Aleksandr Antonovich Lyakhovskiy Working Paper pp

received the order to carry out the diversion I again reconnoitered the target visually, but upon returning to the villa 

noticed that everyone except those in my group had gone off somewhere, including the leaders of the opposition. 

 

 

I gathered the group, announced the time the diversion would take place and assigned the mission to also cut 

the cable at 1930. 

 

 

At about 1845 we drive in three vehicles to carry out the command’s mission. Only one officer was left at the 

villa whom I ordered, in case the mission failed, to hide everything and go to our Embassy, specifically to the Border 

Guards post. Although there were not enough interpreters in the detachment I nevertheless begged for an interpreter 

to be assigned to my group. 

 

 

 

The further development of events showed that had there not been an interpreter in my group the operation 

would not have gone without bloodshed. 

 

 

Having arrived at the target of sabotage the cover subgroup and I situated ourselves in an UAZ-469 around 

the traffic control post. The second cover subgroup stopped around the hotel in a “Volga” [automobile] and Boris 

Pleshkunov’s subgroup with interpreter Khayatov in an UAZ-450 directly approached the conduit. At the moment the 

conduit hatch was opened the sentry of the communications center security post unexpectedly hailed the saboteurs. 

The interpreter ran to the sentry and explained that they were checking communications, offered him a cigarette, and 

distracted him with conversation. 

 

 

The operation to open the hatch, lay the charge in the conduit, and then open the hatch again to throw a 

grenade in with tear gas (in their haste they did not put the grenade in with the charge) was carried out, as they say, in 

a matter of seconds, although it seemed like quite a long time to all of us. The position of the cover [force] and the 

perpetrators and the distance between them allowed us to use visual means of communication. Therefore as soon as 

the UAZ-450 with the saboteurs left the site our cover groups also began to move simultaneously. 

 

 

We returned to the villa without adventure and began to await the explosion without worry. At the moment we 

returned two officers of our [KGB] residency and several Afghans were at the villa who were to greet their supporters, 

so we armed them. 

 

 

Among the Afghans was one who spoke Russian quite well. The rest of the Afghans did not know Russian or 

gave the appearance that they didn’t understand Russian. 

 

 

At 1930 a strong explosion thundered rumbled and soon a second one, not far from us, blowing up the army 

communications lines. 

 

 

I reported to the leadership via radio about completion of the mission. And then it began. The shooting in the 

area of Amin’s palace was especially intense…” 

 

 

The explosion was to have served as the start of the assault on Taj-Bek but the special forces had begun 

somewhat earlier. According to Sergey Golov: “We had hardly begun to move when our vehicle stopped. The driver-

mechanic was frightened, jumped out of the BMP and fled, but I hadn’t yet managed to decide on his replacement 

when he returned - it turned out to be even more frightening outside the vehicle. We started to climb upwards. When 

we stopped and began to get out the two Tajik interpreters sitting on the edge were killed right away. It turned out that 

behind the BMP was an Afghan guard post whose soldiers opened fire on us. We had to eliminate this guard post and 

turn around right away because the main shooting was from above, from the direction of the Palace. Gena Zudin was 

rather heavy when he jumped out of the BMP; his legs fell under the track and were crushed. Who gave him [medical] 

aid I don’t know because the main mission then was rouse the subunit into the attack and advance. The fire was very 

intense. When we managed to make it to the Palace walls to a “dead” space we began to feel a bit better”. 

 

 

The break-in took place under a hurricane of fire. The combat vehicle of Viktor Karpukhin made it to the 

Palace first although it was third in the column. Karpukhin recalled: “I was the commander of one of the subgroups. 

When the BMP stopped I scared the driver-mechanic a bit. I told him not to spare the ammunition just shoot as fast as 

you can. And he tried; it was impossible to breath in the vehicle from the smoke. All the shells and rounds for the 

machine gun coupled with the gun were expended very quickly. But we had left something else entirely in order to get 

 

54

---

to the target. I forced the driver-mechanic to drive closer to the Palace because it was foolish to even be exposed to 

such heavy fire. And the driver-mechanic moved the BMP almost to the main gate itself. Thanks to this only two more 

in my crew were slightly wounded. All the remaining subgroups suffered much worse. I jumped out first and Sasha 

Plyusnin ended up next to me. We began to shoot at everyone who was exposed and was shooting from the windows, 

allowing all the rest of the soldiers of our subgroup to get out. They managed to quickly make it under the walls, break 

into the building, and continue the mission further…” 

 

 

The special forces quickly climbed to the area in front of Taj-Bek. They make it under the heavy fire of large-

caliber machine guns. It turned out that they were firing from every quarter. 

 

 According 

to 

Kolomiyets: “We had barely gotten out of the BMP when a shaped-charge grenade hit it. I then 

encountered a machinegunner who was sitting inside; his jaw was down and there was a terrible wound in his 

stomach. I don’t know whether he remained alive. A fragment had pierced my bulletproof vest but I ran under a 

deflector [kozyrek], and like everyone else not even noticing whether I was wounded or not. There was great 

excitement and the desire to go even further”. 

 

 

The first minutes of battle were the most serious. The KGB special forces went to assault Taj-Bek but the 

main forces of Vladimir Sharipov’s company and the platoon of Rustam Tursunkulov covered their operations. The 

other subunits of the “Muslim” battalion provided an external covering ring. 

 

 According 

to 

Grishin: 

“We began to climb the winding road. It was dark. When we approached the Palace I 

saw the guys who had gotten out earlier – Sasha Repin and Zudin. We passed them. Luckily it turned out that the 

column had kept somewhat to the right; we had gone around them and drove up to the entrance itself. Bullets hit the 

“armor” and there was a feeling of unreality: everything around was lit up, searchlights were blinking, and the guys 

were moving quite openly…The guards evidently also valued their lives and were also afraid to expose themselves, 

although they threw grenades. There were explosions”. 

 

 

The bulletproof vest of one of the “Grom” subgroup commanders, Oleg Balashov, was hit by a fragment but 

in the excitement he did not feel pain and threw himself at the Palace together with everyone else; however he did not 

have enough strength for long and he was sent to the medical battalion. Eh. Kozlov was sitting on the side of the 

combat vehicle, still in the BMP; he barely managed to put his leg outside when it was shot but, paying no attention to 

it, he jumped out of the BMP, clearing the way for his comrades-in-arms…” 

 

 

According to Vladimir Fedoseyev: “I was sitting last in the BMP; Bayev was opposite me with a machine 

gun. We were ready to open the hatches at any moment to jump out in time if the vehicle was put out of action. We had 

just begun to move, but had not gone probably ten meters when they opened fire from the direction of the Palace. They 

knocked out our BMP. The passage was so narrow that two automobiles could separate with difficulty but generally 

combat vehicles couldn’t at all. The vehicle began to spin and the BMP commander shouted that an armor fragment 

had hit him in the thigh. When the driver tried to get out of the vehicle he was killed immediately. There was a pause 

and a dead silence. I turned to Balashov and said: “Oleg! This is an iron coffin. We need to jump out”.  But he said to 

me: “Where did they say? There’s been no order”. I said “What order could there be? Just one more round and we’re 

dead men; or we can do something else. Open the hatches”. We jumped out of the vehicle. Bayev took a position right 

away with the machine gun and went behind the BMP and opened fire from a rifle. Balashov lay right next to me. 

Afterwards a second grenade hit our vehicle and it began to smoke. An interpreter was also with us. He had been 

killed in the first second when he tried to climb out of the vehicle through the upper hatch. 

 

 

 

We fired until the magazines were out of rounds. At this time some sort of explosion occurred next to us. I felt 

a sharp pain in my legs. My right leg was wrapped around my left. After some time I felt blood trickling down my legs. 

A shell landed on the vehicle right next to us and exploded. The terrible impact and shock wave threw me down from 

this breastwork. Aleksey Bayev was standing on the breastwork and firing a machine gun. Suddenly there was some 

sort of snap and he fell. I started to call him but he did not answer. I tried to drag him to a sentry box; he was big, 

about 120 kg, and I couldn’t do it. It’s good that Shvachko helped. We dragged him to the sentry box and I gave him 

an injection, and bandaged his thigh. I did not know then that he also had a wound in his neck. We left Bayev in the 

sentry box and again went to assault the Palace. 

 

 

55

---