Aleksandr Antonovich Lyakhovskiy Working Paper pp

Probably…Right!  So what was I to do without a weapon? I had a pistol, I remembered, and I mentally swore: This toy 

pistol wasn’t good for anything with such an opinion! Perhaps only to shoot myself if the operation was a failure! 

 

 

But Volodya Bykovskiy managed to jump into the entrance and ran around there, not knowing where to go.  

Our guys began to gather there. Boyarinov ended up next to me. He was always in that leather flight jacket with a 

helmet on his head and a Stechkin automatic pistol in his hand. 

 

 

“Upstairs, men! We need to go upstairs! And defend the corridors here on the first floor!”, he shouted. 

 

 

…I looked around. Next to me lay a soldier from the “Muslim” battalion among unexploded grenades and 

some rocks. From appearances he was dead. The butt of an automatic weapon protruded from under his hand. I 

touched the butt with my right hand and pulled the weapon out from under the immobile body. I moved the fingers of 

my left hand. They moved.  And suddenly it was like there was no special pain. Only the elbow ached: a strong impact 

was evident…But the entire hand was sticky with blood. I wiped my hand on my trousers and looked. I needed to go! 

 

 

I untangled the strap on the automatic weapon to make it longer, threw it behind my neck, and rushed 

forward. I almost ran on all fours, squatting and dodging, like they taught us in KUOS, firing bursts. And right here I 

was hit in my left arm, my bad one, as if by a giant hot needle! 

 

 

I don’t remember how I ended up under the arch of the Palace entrance. I was next to a wall. My arm was 

almost completely separated. I simply didn’t feel it! My sleeve was swollen with blood. Here’s the devil for you, a 

second wound, and both in the same arm! I probed it with my fingers. They moved just a bit! But I almost didn’t feel 

my arm! 

 

 

I stood up, leaning on the wall with my arm. Our guys ran past in the semidarkness. 

 

 

Where was I to go now? What was I to do? Ah, yes! According to the order our group was to operate on the 

first floor. We needed to neutralize enemy resistance and clear it from all the rooms, and take the safe with its 

documents under guard! 

 

 

Having stood up the stock of the automatic weapon in front of me and holding it by the grip with my right 

hand - the left had finally fallen off - I moved along the corridor. 

 

 

Ahead one of our soldiers was firing an automatic weapon into the door of an office. Then he came running 

up, put a grenade under the door, and jumped behind a corner. I also hugged the wall. It exploded with a deafening 

rumble and suddenly the lights went out on the entire floor. Pitch-black darkness. After a bit the lights blinked and 

again went out…The power had been cut. Thank God! 

 

 

I ran several steps more along the corridor, which seemed to me to be endlessly long, and yanked the handle 

of some door toward me. The door opened and inside it was semidarkness but I saw that there were tables and a couch 

there…I pulled a grenade out of my pocket, tore off the pin with my teeth, and launched it deep into the room with the 

counterrecoil. Knocking about, the grenade rolled on the parquet floor but I slammed the door and jumped to the 

doorpost. It burst inside, and the door creaked and was thrown open, throwing puffs of smoke and dust from the 

office… 

 

 

Here an automatic weapon round hit me. They were shooting from the left apparently, from an partly-open 

door. The bullet pierced my morally and physically obsolete bulletproof vest and, having played havoc with its 

metallic plates, hit me in the left side, right under the lowest rib. The force was such that it hit like a crowbar. It 

knocked me off my legs and I fell on the floor on my right side and everything dimmed in my head for a second, but I 

didn’t lose consciousness. Instinctively, having raised my weapon in the direction of the presumed enemy, I let loose a 

long random burst in the semidarkness and listened to some wild howl. Like someone had stepped on a cat… 

 

 

I felt sick. On my wounded side, it was as if someone had played around with a hot poker, such was the pain. 

I tried to raise myself. It worked. 

 

 

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The hell with it! What a shame! Just a little more - and victory, and I was out of action. There was shooting 

going on around me, the thunder of a grenade explosion, and plaster beginning to fall on my helmet from the ceiling. 

 

 

Thinking fuzzily about what I was doing, I poked into some dark secluded corner. Directly ahead of me was a 

metal ladder. Two soldiers from the “Muslim” battalion appeared next to me. Their appearance was somewhat 

disoriented but sufficiently combative. I mechanically noted under my breath that the soldiers seemingly did not have 

orders to enter the Palace. They were to finish it off from the outside…These were young guys who could have gotten 

ahold of themselves and entered the Palace and now probably should be good warriors…If they remained alive… 

 

 

They looked upon me with fright: 

 

 

- Comrade officer, are you wounded? – one asked. 

 

 

- Everything’s normal! Forward, men! – I said to them, trying to seem optimistic, cheerful, and confident. 

 

 

At this moment, a fireball exploded literally five steps to the right of me. Evidently this was a RGD-5 grenade 

which had been hurled down the ladder opening. I distinctly remember that for a hundredth or a thousandth of a 

second, as the grenade fragments flew toward me I convulsively and strongly folded into a ball, squeezing for ages. 

The fragments lashed my face, arms, and legs badly…The shock wave knocked me from my legs…” 

 

 

The battle in the building itself right away took on a fierce and uncompromising nature. The special forces 

acted desperately and decisively. If they didn’t come out of the rooms with hands raised then the doors were broken 

down and grenades thrown in.  Boyarinov,  Golov,  Karpukhin, and  Kuvylin accomplished the most important 

mission, putting the Palace communications center out of commission. As Karpukhin recalls: “I didn’t hurry up the 

ladder, I crept up it like all the rest because it was impossible for us to run there; I’d have been killed three times if I’d 

run there. Each step there had to be fought for, just like in the Reichstag. It’s probably comparable. We moved from 

one place of cover to another, shooting all around and then to the last one. What did I do personally? Well, I 

remember Boyarinov who became a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. He was wounded and slightly shell-

shocked and his helmet lay to the side. He tried to say something but nothing was audible.  The only thing I remember 

is how Berlev shouted to me: “Hide him, he’s a colonel, a war veteran.” I was thinking that he needed to be hidden 

somewhere; nevertheless we were all somewhat younger but where they were shooting there it’s in general hard to 

hide.” Golov was literally “flogged [poseklo]” by grenade fragments; then they counted nine intact [grenades]. 

Berlev’s magazine was hit by the bullet of an automatic weapon; he was lucky that Kuvylin was next to him and 

managed to give him his magazine. 

 

 Berlev 

remembers: 

“I stayed on the first floor but Karpukhin and Plyusnin ran up to the second floor. And 

suddenly a guard jumped out around a turn from somewhere. He began to shoot at me practically point-blank, from 

about 10 meters, and let loose a burst of about 10-12 rounds. It penetrated the hand guard and hit the magazine, and 

the shells flew from it. The guard stopped, frightened, and looked at me because he was shooting and I wasn’t falling. 

He had such glazed eyes; they were right in front of me, such dark hazel, even brown eyes. He himself was dark-

complexioned. And I was struck dumb for a second. Then I thought that I had rounds in my chamber. And in a fraction 

of a second I lifted my weapon and fired. He fell. 

 

 

I sat down and started to gather the rounds. At this time Sergey Kuvylin ran up to me and asked what was the 

matter; he gave me his own double magazine. I fastened them into the weapon and started to continue to carry out the 

mission. 

 

 

When we had broken into the Palace and losses occurred a sort of frenzy came to me – to “mow down” 

everyone. Yes, and there was an order – don’t leave living witnesses”. 

 

 

Soviet Ambassador Tabeyev was not informed of the plan of the operation and therefore when he heard an 

explosion and the lights went out in the Embassy he was confused. He recalls: “It was very awkward for me in front of 

my wife. She then said to me that no one is taking you into consideration and they are even keeping you in the dark”. 

The Ambassador called  KGB representative Kirpichenko and demanded an explanation about what was going on in 

the city. The latter told to him that there was no opportunity to talk right then and he would give a detailed report in the 

morning. 

 

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