Biography. Before his death, Gelayev cut off his hand. One of the last battles of the remnants of Gelayev’s group

Biography

Pre-war biography

Gelayev’s cruelty became known when residents of Abkhazia identified him on television as the leader of the bandits and contacted Russian peacekeepers’ checkpoints about this. In 1995, in response to the bombing, Shatoya executed captured military pilots by throwing them into a quarry.

First Chechen War

Participant in both Chechen wars. Since 1993, he commanded the special forces regiment "Borz". In May 1995, he headed the Shatoi defense sector.

Colonel General, Hero of Russia Gennady Troshev, in his memoirs, mentions an interesting episode that, according to him, took place:

To the east of the Gelayevites, on the left bank of the Argun, near the village of Duba-Yurt, in the summer of 1995, paratroopers from Novorossiysk were stationed. At one of the meetings, their senior commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yegorov, challenged the militants to a competition - to perform a forced march of several kilometers through the mountains in full gear. Gelayev accepted the challenge. Then I really regretted it. The Blue Berets left no chance for the militants, outplaying them in all respects. Therefore, Gelayev did not really want to fight with the paratroopers, and under various pretexts he evaded combat operations.

- Gennady Troshev. "My war. Chechen diary of a trench general", memoirs, book

In January 1996, he was appointed commander of the Southwestern Sector of the Armed Forces of the ChRI. On April 16, 1996, together with Khattab, he set up an ambush near the village of Yarysh-Mardy in the Argun Gorge, which was hit by a column of federal troops of the Moscow Military District. 76 soldiers were killed and 54 were wounded.

He worked in Grozny at an oil depot, in charge of the distribution of petroleum products.

Since April 1997 - Deputy Prime Minister of Ichkeria.

Since January 1998 - Minister of Defense.

On July 28, 1999, he was appointed first deputy prime minister of the Chechen government (he was tasked with overseeing the security forces).

During the second Chechen war (1999) - he headed the northwestern defense front of the republic, then the southwestern sector of the defense of Grozny, and then became the head of the defense of the entire capital.

In March 2000, he led the defense of the village of Komsomolskoye, where he lost about 1,200 of his “fighters.” Declared jihad because he didn't
sent as reinforcements. Soon after this, reports began to appear in the media about armed clashes between Barayevites and Gelayevites: in July 2000, there was a battle in the region of the village of Shalazhi, and earlier there was a skirmish between militants in the suburb of Grozny Chernorechye - about 40 “fighters” were killed.

At the end of 2000, information appeared that Gelayev had retired from active hostilities and was seeking contact with the Kadyrov administration.

According to the FSB, since April 2001, Gelayev, together with his detachment (about 500 militants), has been in Georgia.

According to Georgian special services, Gelayev and his squad are in Ingushetia.

Gelayev left Georgia twice: in 2001 it ended with the defeat of militants in Abkhazia, in 2002 - in Ingushetia.

On November 9, 2001, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office sent a demand to Georgia for the extradition of Gelayev. Tbilisi claims that Gelayev is not on Georgian territory.

In May 2002, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ichkeria.

Third-party assessments, characteristics

In May 2001, on ORT, Russian Presidential Aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky showed an episode of a video message from Shamil Basayev to Ruslan Gelayev, who was allegedly in Georgia, made at the end of winter - beginning of spring of this year and which fell into the possession of the Russian special services. According to the video letter, Basayev says that he and Khattab prepared a plan to confront federal forces for the spring-summer period, purchased one and a half thousand grenade launcher shells, and a lot of ammunition.

Basayev asks Gelayev to help with the purchase of Strela missile systems and anti-tank guided missiles. It becomes clear, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes, that the figure of Gelayev, who came into conflict with almost all the leaders of gangs after the crushing defeat in Komsomolskoye, cannot be underestimated and he remains one of the most influential separatist leaders (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 2001)

At the end of 2000, information appeared that Gelayev had retired from active hostilities and was seeking contact with the administration. Indeed, Kommersant writes, Gelayev’s voluntary surrender would mean a complete moral victory over the militants, since they have no other such authoritative commander and ideological fighter. The rest are either Wahhabis, whom few people like in the republic, or simply bandits. Gelayev is respected in Chechnya.

Gelayev became one of the most popular Chechen leaders and at the same time stood out favorably from many of his “colleagues”, who also had considerable weight in Chechnya. If, for example, Basayev and Raduev were not so much respected (although at first they were very popular), but rather feared or, at best, forced to endure, then Gelayev was a truly authoritative figure. He was not involved in terrorist attacks or kidnappings, and in general, his interests were far from war. After the first Chechen campaign, he devoted himself entirely to religion and said that he would take up arms only in the face of a new external danger. (“Kommersant”, 2000)

In August 2000, Brigadier General Dalkhan Khozhaev was killed in Chechnya. He commanded Ruslan Gelayev’s special forces brigade and, they say, was extremely devoted to him... The Chechens decided that the murder was a blow to Gelayev himself... The feds believe that Khozhaev was dealt with by Barayev’s people... Everyone knows that Gelayev and Barayev are old enemies. The other day, for example, their troops clashed in the mountains near the village of Shalazhi - even mortars were used. The losses, however, were not very great: seven people were killed and about a dozen were wounded. But it is possible that among those killed were people close to Barayev. So perhaps Khozhaev’s death is revenge. (“Kommersant”, 2000)

One of the most merciless field commanders. As a rule, he did not take prisoners. During the Abkhazian war (1992 - 1993), he personally cut the throats of 24 captured Georgians when his comrades refused to shoot them. Gelayev’s cruelty became known when residents of Abkhazia identified him on television as the leader of the bandits and contacted Russian peacekeepers’ checkpoints about this. In 1995, in response to the bombing, Shatoya executed captured military pilots by throwing them into a quarry. Twice he and his squad flew to training bases in Pakistan. The detachment of Ruslan Gelayev, along with the “Abkhaz battalion” of Shamil Basayev, is considered one of the most combat-ready units in the armed forces of Ichkeria. (Izvestia, 1999)

Gelayev is known as one of the opponents of Wahhabism, and therefore could not find a common language with many field commanders. After fierce fighting in the village of Komsomolskoye in March last year, where he lost about 1,200 of his fighters, the leader managed to get into Ingushetia. Relations with the Wahhabis finally deteriorated after he vowed to take revenge on Barayev. The latter, despite sworn assurances, never sent help to the militants surrounded in Komsomolskoye. Today the attitude towards Gelayev is not entirely clear.

At the end of last year, information appeared that this field commander was actively seeking contact with the new administration of Chechnya. indeed, he went to Ingushetia to negotiate with several of Gelayev’s subordinates. Maskhadov, in his address to the militants, even branded Gelayev a disgrace and once again demoted him. The fact that negotiations with Gelayev are possible was hinted at by Viktor Kazantsev’s office. But the plenipotentiary himself denied these allegations a few days later. It is likely that there is some kind of agreement between Gelayev and representatives of Akhmad Kadyrov. Perhaps the field commander was simply persuaded to retire. This may explain the seclusion of the “general” in the mountains of Georgia. (“Utro.ru”, January 2001)

According to Russian intelligence, it was Gelayev who was appointed as a kind of curator of the operation to transfer mercenaries from Arab countries to Chechnya. According to operatives, the Afghan Taliban are providing him with special assistance in this. (“Time MN”, 1999)

Introducing the first deputy prime minister (1999), Maskhadov said that “the general will lead the fight against crime in Chechnya and stable criminal groups.” Gelayev’s powers also included the fight against corruption in the highest echelons of power. With the arrival of Ruslan Gelayev to his new position, Aslan Maskhadov, as his press secretary noted, “hopes to turn the tide in the fight against crime and especially oil kidnappings and drug trafficking.” (RIA Novosti, 1999)

Additional Information

After Komsomolsky, Gelayev acquired an aura of some kind of mystical holiness. Ordinary Chechens imagined him as an incorruptible and honest Mujahideen defending the independence of his homeland. The Chechens leading the republic also considered the field commander a fighter for the idea and called him the most desirable figure in the ranks of their supporters. (Kommersant-Vlast magazine, 2002)

Unlike other field commanders, Gelayev never killed Chechens. Even traitors. In Komsomolskoye, when several militants came to him and said that they wanted to surrender, he replied: “Everyone who wants to, let them go and surrender. The most faithful remain with me, and we declare jihad.”

Gelayev quickly became friends with people, but stayed only with those he needed. He, for example, became friends with Salman Raduev at the time of the latter’s active social activities, and together with him organized the “Movement of Patriotic Forces” in opposition to Maskhadov. But just six months later he quarreled with Raduev and, at Maskhadov’s suggestion, became Deputy Prime Minister of Ichkeria, and in 1998 - Minister of Defense. Soon after this, he met Arbi Barayev, already a well-known slave trader and drug dealer. They say that Gelayev did not approve of Barayev’s “business,” but as a field commander with combat experience, he trusted him.

After Gelayev was abandoned in Komsomolskoye, Barayev’s bandits were the first to suffer in the internecine squabbles at the hands of the Gelayevites. Then Gelayev, as it now turns out, hid for a long time in Ingushetia and in May 2000 moved to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. In a short time, he managed to unite quite a lot of small Chechen field commanders under his banners and create real competition for the gangs of Basayev, Maskhadov and the then still alive. This competition boiled down to intercepting drug trafficking channels, arms sales and the delivery of foreign financial assistance. (“Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, 2002)

The wounded Ruslan Gelayev spent the entire past winter, together with 13 guards, in the house of a shepherd named Mechiauri in the Pianetsky region of Georgia. According to local residents, Gelayev and his armed detachment are still in the forests of the Pianetsky district (near the Pankisi Gorge). Back on November 9, 2001, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office sent a demand to Georgia for the extradition of Gelayev. Tbilisi claims that Gelayev is not on Georgian territory. According to the Russian military, Ruslan Gelayev’s gangs are preparing to break into Russian territory on the Chechen section of the Georgian-Russian border. The militants, in groups of 30 people, dispersed along the border, and Gelayev himself and his headquarters are located in one of the villages of the Pankisi Gorge, approximately 10 km from the border. According to available data, the total number of Gelayev’s detachments is 250-280 people. (“Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, 2002)

Original of this material
© “Newspaper”, 03/02/2004, “Ruslan Gelayev was killed”

Oleg Rubnikovich

One of the most odious Chechen field commanders, 39-year-old Ruslan Gelayev, was killed in Dagestan. According to one version, the bandit leader was destroyed in a shootout with a border patrol consisting of two people who accidentally stumbled upon him. At the same time, both soldiers also died.

Despite the fact that Gelayev has already been identified by previously detained members of his gang, as well as other indirect signs, they are in no hurry to say with absolute certainty that it was he who was killed. “He was killed three times already. We must wait for the results of the forensic examination,” they are cautious at Lubyanka. The leader of the militants was identified by a familiar policeman

Last Saturday evening, a reconnaissance and search group consisting of contract border guards of the Khunzakh detachment, foreman Mukhtar Suleimenov and sergeant Abdula Kurbanov, walked around one of the areas controlled by the 7th border outpost. After the fighters failed to make contact on Sunday morning, a search began for them.

The bodies of the border guards were discovered at 15.30 in the mountains five kilometers from the village of Bezhta (Tsuntinsky district of Dagestan) in the area of the Avaro-Kakheti road leading to Georgia. The sergeant and sergeant were killed with automatic weapons. Their machine guns lay nearby. The body of a man in camouflage, later identified as Ruslan Gelayev, was found 100 meters from the servicemen; he too was killed by gunshots.

Near the corpse they found a machine gun with three magazines, a grenade and “Wahhabi literature.” “If there was a shootout between our fighters and Gelayev, then it is absolutely incomprehensible how all three could have died at once,” a source in the border service expressed bewilderment in a conversation with a GAZETA correspondent.

- If the militant was not alone, then his own people could not abandon him. Perhaps Gelayev was mortally wounded in the shootout, but managed to crawl away several tens of meters.” Meanwhile, GAZETA's sources in the FSB claim that the body of another militant was discovered along with Gelayev, but there is no official confirmation of this information yet.

Yesterday, Gelayev’s body was transported to Makhachkala, where, according to the NEWSPAPER, he was first identified by one of the local policemen, a longtime acquaintance of the field commander. At the same time, traces of a wound received in the battles for Grozny were found on the victim’s leg. In addition, the corpse was shown to militants from Gelayev’s gang captured in December on the territory of Dagestan. Two of them also confirmed that this was their former commander.

Let us recall that on December 15, 2003, a detachment led by Gelayev attacked several villages in the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan. The militants shot a patrol of 9 border guards. After the Tsuntinsky region was completely blocked by border guards, police and army units, aviation and artillery struck the militants holed up in the mountains.

According to the feds, the militants lost several dozen people. Several more extremists were covered by avalanches that came down from the mountains. Only 8 bandits were captured alive. Then some of them claimed that during the shelling, almost the entire Gelayev detachment was destroyed, and he himself was wounded.

It is quite possible that all this time the leader of the bandits was holed up in one of the Dagestan villages or in a dugout prepared in advance by the militants. Be that as it may, last Saturday Gelayev apparently decided to either change his shelter or, more likely, return to Georgia (his gang hid in the Pankisi Gorge for almost a year and a half), but ran into border patrol.
The fourth death of a field commander

There is practically no doubt that it was Gelayev who was killed this time. Let us remember that he was buried three times already. The death of the field commander was first announced in March 2000 by representatives of the Ministry of Defense. This allegedly happened during a battle near the village of Komsomolskoye captured by militants (Urus-Martan district of Chechnya).

Then, in October 2001, Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin announced the destruction of Gelayev. According to him, the extremist leader was eliminated during the breakout from the territory of Abkhazia. And on February 10, 2004, Gelayev was “buried” by the prosecutor of Dagestan, Imam Yaraliev, who stated that the bandit was killed in mid-December last year in the Tsuntinsky district of the republic.

Apparently, precisely because Gelayev had repeatedly “resurrected from the dead” before, FSB representatives are in no hurry to confirm the fact of his death even now, when it is absolutely obvious. According to representatives of the intelligence service, it will be possible to talk about this with confidence only after the conclusion of the forensic examination.

“Apparently, this will take about a month. Gelayev was convicted three times, so it is possible to carry out, for example, fingerprinting and other examinations,” the FSB told GAZETA.

"Join into peaceful life"

Even among Chechen field commanders, Gelayev was considered one of the most odious personalities. His squad always kept to themselves, preferring to conduct independent combat operations. Unlike his colleagues, Gelayev never resorted to ordinary and ineffective sabotage, preferring to carry out spectacular and large-scale special operations. Other field commanders called him an "offensive general," implying that defensive actions had never been his unit's strong suit.

It is not for nothing that the President of Ichkeria Maskhadov demoted Brigadier General Gelayev to private for mistakes made during the defense of Grozny in 2000. Then his detachment held Minutka Square, but unexpectedly abandoned it in the midst of the battle.

True, Gelayev soon rehabilitated himself by raiding Abkhazia. As a result, Maskhadov returned him the rank of brigadier general.

Another distinctive feature of this commander was that his people were not seen in such crimes as typical of Chechen bandits, such as kidnappings. This circumstance was once noted by the head of Chechnya, Akhmat Kadyrov. Moreover, he believed that if he surrendered his weapons, Gelayev could well “join peaceful life.” However, Gelayev himself, apparently, had his own plans for the future.

***
Original of this material © Kommersant, 03/02/2004. The field commander was destroyed by the mountains. Sergey Dupin

[…] The corpse of the field commander was brought to Bezhta last Sunday around noon. He was supposed to be sent to Makhachkala that same day, but the ambulance helicopter was unable to take off due to fog in the mountains, and the evacuation had to be postponed to Monday. For a long time, local police officers could not decide where to leave the body of Ruslan Gelayev for the night; they received information that militants would try to recapture him.

In Bezhta they well remember the last December meeting with Gelayev’s detachment, during which an entire squad of border guards was shot, so the corpse was guarded like a living militant.

The most reliable and fortified place in the village was, naturally, the “monkey house” of the local police department, but the officers on duty flatly refused to spend the night in the company of a dead militant. In addition, the police building is heated, which could have adversely affected the body. Therefore, a concrete garage-bunker was allocated for the morgue, in which four police UAZ vehicles are usually parked.

The corpse was placed directly on the concrete floor between the cars. Then they locked all the locks and sealed the metal doors, which had never been closed since the garage was built. A dozen of the most experienced policemen with machine guns were placed around the perimeter of the yard - they did not sleep a wink until the body of the “Black Angel” (Gelaev’s call sign on the radio) was taken by the “Black Tulip” (military ambulance helicopter).

“Formally, Gelayev’s corpse remains unidentified,” the Dagestan prosecutor’s office told Kommersant. “We must still conduct a fingerprint examination, and, if necessary, a genetic-biological examination. Only when we have expert opinions will we stop criminal cases against Gelayev in connection with his death and remove his data from the federal and international search databases. In the meantime, Gelayev is legally alive, but actually dead. The fact is that the corpse of the field commander was identified by eight militants who spent the last few years side by side with Gelayev.”

[…] During the pursuit of militant detachments, representatives of the federal command several times reported the liquidation of Gelayev himself, but in the end he could not be found either among the living or among the dead. As it turned out later, he eluded the special forces, and at the same time his subordinates, immediately after the execution of the border guards, and all the chases and shootouts were nothing more than a diversionary maneuver by the militants in order to get their commander out of the way. While the rest were freezing in mountain caves, dying under avalanches and federal air strikes, actually causing fire on themselves, the Black Angel with a faithful bodyguard named Bull was holed up in a shepherd's shed near the village of Shauri.

Dagestani operatives still hope to meet with Byk and the shepherd, the owner of the shed, who are now on the run, so they asked not to give their last names. On Saturday, February 28, it is believed that Byk and a shepherd in a UAZ took Ruslan Gelayev to the lower reaches of the Chaekha Gorge, which runs from the village of Bezhta to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia.

There the Black Angel was left alone. Having said goodbye to his accomplices, he moved up the gorge. Having lost his entire army during an unsuccessful Dagestan raid, the commander decided to leave through the passes to the main base in the Pankisi Gorge, where his wives, children and numerous other relatives still live.[…]

The last meters on all fours

Perhaps even an experienced border guard would not recognize Khamzat (the Muslim name of Ruslan Gelayev) in the man walking towards him. A scraggly beard, black Adidas sweatpants with elongated knees, a frayed Alaskan jacket, knee-length rubber boots and a knitted cap made him look more like a homeless person than a formidable field commander. How events developed further will now never be possible to establish. Most likely, one of the border guards called out or tried to check the documents of the oncoming person - in response, machine gun fire rang out.

The fire was almost point-blank - apparently, Gelayev hid a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault rifle under his jacket until the last moment, so both border guards immediately fell, bleeding profusely. Private Suleymanov was killed on the spot by a bullet that hit him in the head. Abdulkhalik Kurbanov, wounded in the chest, managed to shoot back. His bullets shattered Gelayev’s left elbow and practically tore off his arm. But the wounded militant was not stopped. As Dagestani policemen say, the death of Private Kurbanov also occurred from a bullet wound to the head - Gelayev finished him off with two shots at point-blank range. And he shot while holding a machine gun in one hand.

However, the Black Angel himself did not have long to live. The footprints in the snow eloquently testified to how the field commander spent the last minutes of his life. Immediately after the execution of the border guards, Gelayev rushed up the gorge, but ran only about fifty meters - his strength melted away with every step, as blood gushed from the commander’s hand. Gelayev fought for his life to the last.

Judging by the pool of blood, he stopped, cut off his left hand and threw it into the snow along with the knife. Then he took a rubber tourniquet from the field first aid kit, applied it to the bleeding stump, took a few more steps, fell, and stood up again. The Black Angel walked another half a hundred meters and stopped again. He pulled out a can of instant Nescafe from his pocket and chewed the powder, apparently hoping that it would give him strength. Then he took out and bit into a bar of Alenka chocolate. The field commander crawled on all fours the last meters towards the Georgian border. He died in this position with a chocolate clenched in his fist.

His body was found by police officers who went to search for the border guards who had not reached their native village. In addition to chocolate and coffee, in the late commander’s belongings they found a piece of dried lamb fat, $200, a package of Rollton noodles, a notebook with a long list of mobile phone numbers and a map of the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan, which marked the path of his group in December last year.

Ruslan (Khamzat) Abdul-Khamidovich Gelayev (real name Reshid; 1964, Goy-Chu, Chechnya - February 28, 2004, Bezhta, Dagestan) - active participant in the Chechen conflict in the 1990s - 2000s, field commander, held high posts in the Armed Forces of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, held the rank of division general.

Radio call sign - “Black Angel”. According to the official version, he was mortally wounded in a battle in the mountains of Dagestan on February 28, 2004.

Pre-war biography

Ruslan Gelayev was born in 1964 in the village of Komsomolskoye, Urus-Martan district, Chechen-Ingush ASSR, into a large family. Father Abdul Hamid was married three times. His wives are Tamila, Nina, Sazhan. Rasoevna. Merzokhanova is Reshid's mother. In the family, in addition to Reshid, there were five more sons (Rizavdi, Umar born 1976, Salman born 1959, Khamzat - Vladimir born 1978, Davlet born 1962) and six sisters (Rosa, Neka born 1971, Adina born 1973, Amina born 1969, Leisa, Louise). His grandfather Abdul is Kadir, and his grandmother is Bazar. In the 1980s, after the death of his father, he went to work in the Omsk region, where he married a local resident, Gubkina Larisa Petrovna, who at that time had a daughter, Victoria, born in 1980. In 1988, their son Rustam was born. Ruslan Gelayev’s second marriage was to a native of Georgia, Malika Saidulayeva, who later died in the war. From this marriage there were two sons (Khasan and Hussein born in 2003). Brothers Rizavdi, Umar, Davlet, sisters Neka, Amina and Adina also died during the armed conflict. Other relatives of Ruslan live in the Volgograd region, Georgia, Azerbaijan, France, Belgium, Rostov region, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk region, Moscow, etc. Brother Khamzat and the second wife of Gelayev’s father live in the Kirov region. Brother Salman chose to go to Georgia. Sister Rose went to Belgium. And two more sisters Leisa and Louise left for Canada. His mother Sazhan (Abdul's first wife, Hamida) lives in Georgia. Many call Shudin Gelayev his brother; that's not true - he's a cousin. Abdul-Hamid (father of Reshid) - uncle of Mumadi (father of Shudin)

Born in the village of Komsomolskoye, Urus-Martan district. His father and mother came from the local Gukhoi teip. Little Ruslan easily carried full buckets from the stormy Goyta River. Tall and broad-shouldered, he did not really like studying, preferring to spend his free time with a double-barreled shotgun in the mountains. I learned to shoot accurately, navigate easily, spend the night in caves, and feed on the gifts of nature. Years later, when he himself would be hunted by boys who grew up on the plains, these skills would come in handy. Islam and low literacy prevented the mountain people from controlling the birth rate, and there is little land suitable for agriculture in the mountains. Therefore, numerous families have long lived meagerly and looked for extra income. Brigades of Caucasians traveled around the Union, offering their services as rural builders - mainly in areas with northern allowances. So Ruslan Gelayev, having served in the army, joined the artel of his relatives and went on a sabbath. The Chechens settled in the swampy north of the Omsk region, in the village of Orlovo, Tarsky district, where the board of the local state farm was located. They began to build cowsheds and housing in the surrounding villages. When Ruslan drew attention to the daughter of the state farm director Larisa, the relatives were initially indignant; the 20-year-old woman did not look like a wife for a Chechen. Her parents sent Larisa to college, and she became pregnant there and returned to her homeland with her daughter. Her father found something for her to do - run a village club. In the end, the Chechens decided that being related to the director would greatly facilitate the receipt and payment of orders and the supply of construction materials to sites. Larisa's mother, who worked in the village council, painted the newlyweds. Ruslan settled in the director's house. Soon, Ruslan's wife gave birth to a son, who was named Rustam. In the village, Ruslan behaved peacefully. Ruslan would probably never have returned to his native mountains if not for perestroika. Exciting news came from Moscow and Checheno-Ingushetia. In 1989, Ruslan left the state farm, which was collapsing, like everything around it. Relatives got Ruslan a job at an oil depot in Grozny, in charge of the supply of petroleum products. After the August putsch, radical separatists led by General Dudayev announced the creation of the National Guard. Gelayev Ruslan joined the ranks of the guards. Soon his imposing figure could be seen behind Dudayev at numerous rallies. In September 1991, Dudayev, without being yet president, withdrew Chechnya from the Chechnya Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The National Guard, along with other factions, seized power. And four strong guys arrived in distant Orlovo with a note from Ruslan. Larisa soon moved with her children from the Siberian village of Orlova to the Chechen village of Komsomolskoye. She didn't see her husband often. He worked as a builder and was an employee of the Grozny oil depot.

Georgian-Abkhaz conflict

In 1992-1993, together with Shamil Basayev, he participated in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict as part of the detachments of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus. By the end of the war he became one of the most authoritative commanders. Ruslan fought in Abkhazia together with his relative Khamzat Khankarov. In honor of him, he took the name Khamzat. In 1992, he trained under the guidance of Russian officers of the 345th Parachute Regiment. Strong, dexterous, resilient and unpretentious, Ruslan excelled in all military subjects. Battalion commander Khamzat Khankarov appointed him platoon commander - and he was not mistaken.

Gelayev quickly gained a reputation as an excellent fighter and skilled commander. Soon there was already a company under his command. It was then that the style of this field commander was formed: sudden, rapid attacks on the rear of Georgian detachments, combined with no less lightning-fast withdrawals. Gelayev more than once personally silently removed the sentries, cutting their throats. He preferred not to burden himself with prisoners, so as not to lose mobility. Although the militants sometimes doubted whether it was worth shooting the captured Georgians, Ruslan never knew pity.

Gelayev’s cruelty became known when residents of Abkhazia identified him on television as the leader of the bandits and contacted Russian peacekeepers’ checkpoints about this. In 1995, in response to the bombing of Shatoy, he personally executed captured military pilots, throwing them into the abyss.

First Chechen War

Participant in both Chechen wars. Since 1993, he commanded the special forces regiment "Borz". In May 1995, he headed the Shatoi defense sector.

Colonel General, Hero of Russia Gennady Troshev, in his memoirs, mentions an interesting episode that, according to him, took place:

To the east of the Gelayevites, on the left bank of the Argun, near the village of Duba-Yurt, in the summer of 1995, paratroopers from Novorossiysk were stationed. At one of the meetings, their senior commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yegorov, challenged the militants to a competition - to perform a forced march of several kilometers through the mountains in full gear. Gelayev accepted the challenge. Then I really regretted it. The Blue Berets left no chance for the militants, outplaying them in all respects. Therefore, Gelayev did not really want to fight with the paratroopers, and under various pretexts he evaded combat operations.

Gennady Troshev. "My war. Chechen diary of a trench general", memoirs, book

Participated in two assaults on the city of Grozny in 1996 (March 6-8 and August 6-11). During the March assault, Gelayev held out in the city for 3 days and retreated. The second assault was more extensive; Soon after, the Khasavyurt Agreements were signed, which effectively ended the First Chechen War.

Interwar period

After the end of the war, he made the hajj to Mecca and took the Arabic name Hamzat. In April 1997, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for Territories in the government of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, then Deputy Prime Minister for Construction in the government of Aslan Maskhadov. In January 1998, he refused the post of Minister of Defense in the government of Shamil Basayev, saying that he was not going to become a “wedding general.”

There are untold pages in the story of the death of one of the most odious field commanders of the “Chechen resistance” Ruslan (Khamzat) Gelayev. The reader is presented with a version of his death, based on some very interesting circumstances.

Ruslan Gelayev began to call himself by the Islamic name Khamzat in the early 1990s. After the defeat of the main forces of his detachment near the village of Komsomolskoye by federal troops at the end of March 2000, he holed up in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia for two years and only showed up in the Chechen Republic in the spring of 2003. The transition from Pan-Kissia to Chechnya was not easy for Gelayev’s detachment. The militants were pretty beaten up by Russian border guards, special forces and army aviation of the Ministry of Defense. In one of the clashes with federal forces, a British citizen with the documents of a journalist, who was in one of the detachment groups, was killed.

Coincidentally or not, it was in this group that there were Igla portable anti-aircraft missile systems, provided to Gelayev by Tbilisi patrons. It is possible that the British or Americans paid for the expensive MANPADS with Georgia. In this case, the presence of a British citizen in the detachment can be explained by the role of a controller responsible for the use of missiles against Russian planes and helicopters, thereby excluding their subsequent resale to Arab terrorists and the use against aviation of Western patrons of “freedom fighters of the Chechen people” somewhere near Basra, Baghdad or Kabul.

By July 2003, Gelayev with a detachment of about thirty people arrived at a camp for training militants in the area of the villages of Chemulga and Galashki in the territory of the Republic of Ingushetia. Here “fresh blood” joined the ranks of the detachment. These were mujahideen who had undergone two months of training, mostly young people from Chechnya, Ingushetia and other republics of the North Caucasus region.

From August to December 2003, Gelayev’s detachment, avoiding clashes with federal forces, made the transition from Ingushetia to the Sharoi region of the Chechen Republic for subsequent departure to Georgia for the winter.

Unlike most field commanders, Gelayev was a supporter of a fair armed struggle against the “occupation forces”, and not against Russian ordinary people, and condemned the mine war. This position of the most popular field commander in Chechnya, who did not stain himself with the blood of the civilian population and openly condemned terrorism, was the last straw, forcing the top leadership of the Chechen gangs to excommunicate him from the “dollar pie.” For this and other reasons, some of the militants who joined D. Umarov’s gang also left Gelayev’s detachment. The latter, in the summer of 2003, was appointed commander-in-chief of the western sector (this position formally belonged to Gelayev).

In this difficult situation for the proud Gelayev, at the end of autumn 2003, the late President of the Chechen Republic A. Kadyrov invited him to lay down his arms in exchange for certain guarantees of personal safety. But, apparently, the federal center did not dare to grant amnesty to Ruslan Gelayev, whose militants are responsible for hundreds of lives of FS soldiers and officers. The deal did not take place, and Gelayev made a belated decision to begin the transition to Georgia. Like Napoleon in 1812, Hitler in 1941, and Gelayev in 2003, “General Moroz” let him down. His detachment of 37 people, which left in the direction of the Russian-Georgian border (Dagestan section) on November 30 from the village of Kiri, Sharoysky district of the Chechen Republic, lacked one or two weeks before the Batsy-Butsa pass was closed for the winter. The detachment reached him on December 8, led by a guide from the Dagestan village of Gakko. There was no more than 300 m left to the top of the three-thousand-meter pass when the guide, having indicated only the direction of further movement and collected a fee of $ 1,000, left the group.

The militants were unable to overcome these last 300 m - deep snow and severe frost left them no chance of success. Gelayev himself, having donated Ekko winter boots to one of his subordinates and went out into the mountains in summer canvas boots “jungle boots,” by this time his feet were seriously frostbitten. And the rest of the detachment’s fighters, who were more responsible about their equipment (winter mountain boots “Ekko” and “Matahorn”, black winter syndepon trousers and jackets, down sleeping bags, etc.), also gained a fair amount during a week of wandering through the mountains in thirty-degree frost. undermined their strength. Having rolled down without a guide from a 3,700-meter pass back into the gorge, the detachment organized a day in a mountain forest a couple of kilometers from Gakko. The morale of the militants was shaken, and during the prayer, Khamzat addressed his subordinates with the words “Allah tests us with cold and hunger...” and urged them to take courage.

This episode was captured in Gelayev’s last lifetime video. On his orders, Abu-Rauf, a Chechen from Dagestan, goes in search of a guide. But he was only able to bring the brother of the guide, who led the detachment to an abandoned border outpost. Abu-Rauf received a new task - to obtain food, but did not show up at the camp by the deadline specified by Gelayev. Three days later, guided by the map, Gelayev turns south.

On December 13, Khamzat’s detachment goes to the village of Metrada and “hires a taxi,” then paying the owners of two Nivas and a Volga in dollars for several shuttle flights. Having reached the village of Mikali, the militants bought food (a box of condensed milk, chocolate candies, instant noodles, and several packages of yogurt), paying the seller with the same dollars - “a hundred, no change.”

There were many patriots among the residents of Dagestan, and now, to counter the gang, an alarm group from the 5th border post, led by its chief, leaves the village of Mokkok. The vaunted “Gelaev special forces” (this is how they are sung by the singer of the “Chechen resistance movement” Timur Mutsuraev) lose their nerve, and in the vicinity of the village of Shauri they open fire after a car with border guards passing by.

The border guards returned fire, but were killed during a short battle with an outnumbered enemy. Two servicemen, the head of the outpost and a contract driver, were captured by the wounded militants. Having interrogated the wounded and not receiving an answer as to who handed them over, Gelayev shot the head of the outpost with a machine gun, and a little later the Algerian Abu Yassin (German citizen, German wife, in Gelayev’s detachment since 2000) killed the driver with a knife.

The battle with the border guards was the beginning of the end for Khamzat and his militants. With stupidity that defies logic, the militants did not use the serviceable GAZ-66 of the border guards, using which they could end up in Georgia in less than an hour. Moreover, having seized the border guards’ radio station, they listened to the airwaves and knew that nothing was known about the death of the border patrol - the air was filled with ordinary radio traffic (the border guards themselves did not have time to use the radio station). Gelayev acts like in a bad movie, loading the bodies of the dead into the back of a car and pushing it off a ten-meter cliff into a mountain river. By doing this, he stages an accident, without thinking that the sounds of the battle could and were heard by the residents of Shauri. Then the militants enter a semi-abandoned mountain village and take several frail old people hostage. By the morning, the border guards had established their whereabouts, but for a number of subjective reasons they were unable to block the gang, giving the militants the opportunity to disappear from the sight of federal forces for two days.

On December 17, scouts from the Group of Troops of the Mountainous Part of the Chechen Republic (GV GCH CR) go out on the “warpath”. They were the first to discover militants in the Kusa Pass area during an air patrol from a helicopter. On December 18, the escape routes of Gelayev’s detachment were blocked by reconnaissance and air assault companies of the Main Guard of the Chechen Republic on the slopes of the Kusa ridge. The detachment was damaged by mortar and helicopter fire - two militants were wounded. On December 19-20, taking advantage of weather unfavorable for helicopters (snowstorm), the militants climb the ridge. Local residents claimed that it was impossible to climb it, which did a disservice to the command of the operation. At 2.00 on December 20, Su-24 front-line bombers launched a bomb attack on the areas where Gelayev’s detachment was supposed to be located. The bombers entered the target area and bombed using an on-board computer, the accuracy was amazing. Under an avalanche caused by the bombing, eight militants found their final refuge, including two Arabs: the jamaat amir (group commander) Abu Yassin with a topo map and GPS device, and the Algerian Abu Mushab.

After spending two days in snow holes at an altitude of 3500 m (at night the frost reached 30°), the militants descended into the gorge on the morning of December 21, neglecting basic camouflage, but in vain... From this day on, all the helicopters of the Defense Ministry and the Air Force located in the conflict zone take to the skies . Stormtroopers bomb glaciers, causing avalanches and clearing the way for special forces. Helicopters and 82-mm mortars are operating in the area where the militants are supposed to be located. The use of attack aircraft is risky due to the difficulty of piloting and carrying out targeted bombing, since the populated areas of Tazeli and Metrada are located nearby. Hiding from helicopter attacks, the militant Isa falls into the abyss and dies. And his twin brother Musa will live another seven days.

The actions of aviation and special-purpose reconnaissance groups drove the militants into a narrow gorge with steep slopes, where they descended along the glacier. The ring of special forces and military reconnaissance units blocking Gelayev's detachment is shrinking. Gelayev's deputy, Kishi Khadzhiev, was wounded in the leg by fire from the Mi-8MT helicopter's machine gun. Disagreements have intensified among the militants, which first appeared after the clash with border guards on December 14.

On the night of December 24-25, ten of the most combat-ready militants, having taken the remains of food, again climbed the Kusa ridge and headed for Georgia - for help. The rest had injuries, serious frostbite on their legs, arms and face, and severe exhaustion. In the morning, when patrolling the area with helicopters with special forces on board, a chain of traces gives away the departed. In the direction of their withdrawal, at the direction of the operation commander, an ambush from the border troops is organized. The militants will get there on December 28, and before that the eleventh member of the group, Magomed Umashev, will accost them. Three will die resisting; four militants, including a wounded man and frostbite, will choose to surrender to the border guards, demanding a lawyer and being treated as prisoners of war. The fate of four more is unknown.

Gelayev, who could hardly move on frostbitten legs, and his right hand, Kishi, who had a through bullet wound to the soft tissues of the upper third of his right thigh, with a group of 16 people, on the night of December 24-25, decided to escape from the ring of fire and move to the neighboring gorge. Two militants from this group, preferring the warmth of prison dungeons to death from cold and hunger, leave their commanders. One, Ali Magomedov, reached it, and the second, the Arab Abu-Haq, fell from the slope and crashed. On the slopes of the same ridge these days, four servicemen of the Ministry of Defense special forces also crashed. Magomed Umashev was unable to descend into the gorge and climbed up the glacier. On December 28, he caught up with a group of ten people, but the next day he was detained by border guards in ambush.

Initially, the militants led by Gelayev descended into the gorge above 1.5 km from the confluence of the nameless stream into the Andiyskoe Koisu River. The path down the gorge to the river was blocked by two waterfalls. The advanced group of militants bypassed them along the right slope, descending to the discovered cave using machine gun belts, and blocked the “federals” entrance to the gorge. Gelayev himself and his personal bodyguard Maomad remained above the waterfall, hiding in one of the crevices. Gelayev was already having difficulty moving. Moving along the bottom of the gorge, which was completely filled by a stream, the militants in some places walked waist-deep in icy water. In the same way, to destroy the militants discovered in the cave, an assault group of Ministry of Defense reconnaissance officers walked through the water.

On December 27, federal intelligence officers established the exact location of a group of militants from Gelayev’s detachment - a cave 1.5 km south of the Tazeli glacier. Conducting covert surveillance during the day, in a cave at the bottom of the canyon, they established the presence of about ten militants, the general direction of whose actions was carried out by a long-bearded militant aged 45-50 years. It was Kishi, the amir of the jamaat and Gelayev’s first deputy.

On December 28, during a fierce battle, most of the group was destroyed. The scouts “harassed” the militants with anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades and hand fragmentation grenades. During the battle, the commander of the assault group broadcast that there was a woman among the militants, because he heard a woman’s squeal and saw a cosmetic set thrown out of the cave by a blast wave. But it was the wounded Mujahideen who screamed, and they used cosmetic bags to care for their beards and sidelocks. However, none of them wanted to lay down their arms. Helicopters of the border troops and the Ministry of Defense circled over the battlefield, replacing each other, but they could not help the assault group with fire. In this battle, one of the scouts of the assault group heroically died, the seriously wounded scout was evacuated by a Mi-8MT helicopter with a VPShG on board. The crew of squadron commander Sergei P., evacuating the wounded, will land their helicopter on a tiny spot, where even a Ka-27 helicopter would have difficulty landing in two days.

From conversations between the helicopter commander and the commander of the air search and assault group:
- Look, look - there are two people (600-700 m up the gorge from the cave in which the militants were desperately defending themselves). Are these yours? (question to the commander of the VPSHG)
- No, spirits! Come to the combat one, I’ll work with the course machine gun.
- Come on... Wait, I’ll work on them with NURS now.
The targets disappeared in the smoke of NURS explosions and a cloud of snow dust. Small avalanches occurred in several places in the gorge. Upon re-entry, no targets were observed.

When examining Gelayev’s body at the end of February, multiple shrapnel wounds and an avulsion of his hand were recorded. Perhaps the brush was chewed off by foxes, jackals or mustelids, predators who discovered a corpse that had lain under the snow for two months.

The scouts were unable to inspect the site of the helicopter strike on the two militants on December 30 and 31, 2003, since the path up the gorge was blocked by a waterfall and congestion on the stream caused by avalanches. Unfortunately, the entire meager supply of mountain rope and equipment, which the scouts, begging the command, begged for at the end of the operation, was used only to get to the cave not by fording the stream, but along the slope. The Ka-27 helicopter of the search and rescue service of the Black Sea Fleet, which was placed at the disposal of the operation commander on December 27 by order of the Chief of the General Staff, was also unable to land there. By the way, for the first time in the Russian history of special forces, on December 30, 2003, a combat landing of a reconnaissance group was carried out using a KA-27 helicopter. The static ceiling of the “Kashka” is almost three times higher than that of the Milevsky “Eight”, and in the highlands it is not replaceable. But God forbid it gets under enemy fire!

On December 29, the scouts finished off the remaining militants in the cave, but one of them, Maomad, who buried Gelayev and brought all his personal belongings into the cave, managed to escape. But not for long, he was killed on January 2 by a reconnaissance group of the Moscow Region special forces. Gelayev’s cousin, Alikhan Utsiev, who had been following him inseparably throughout the last months, was also killed in the cave.

The completion of the operation to destroy Gelayev’s entire bandit group was prevented by the celebrations organized in early January for a group of military personnel participating in the operation. The operation was hastily scrapped, although an analysis of the available operational data allowed us to conclude that the remainder of the militants (up to seven people) were still in the Tsumadinsky region of Dagestan. In the village of Nizhnie Khvarsheni, on the eve of the New Year, three militants stocked up on food and medicine. The identified identities of the militants from Gelayev’s inner circle killed in the cave indicated that Khamzat himself was somewhere nearby, and unlikely to be alive, because his personal belongings were found in the cave, which he did not part with.

The fact of the destruction of Ruslan Gelayev will be made public on the eve of the Russian presidential elections. The version of his death with a chocolate bar in his mouth, the self-cutting off of his hand, the simultaneous death of all participants in the battle, the field commander’s two-month wandering around Dagestan and his appearance in sweatpants in the last days of December 2003, several tens of kilometers south of the area of his death, from which to the Georgian border was no more than 8 km - all this nonsense will cause homeric laughter even among non-professionals. During this time, Gelayev’s beard did not even grow, it remained the same length as it was seen a few days earlier by five militants detained from December 25 to 29 (Ali Magomadov, Magomed Umashev, Lechi Magomadov, Khasan Khadzhiev, Magomed Umarov).

Opinion of the author, a participant in the operation: If politicians had not interfered with us, professional military men, and the same favorable conditions had been created for the destruction of every group of militants that appeared in Chechnya as in December 2003 in Dagestan, then the Chechen campaign would only remind of itself the graves of Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters who fought equally bravely in the dirty war of the late 20th – early 21st centuries.

Yesterday in Makhachkala, captured militants identified the corpse of perhaps the most authoritative of the Chechen field commanders, Ruslan (Khamzat) Gelayev. The famous militant was eliminated not by GRU or FSB special forces, but by two young border guards who accidentally met him near his native village. The FSB is convinced that the death of Ruslan Gelayev, who formed detachments for the Chechen war in Georgia, will have a significant impact on the situation in the republic. The leadership of Chechnya does not think so. With details - SERGEY Y-DYUPIN.

The corpse was guarded by the entire department

“You’re exactly three minutes late,” the policeman on duty interrupted a Kommersant correspondent who called the police department in the village of Bezhta. “They just sent him off, thank God.” Look, you can even see the “pinwheel” through the window.
- Who did they send? Where?
“Gelaeva, in Makhachkala,” the policeman explained. “And thank Allah because now I’ll finally go to bed.” After all, almost all the personnel guarded him all day long.
The policeman, as it turned out, was not talking about the living, but about the dead Ruslan Gelayev. The field commander’s corpse was brought to Bezhta last Sunday around noon. He was supposed to be sent to Makhachkala that same day, but the ambulance helicopter was unable to take off due to fog in the mountains, and the evacuation had to be postponed to Monday. For a long time, local police officers could not decide where to leave the body of Ruslan Gelayev for the night; they received information that militants would try to recapture him.
In Bezhta they well remember the last December meeting with Gelayev’s detachment, during which an entire squad of border guards was shot, so the corpse was guarded like a living militant.
The most reliable and fortified place in the village was, naturally, the “monkey house” of the local police department, but the officers on duty flatly refused to spend the night in the company of a dead militant. In addition, the police building is heated, which could have adversely affected the body. Therefore, a concrete garage-bunker was allocated for the morgue, in which four police UAZ vehicles are usually parked. The corpse was placed directly on the concrete floor between the cars. Then they locked all the locks and sealed the metal doors, which had never been closed since the garage was built. A dozen of the most experienced policemen with machine guns were placed around the perimeter of the yard - they did not sleep a wink until the body of the “Black Angel” (Gelaev’s call sign on the radio) was taken by the “Black Tulip” (a military ambulance helicopter).
“Formally, Gelayev’s corpse remains unidentified,” the Dagestan prosecutor’s office told Kommersant. “We must still conduct a fingerprint examination, and, if necessary, a genetic-biological examination. Only when we have expert opinions will we stop criminal cases against Gelayev in connection with "His death and we will remove his data from the federal and international search databases. In the meantime, Gelayev is legally alive, but in fact dead. The fact is that the corpse of the field commander was identified by eight militants who spent the last few years side by side with Gelayev."

The commander abandoned his

Ruslan Gelayev was identified by militants arrested on charges of shooting border guards of the Khunzakh border detachment. Let us recall that in December last year, a brigade of about 60 armed militants under the general leadership of Ruslan Gelayev penetrated from Chechnya into the territory of the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan. For several days, the militants rested and stocked up on provisions in the village of Shauri, and then their reconnaissance patrol, which included commander Gelayev, accidentally reached the border outpost. The militants could have calmly retreated and disappeared - it was not difficult to do this at night, in a snowstorm, but the Black Angel ordered a fight. Commander Gelayev, according to the arrestees, set an example for them, went out onto the road with Degtyarev’s machine gun at the ready and riddled the border GAZ-66 - the soldiers sitting in the back died without even having time to understand what was happening. The tenth victim of this massacre was a young Avar militant. Gelayev gave him a bayonet and ordered to cut off the head of his fellow countryman, the wounded commander of the border post, Captain Ragim Khazikov. The militant refused and immediately received a bullet from the Black Angel.
After the execution of the border guards, a large-scale military operation involving artillery, aviation and armored vehicles began against Gelayev and his people. Divided into detachments, the militants ran through the Dagestan mountains for almost a month, from time to time capturing and liberating small mountain villages. As a result, most of the Gelayevites were killed, some of them managed to escape through the passes to Georgia and Chechnya. Eight bandits from Gelayev’s inner circle—the very ones who shot the border guards—were captured.
During the pursuit of militant detachments, representatives of the federal command several times reported the liquidation of Gelayev himself, but in the end he could not be found either among the living or among the dead. As it turned out later, the Black Angel eluded the special forces, and at the same time his subordinates, immediately after the execution of the border guards, and all the chases and shootouts were nothing more than a diversionary maneuver by the militants in order to get their commander out of the attack. While the rest were freezing in mountain caves, dying under avalanches and federal air strikes, actually causing fire on themselves, the Black Angel with a faithful bodyguard named Bull was holed up in a shepherd's shed near the village of Shauri.
Dagestani operatives still hope to meet with Byk and the shepherd, the owner of the shed, who are now on the run, so they asked not to give their last names. On Saturday, February 28, it is believed that Byk and a shepherd in a UAZ took Ruslan Gelayev to the lower reaches of the Chaekha Gorge, which runs from the village of Bezhta to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia.
There the Black Angel was left alone. Having said goodbye to his accomplices, he moved up the gorge. Having lost his entire army during an unsuccessful Dagestan raid, the commander decided to leave through the passes to the main base in the Pankisi Gorge, where his wives, children and numerous other relatives still live. From Pankisi, we recall, the field commander organized most of his forays, gathering for them detachments of volunteers from almost all over the CIS. However, this time the Black Angel could not return to the gorge that had already become his home.

The last meters on all fours

As they say in the police department of the village of Bezhta, at the same time, two 22-year-old local residents, privates Abdulkhalik Kurbanov and Mukhtar Suleymanov, were walking down Chayekha. After serving emergency duty at a small border outpost that didn’t even have a name, the guys remained to guard the border under a contract. Since the outpost is located only ten kilometers from their home village, the contract soldiers could afford to run home from time to time - get some food, meet girlfriends, and sometimes spend the night on the weekend. This was the case last Saturday - Abdulkhalik Kurbanov, who got married just a couple of months ago, decided to visit his wife, and Mukhtar Suleymanov, who was still unmarried, went to see off his friend.
Perhaps even an experienced border guard would not recognize Khamzat (the Muslim name of Ruslan Gelayev) in the man walking towards him. A scraggly beard, black Adidas sweatpants with elongated knees, a frayed Alaskan jacket, knee-length rubber boots and a knitted cap made him look more like a homeless person than a formidable field commander. How events developed further will now never be possible to establish. Most likely, one of the border guards called out or tried to check the documents of the oncoming person - in response, machine gun fire rang out. The fire was almost point-blank - apparently, Gelayev hid a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault rifle under his jacket until the last moment, so both border guards immediately fell, bleeding profusely. Private Suleymanov was killed on the spot by a bullet that hit him in the head. Abdulkhalik Kurbanov, wounded in the chest, managed to shoot back. His bullets shattered Gelayev’s left elbow and practically tore off his arm. But the wounded militant was not stopped. As Dagestani policemen say, the death of Private Kurbanov also occurred from a bullet wound to the head - Gelayev finished him off with two shots at point-blank range. And he shot while holding a machine gun in one hand.
However, the Black Angel himself did not have long to live. The footprints in the snow eloquently testified to how the field commander spent the last minutes of his life. Immediately after the execution of the border guards, Gelayev rushed up the gorge, but ran only about fifty meters - his strength melted away with every step, as blood gushed from the commander’s hand. Gelayev fought for his life to the last. Judging by the pool of blood, he stopped, cut off his left hand and threw it into the snow along with the knife. Then he took a rubber tourniquet from the field first aid kit, applied it to the bleeding stump, took a few more steps, fell, and stood up again. The Black Angel walked another half a hundred meters and stopped again. He pulled out a can of instant Nescafe from his pocket and chewed the powder, apparently hoping that it would give him strength. Then he took out and bit into a bar of Alenka chocolate. The field commander crawled on all fours the last meters towards the Georgian border. He died in this position with a chocolate clenched in his fist. His body was found by police officers who went to search for the border guards who had not reached their native village. In addition to chocolate and coffee, in the late commander’s belongings they found a piece of dried lamb fat, $200, a package of Rollton noodles, a notebook with a long list of mobile phone numbers and a map of the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan, which marked the path of his group in December last year.
The FSB said yesterday that the death of commander Gelayev will have a very significant impact on the situation in the republic. “He not only formed militant detachments in Georgia, sending them to Chechnya, but also personally led the largest operations against federal forces,” noted security officers working in Chechnya. “In particular, together with Khattab, he led a detachment that attacked a company of paratroopers near Ulus- Kert (today marks four years since those events—Kommersant), then 84 paratroopers died.” In turn, Chechen President Akhmat Kadyrov is confident that with Gelayev’s death there will be no fewer terrorist attacks and murders in the republic. “Previously,” Mr. Kadyrov noted, “Khamzat really was a key figure among the militants. However, after the defeat in Komsomolskoye and other unsuccessful raids, Maskhadov demoted him to the rank and file. Thus, from Gelayev only one name remained, promoted by the media.”
SERGEY Ъ-DYUPIN