Aleksandr Antonovich Lyakhovskiy Working Paper pp

 

 

…The “Shilka”’s shifted their fire to other targets. The BMPs left the area in front of the Palace and blocked 

the only road. Another company and two platoons of AGS-17 grenade launchers  fired on the tank battalion and then 

seized the tanks, simultaneously disarming the tank crews. A special group of the “Muslim” battalion seized the 

weapons of the anti-aircraft regiment and took its personnel prisoner. Lt. Col. O. Shvets oversaw the combat 

operations in this sector. 

 

 

In the Palace the officers and soldiers of Amin’s personal guard and his bodyguard (about 100-150 men) 

resisted stubbornly, not surrendering. Their undoing was because they were all mainly armed with MG-5 submachine 

guns and they did not penetrate our bulletproof vests. 

 

 

The “Shilka”’s again shifted fire, beginning to hit Taj-Bek and the area in front of it. A fire began on the 

second floor of the Palace and this exerted a strong influence on the defenders. As the special forces moved toward the 

second floor of Taj-Bek the shooting and explosions intensified. The soldiers of Amin’s security force, having taken 

the special forces for an Afghan rebel unit, heard Russian speech and swearing, and surrendered to them…As soon 

became clear, many of them had trained at the Airborne Forces School in Ryazan’ where they obviously remembered 

Russian swearing for their whole lives. 

 

 

Kozlov, Golov,  Karpukhin,  Semenov,  Anisimov, and Plyusnin rushed to the second floor. The target of the 

“first line” was their main objective there. The special forces attacked boldly, shooting from automatic weapons and 

throwing grenades in all the rooms. According to Sergey Golov: “I climbed upstairs together with Ehval’d Kozlov and 

the “Zenit” group leader Yasha Semenov. I don’t know why he had ended up without a bulletproof vest but Eh’vald 

bravely forged ahead with a pistol in his hands. I didn’t notice when I myself was wounded. Possibly it was when, 

having thrown a grenade into a window and got into trouble and it rolled back; I quickly managed to throw a second 

grenade and lie on the floor. The grenades detonated and we stayed alive. The main goal was to reach Amin’s location 

at any cost.” 

 

 

The lights were on everywhere in the Palace. All the attempts by Nikolay Shvachko to turn them off came to 

nothing. The electrical power was independent. Somewhere in the depths of the building, possibly in the basement, 

there were electrical generators operating but there was no time to search for them. Some soldiers were shooting at 

light bulbs in order to shelter themselves somehow since they were in plain view of Palace defenders. By the end of 

the assault only a handful of sources of illumination remained but they were burning. 

 

 

According to Ehval’d Kozlov: “In general, impressions from events, the perception of reality in battle and in 

peacetime differ greatly. Several years later in a quiet situation I walked through the Palace with General Gromov. 

Everything seemed different, completely opposite of what it had been then. In December 1979 it seemed to me that we 

had overcome endless “Potemkin” stairs but it turned out that the staircase was narrow, as in the entrance of an 

ordinary house. How we eight travelled up it together I don’t know; the main thing is we stayed alive. It happened that 

I was fighting without a bulletproof vest, which even now is horrific to imagine but on that day I didn’t remember it. It 

seemed, I had become empty inside and everything was forced out by the desire to carry out the mission. Even the 

noise of battle and the shouts of people were perceived differently from the usual way. Everything in me operated only 

for battle and I was to be victorious in the battle”. 

 

 

Soviet doctors in the Palace hid where they could. Initially they thought that the attackers were mujaheddin 

and Taraki supporters. Only after hearing Russian swearing did they understand that their own servicemen were 

fighting. Alekseyev and Kuznechenkov, who were to be helping Amin’s daughter (she had a baby), found “refugees” 

at the bar counter after the assault. They saw Amin, who was going along a corridor, completely in the reflections of a 

fire. He was in shorts and a sports shirt, holding his hands high, wrapped in tubes, vials with saline solution as if they 

were grenades. It is possible to imagine what effort this cost him with the needles put in his elbow veins. 

 

 

Alekseyev, having fled from cover, took out the needles as his first act, pressed the veins with his fingers to 

keep them from bleeding, and then led him to the bar. Amin rested on a wall but then heard a child’s cry somewhere 

from a side room. His five-year-old son came out, washed with spots of tears. Having seen his father, he ran to him 

and embraced his legs. Amin pressed his head to him and they sat down together at the wall. 

 

 

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Many years after these events Alekseyev said: they could not stay around the bar any longer so they hurried 

to leave there; when they were travelling along the corridor an explosion rang out – the shock wave threw them toward 

the door of the conference room where they took cover; it was dark and empty here. A broken window brought in the 

sounds of shooting. Kuznechenkov stood in the partition next to the window, Alekseyev to the right. Thus they shared 

their fate in this life. In any event, some soldier who had jumped in there shot in the darkness. One of the bullets hit 

Kuznechenkov. He cried out and immediately fell dead. Alekseyev lifted the body of his dead comrade to him and 

took it to the courtyard where he placed it in an APC which was taking the wounded away. “We don’t take the dead”, 

the soldier who was supervising the loading of the wounded cried to Alekseyev. “He’s still alive, I’m a doctor”, the 

Colonel objected. They took Kuznechenkov’s body to a [military] hospital and Alekseyev went to an operating table 

and gave aid to the wounded. 

 

 

It is clear from the memoirs of his adjutant that Amin had ordered him to notify our military advisers about 

the attack on the Palace.  In the process he said: “The Soviets will help.” But the adjutant reported: “The Soviets are 

shooting.” These words caused the General Secretary to lose his composure; he grabbed an ashtray and threw it at the 

adjutant, crying: “You’re lying, it can’t be!” Then he tried to call the Chief of the General Staff on the 

telephone…There were no communications. Amin quietly muttered: “I suspected this; it’s all true.” If Amin was a 

CIA agent, he did not give himself away in the last minutes of his life. 

 

 

…At a time when the assault groups were breaking into Taj-Bek the soldiers of the “Muslim” battalion had 

created a rigid ring of fire around the Palace, destroying everything which offered resistance. Bursting into the second 

floor they heard a woman’s cry: “Amin, Amin!…” Evidently his wife was shouting. 

 

 

When a group composed of Kozlov,  Semenov, Karpukhin, Golov,  Plyusnin,  Grishin,  Gumennyy, 

Anisimov, Karelin,  Drozdov, and  Kurbanov, throwing grenades and firing continuously from automatic weapons, 

rushed into the second floor of the Palace resistance rose to its highest level. There was shooting from every direction, 

some figures appeared in the smoke, and shouts were heard. According to Viktor Karpukhin: “It was quite hard for us 

to converse during the battle; we had other concerns. There simply isn’t enough time to talk. You were to reload faster 

and in any case look in order to orient yourself and not get a bullet from somewhere. How did I feel that Amin was 

killed? How was I generally supposed to feel? I saw it all with my own eyes…” 

 

 

And according to Grishin: “There was shooting from every direction. Lenya Gumennyy, who gave me shells, 

was standing on the span of a stair step and I reloaded my magazines. There were also other guys there. We began to 

group together at the entrance to the door into the corridor which led to the second floor rooms. We had to open the 

door and rush inside. Getting ready, we reloaded our magazines. It was dark there. We were taught before we rushed 

in – either shoot from an automatic weapon or throw a grenade. We opened the door with a leg but the door was on 

hinges. Sergey Aleksandrovich threw in a grenade but the door had been opened so sharply that it knocked against a 

wall, suddenly closed, and therefore the grenade struck the door and rolled toward us. Lenya and I managed to jump 

to a level below and lie down. Everyone also laid down and the grenade exploded. Possibly it also brushed against 

someone; it then turned out that someone was wounded, someone else got caught, and for the rest everything turned 

out OK. But then after the explosion we jumped into the corridor right away. In this group were: Plyusnin, Gumennyy, 

Anisimov, Karpukhin, Golov, and Berlev. There were also guys from “Zenit” of whom I knew only Yasha Semenov. I 

saw him on the second floor but I didn’t know anyone of the rest. Sasha Plyusnin and I operated as a pair. Shooting, 

we ran a bit along the corridor and fell down as if on command. This is how we moved along. A recess appeared on 

the right, like a shelter. This was the bar. We ran in there. At the bar counter a man was laying on his back. He was in 

a sport shirt and shorts. I didn’t see any signs of blood in general, I don’t remember; in any case, there was nothing 

there in my opinion. He was still alive but his movements were sort of convulsive. As it turned out later this person was 

Amin. 

 

 

At that time women’s and children’s voices rang out and everyone ceased for as if on command. Probably in 

the spirit of normal Russian people, even soldiers, pity on women and children always remains; that is, human 

qualities are never lost. It then turned out that one boy was wounded in the thigh and a woman was barely scratched; 

the rest were unharmed.  Letting them go, we continued to clear the room. 

 

 

We again ran into the corridor. I ended up paired with Lenya Gumennyy and we “cleaned” all the rooms in 

sequence. First we opened the door, threw in a grenade, and shot everything. Then we stopped throwing grenades and 

 

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