Three black days in October: 10 years on

Author: VK

Every year on the day of memory of victims of the Dubrovka terrorist attack when 130 hostages were killed the same question is sounded - whether it was possible to avoid the loss of life.

On October 24, 2002 at five o'clock phone calls were heard in the apartments of relatives of those who were taken hostage - the terrorists forced the hostages to call home and ask their relatives to go out with placards: "Stop the war in Chechnya". "It was the first claim of terrorists. We gathered near the theater on Melnikov Street, in a building of a vocational school, and wrote the slogans with lipstick”, Tatiana Karpova, the mother of a hostage killed at the Dubrovka. “Then we came to the square and tried as much as possible to be in front of the crowd in front of the television cameras so that Chechen terrorists see that we fulfilled their terms and would do anything to make our loved ones free".

Then hostages were forced to call their relatives and ask one more time for gathering meetings. "We have gathered”, Tatiana Karpova said. “In the evening people could see two such meetings. They were spontaneously assembled, no one planned this in advance. I cannot forget for ten years old already the improvised stage made by Sasha Tsekalo (Alexander Tsekalo - the producer of the musical "Nord-Ost". - Ed.) where he assembled the actors who were not engaged in the play that day. Among them there were young artists, children who punched smeared tears on the cheeks and shouted, referring to the terrorists, "Please, let those who are in the hall go out, they are our friends!" They probably thought that the terrorists heard them, and this might make their icy hearts tremble. Among the professional negotiators good-hearted people came to our aid - Irina Hakamada, Anna Politkovskaya, Joseph Kobzon and many others who were willing to exchange themselves for the hostages to save as many people as possible. They tried to do something. A few of them managed to do this. Joseph Kobzon managed to persuade the terrorists, and they brought four people out. It was already our small common victory.

After these meetings, we stayed up all night waiting for a miracle. Everyone thought: there are so many people in the room, we have to come up with something and to do this. At dawn, about five o'clock in the morning, when the sound of automatic fire broke out, we realized that the worst thing happened - the assault began. I do not understand how they can say "the assault was brilliant." The terrorists were killed brilliantly. We were in a vocational school when the joyful group from our government came. I'll never forget their words: "We won! Now we have a holiday! There are no casualties. "That phrase - "no casualties" – has hurt our hearts for 10 years. This was the first lie which they openly told us.

Then the lists appeared on the walls. People saw familiar names and went to the hospital. But, to our dismay, soon they returned - in hospitals there were not any hostages. A small panic started. Then we were terrified when suddenly we saw new listings - 8 people died. After 10 minutes – 15 people died, hen 35, then 70, and in the end - 130 people died".

Joseph Kobzon, who managed to get out of the building captured Lyubov Kornilova and three children (two her daughters and one child, whom she called hers), says: "The first thing that Luba did having come out of the room - she rushed to Abubakar (head of the terrorists – Ed.) before rushing to her children and said: "You must immediately release the woman which was next to me, she's pregnant." I was afraid that Abubakar would take back the children he gave me and Lyuba, so I took her hand and said "Madam!" She said "Wait!" I said, "Madam, let's go, we'll release this woman, let's go." And we came out of this hell. That's the nature of the Russian woman, who was not thinking of herself, not of the children, but of the woman who was near her".

Chairman of the Association of Veterans of counterterrorism group "Alpha" Sergei Goncharov said that the hostage-taking at the Dubrovka terrorist act was preceded by a similar seizure in Budennovsk hospital in 1995. "Then the unit "Alfa" was prepared for the assault and was ordered to storm Budennovsk. In the operation at the beginning of the assault three officers of "Alpha" were killed. And then the command "Belay!" came. The command was given by Viktor Chernomyrdin after direct negotiations with the bandit Basayev. For some reason, Boris Yeltsin did not want to give a command, but this problem is history, and we do not discuss it. Then all the channels, both Russian and international, have shown these thugs leaving with a victory, with their green flags, shooting off from the buses and clearly demonstrating of what they could do with Russia, if they wished.

Then there was "Nord-Ost". Three major claims were made. First - withdrawing troops from Chechnya, the second - giving freedom to Ichkeria, and third - releasing all their accomplices, bandits, as we call them, from Russian prisons. If someone believes that at this point it was necessary to organize a second Budennovsk, personally I view it quite the opposite. "

According to Yuri Torshin, who in 2002 was the head of one of the units of "A", "two special forces units -" Alpha "and" Vympel "- have done everything possible to make losses as low as possible. But, unfortunately, there were few doctors and ambulances. There were some problems at the entrance for ambulances, because the area was completely packed with vehicles. Ambulances approached very slowly and very difficult. Perhaps there was a mistake of the Ministry of the Interior which that time did not provide way for medical machines. This is one of the reasons that after the assault our employees put down their arms and began to bring out all the people who were in the hall, both living and dead.

The units were being prepared for almost two days; a similar movie theater was found – it was "Meridian" in New Cheryomushki. Previously, everything was constructed according to the standard, one architectural scheme. "Alpha" and "Vympel" were working out 5-6 versions of the assault. Training took place 24 hours a day, and the units rested for an hour or two hours per day; they slept on the floor or in the theater chairs of "Meridian". We did not know what the scheme we would use. When 5-6 hours remained before the storm, the units, accompanied by traffic police cars were sent directly to Dubrovka. Our headquarter developed a plan based on real-time data that had already been obtained by the time of negotiations, by the time of establishing the identity of the terrorists.

Why did everything happen very quickly? Probably, not only these two days of training played their role. The fact that the special forces, mostly officers (we do not have common soldiers, there is no non-commissioned officers) with military training prepare for years to carry out measures to free the hostages in different situations - whether it's a bus, a plane, a railway carriage or a building. And there is such an intuitive act that no remarks are required".

Head of Department "A" Alexander Mihaylov told about preparing for an operation to free the hostages: "Above all, we find out everything about the quantity of explosives, the arms, the number of people, their aggressiveness (blood had already been spilled). Then we realized that people were prepared better than it was possible to prepare for a month or two. The big challenge faced the boys who were going to die in order to save people. There were several suicide bombers and a lot of explosives, and we knew that an explosion could cause the collapse of the building, that is, 200-ton ceiling would fall on the people we were going to rescue and on the guys from Special Forces. Suicide bombers were in a staggered and if one exploded she might kill a great number of people. Shahid belt is about 100 balls. The flight speed of a ball is about 1000 km / h. It can kill one, second, third person, can break through a body armor. Plus there were 154-millimeter shells on the ceiling.

Of course, there were 3 days of negotiation. Of course, we also thought about this. And I want to express my displeasure: when we were working on the roof, looking for ways of penetration, we appeared then on the TV show. After that, the doors were booby-trapped. "

"When the officers appeared on the roof, the central television channels broadcasted this information and passed it to the militants - certainly not on purpose, but just it was shown on TV as breaking news”, vice president of the International Association of Veterans of counterterrorism "Alpha" Alexei Filatov adds. ”In defense of rescue service I want to say that it had to conduct this operation in top secret conditions. The officers did not know until recently that the gas would be used. We could not report it to the health and medical institutions. We could not put 500 ambulances next to Dubrovka, because, God forbid, something would have leaked out to the militants, the operation would be disrupted, and the casualties would have been much greater. "