaintance who owed him money. The debtor was not at home, and the defendant threw a grenade into the yard, where the borrower's wife was at that moment (she was not injured). And in December 2022, “volunteer” Vladimir Yakimov, who returned from Ukraine, shot dead his wife Victoria, suspecting her of treason. As journalists found out, military doctors discovered inflammation of the paranasal sinuses in Yakimov and sent him home for treatment. According to regional media, Yakimov killed his wife with a service pistol.
Such incidents are a consequence of the huge flow of military weapons that poured into Russia after the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The widespread uncontrolled proliferation of weapons will have the most tragic consequences. This can be judged with certainty, if only because this wave is not the first.
A Farewell to Arms!
According to the operational base of the Ministry of Internal Affairs "Lost Weapons", during the fighting in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Georgia, federal troops lost 9606 firearms and ammunition. The greatest losses occurred during the battles for Grozny in 1995: only Kalashnikov assault rifles of various modifications, pistols, grenade launchers and sniper rifles lost 1728 pieces.
The record holder for the number of lost weapons and ammunition is the 166th separate motorized rifle brigade, in which the notorious Igor Girkin (Strelkov) served under a contract in 1994-1995. During the battles for Grozny, Shali and Shatoi, the brigade irretrievably lost 204 pieces of weapons and ammunition: 13 rocket launchers, 29 Makarov pistols, 74 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 19 lemons, 23 grenades (RGD), 5 heavy machine guns (SP-18), 10 Kalashnikov machine guns, 25 underbarrel grenade launchers, 2 heavy machine guns (NSVT), 4 grenade launchers (RPG-7N, RPG-7V). Most of the “barrels” and grenades were captured by the Chechen militias from the soldiers of the brigade who had surrendered, others were lost during the fighting or stolen from the weapons pyramids.
For the reprisals against the civilian population, the brigade fighters were called "mad". “They blocked the village, went into the houses and first of all looked for grub and alcohol. Gold, carpets, chickens and cattle were also immediately taken away. Drivers were scolded at checkpoints. Now I'm watching a video from Ukraine – nothing has changed, ”a former fighter of the brigade told The Insider, who asked not to be named.
According to the same source, there was practically no accounting of weapons in the brigade, and many fighters took home “souvenirs”. So, on June 20, 1996, in Moscow, at the Kurskaya metro station, a contract soldier from military unit 22033 Valery Mordvinov was detained, in whom policemen found two RGD-5 grenades. And Sergei Volkov, who was wounded in Grozny, was treated at the Burdenko military hospital during the day, and at night he got out of the hospital ward and engaged in robberies. To intimidate the victims, the contractor used an F-1 grenade and a bayonet-knife.
"Souvenirs" from the front surfaced, including in the most unexpected places. For example, in September 2001, the duty officer of the Zyablikovo police department received a message about an explosion in an apartment on the street. Musa Jalil, building 4, building 2. The investigators who arrived at the scene found the bodies of Viktor Yastrebtsov and his son Sergei. In the hallway were Yastrebtsov's wife, who received shrapnel wounds in both legs, and her granddaughter Yulia, a 4th grade student, was shell-shocked. After a preliminary interview with relatives, it turned out that during the joint drinking of alcoholic beverages, the men had a fight, and then Yastrebtsov Sr. took out an RGD-5 grenade and threw it on the floor. According to the victim, the grenade was brought to the father-in-law by a familiar officer from the "mad" brigade.
By the way, now some former fighters of the brigade are fighting in Ukraine. One of them, Aleksey Khmelev, signed a contract with military unit 45377 and was sent to the "LNR". On October 6, 2022, a funeral came to his relatives. As they write in social networks, 5 more colleagues died along with Khmelev.
The second place in terms of lost weapons is occupied by the 428th motorized rifle regiment, which fought in Chechnya and lost half of its personnel there. During the fighting, the officers and soldiers of the regiment “sowed”, among other things, 117 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 11 grenade launchers. In third place in terms of weapon losses is the 76th Guards Air Assault Division from Pskov, which lost 88 AKS-74s, 17 Kalashnikov machine guns and 27 grenade launchers in battle. With the beginning of the aggression against Ukraine, the Pskov paratroopers were supposed to enter Kiev, but, having suffered heavy losses, dug in in the now world-famous Bucha. The fourth position is occupied by military unit 23562, which during the assault on Grozny lost 54 Kalashnikov assault rifles, as well as machine guns and grenade launchers. Next comes military unit 29483, which was transferred from Vladikavkaz to Chechnya. 74 barrels were lost in battles. However, this military unit managed to become famous even earlier: from 1988 to 1993, 806 firearms and grenades disappeared from the military depot. Then half of the stolen weapons were added to the arsenals of the Armenian and Georgian organized crime groups, as well as bandits from the Solntsevo metropolitan area and Dolgoprudny near Moscow.
"Cosmonauts", rapists and "traitors"
OMON and internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (now these units are part of the Russian Guard) made their contribution to the statistics on the loss of weapons and ammunition. The largest batch of weapons was stolen from the warehouses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on June 22, 2004, when the militants attacked Nazran. Then 98 people were killed, 104 were injured, and the attackers seized 866 pistols, rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Among other things, evidence of contract killings stored there disappeared from the safes of the investigators: 7 Italian Beretta submachine guns, 4 Czech Ceska Zbrojovka pistols, 14 sawn-off shotguns and one Polish VIS-35 barrel of 1934.
Another major loss of weapons from the arsenals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs happened on August 6, 1996, when Chechen militias captured Grozny. Local law enforcement officers fled, and 162 Makarov pistols, 13 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 9 light machine guns, 18 PP-90 submachine guns and 4 KS-23M shotguns were stolen from the building of the OOP at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya (a total of 249 weapons disappeared from the gunsmith).
Of the other units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the 2nd Order of Kutuzov Special Purpose Regiment can be noted. Previously, the fighters guarded mass events and football matches, and with the transition to the Russian Guard, they were connected to disperse opposition rallies with batons, and Muscovites nicknamed them “cosmonauts”. Since 1992, the “cosmonauts” have lost 208 firearms. So, on October 31, 1992, in Nazran, militants captured 5 Makarov pistols, 92 AKS-74s, 21 Kalashnikov machine guns, 17 grenade launchers and 4 Dragunov sniper rifles without firing a single shot. Five years later, one of the machine guns was found in a cache near Zagorodnoye Highway in Moscow.
During the fighting in Chechnya, the regiment lost another 52 barrels and two twin ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns. And in 1998, an audit revealed the loss of 4 AK-74s in the warehouse.
The criminal reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of that time are full of crimes committed by soldiers of the 2nd regiment. Here are some of them: On February 7, 1995, Lieutenant Igor Aleinik was detained at the Komsomolskaya metro station. During a search, they found an RGD-5 grenade, a rocket launcher and an anti-personnel mine. On March 22, 1997, Zinaida Fedorova, a tent saleswoman, contacted the police and reported that three unknown men had broken into her and, threatening physical violence, had stolen several bottles of vodka and cigarettes. In hot pursuit, the operatives detained three fighters of military unit 3186 – Savchenko, Eliseev and Golikov. The stolen property has been recovered. On January 31, 2002, in Mytishchi, traffic police inspectors stopped a Zhiguli carrying Major Evgeny Nifontov, Captain Roman Lebedev, and Senior Lieutenant Valery Burdeev. RGD-5 was found in the trunk of the car. On February 7, 2004, a minor Marina P. turned to the duty unit and said that two unknown men in military uniform dragged her into the entrance and raped her one by one. According to signs, soldiers of the Nerovnykh and Drozdov regiments were detained. On May 4, 2004, two teenagers Aleksey K. and Pavel O. were brought from the Kuzminki-Lyublino park, who reported that on the path they were attacked by an unknown person with a knife and began to demand money. Frightened teenagers gave the robber a mobile phone and 50 rubles. At the exit from the park, a serviceman of military unit 3186 Sergey Levchenko was detained. On October 19, 2006, corporal Dmitry Frolov contacted the UBOP of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and said that the head of the engineering service of military unit 3186, Major A. A. Repin, was extorting 15 thousand rubles from him, and if he refused, he threatened to send Frolov to Chechnya, where he would be buried. At the time of the transfer of money on the territory of ODON them. Dzerzhinsky Repin was detained.
Further on the loss of weapons is the 81st operational regiment of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1992-1994, the fighters of the regiment took part in the Ossetian-Ingush conflict and two Chechen wars. During the fighting in Chechnya, 28 machine guns were lost. Plus, as indicated in the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on March 19, 1996, Sergeant Alexander Gladkikh and Private Vladimir Pinaev went AWOL in Urus-Martan, taking two AK-74s.
Meanwhile, the story of the disappearance of Gladkikh and Pinaev still raises many questions. A month after their parents received the last letters from their sons, operatives came to search them. They said that both servicemen were put on the federal wanted list and offered to indicate the place where they were hiding. Concerned parents immediately went in search of Chechnya.
Weapons and ammunition stolen in hot spots and from warehouses were distributed throughout the country
The command of the regiment told the parents that their runaway sons had betrayed their homeland and there was no point in talking about them. During the search, the parents examined hundreds of bodies of soldiers in refrigerator cars, met with field commanders and interviewed prisoners, and once they were almost shot by riot police at a checkpoint in Starye Atagi. Only three months later, the bodies of soldiers were accidentally discovered five hundred meters from the location of the regiment. They did not have weapons with them. Apparently, they were shot in the dark by their own sentries and the corpses were thrown into a pit. However, the regiment commander, who until recently called the dead cowards and traitors, immediately put forward another version: they say, Gladkikh and Pinaev took an unequal battle with the militants and died like heroes. And even provided witnesses. By order of the command, both were awarded the Order of Courage (posthumously), and a commemorative plaque was installed at the school where Pinaev studied. But even after the solemn funeral, local policemen visited relatives and asked about the missing machine guns.
Military unit 3219 lost 10 assault rifles and 2 grenade launchers; military unit 3703 lost 6. Military unit 3692 lost a Makarov pistol, two AK-74s and two heavy machine guns. In addition, Andrey Voronkov, deputy chief of staff of military unit 3692, forgot his PM in a private taxi, and he disappeared completely.
Add to the loss statistics 2,325 weapons stolen from military arsenals in peacetime. The federal wanted list includes 205 pistols and machine guns stolen from the warehouse of military unit 83589 (Kaliningrad region), 110 from military unit 13008 (Leningrad region), 88 from military unit 51866 (Russian military base in Armenia), 29 from military unit 11411 (Kaliningrad region), 57 submachine guns disappeared from military unit 7474 (Kazan), 29 disappeared from military unit 11341 (Mogilev), 37 from the warehouse of the Internal Affairs Directorate of Ingushetia, 46 units were stolen from military unit 2386 (Mardakan ), 72 – from military unit 40491 (Krymsk), 366 machine guns – from military unit 56178 (Estonia), and this list can be continued indefinitely.
42 PM and 3 Stechkin pistols were lost by employees of the FSB department in the Tyumen, Pskov, Omsk, Tula, Ryazan, Sverdlovsk, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Rostov regions, as well as security officers from the Krasnodar Territory, Primorye and Tatarstan.
About a quarter of the information in the Lost Weapons database is classified. For example, on September 24, 1995, 117 RPG-26 Aglen hand grenade launchers were stolen. However, it is not specified from which military warehouse the grenade launchers disappeared, and in the column "Fabula" it is only indicated: "The data are presented by the command of the group of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Chechen Republic."
In the meantime, weapons and ammunition stolen in hot spots and from warehouses were distributed throughout the country. For example, from 1995 to 2015, until the statistics were classified, only in the capital region grenades exploded 512 times (86 people died), grenade launchers were used by killers 84 times, criminals used 196 anti-personnel mines, and 465 "Kalash" and silenced pistols. And this is not counting the tons of weapons found in gangster caches or brought by military personnel from business trips. Moreover, a significant part of the “trunks” is not listed in the search bases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.