2000, the 160th tank regiment is preparing to withdraw from the combat zone to the place of permanent deployment. Over the months spent in Chechnya, this unit showed how to fight not by numbers, but by skill. For the entire time of the business trip, the regiment lost one soldier, inflicting tangible losses on the gangs.
Among the successes in eliminating the hotbeds of armed resistance, the most notable are cases when the commander himself entered the rebel villages and through peaceful negotiations urged them to cease fire. In cases where such attempts did not lead to success, the military task was solved at the cost of minimal losses among the population, point targets were subjected to attacks.
This commander was Budanov, the hero of Russia, who, however, was not awarded a golden star. The fact that he will return to the parents of his living sons was for him a more significant reward. But in the last days before returning something unexpected happened.
At a height adjacent to the location of the regiment, a sniper appeared. In five days, this unknown shooter killed twelve people. Local agents reported that Elsa Kungaev was firing. One accurate shot was fired at the house in Tangi-Chu, where she lived, after which the Chechen was taken prisoner. During the interrogation, the colonel, after listening to several arrogant provocative remarks of the detainee, simply strangled her, apparently, by accident, not controlling his emotions.
As you know, there was no war in Chechnya. There was a counter-terrorist operation, a kind of police raid. Like in Korea in 1950-53. Consequently, what Budanov, the hero of Russia, did was qualified as a criminal offense. Apparently, he should have called a police squad, and let them understand. Protocols, fingerprints, and so on ... By the way, the fire on the positions of the regiment immediately ceased. Indirectly, this confirms the correctness of the colonel.
The case received wide publicity. Relatives of the murdered terrorist showed her photographs with a mournful look, apparently calling for public sympathy. There were condolences (the "innocent girl" was killed after she shot back), but that is not the point. The law is the law, Colonel Budanov, the hero of Russia, was sentenced under articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 105, 126 and 286 to 10 years in a penal colony. He was also demoted and stripped of his rewards. The investigation proved that there was no rape on which the prosecution insisted.
Three years later, in 2004, the convict filed a petition for clemency, which was granted in 2008. The governor Shamanov took into account the merits to the motherland and the severe concussion suffered. However, most likely, not all fellow citizens had this approval. There were shouts of indignation and threat from Chechnya.
Yuri Budanov, the hero of Russia, was killed in broad daylight in the center of Moscow by shots from a passing car on June 10, 2011. The crime was well prepared, the traces were carefully noticed, the firing points were chosen so that the image of the shooter did not fall into the lens of the surveillance cameras. Used redesigned weapons, almost unidentifiable.
Yuri Budanov, the hero of Russia, is buried in a cemetery in Khimki. To carry on the last journey, except for relatives and friends, came his comrades, who were many. They had something to remember. During his military service, the deceased officer saved hundreds of lives, he was a father to his soldiers and the shore of each of them.
The law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation have the opportunity to show their ability to guard the lives of people, justice and the law. To do this, you just need to find the killers. In this case, the crime occurred in peacetime and in a peaceful city, the capital of our country. Nothing should interfere with justice.
It is possible to determine in these conditions those who killed Budanov, the hero of Russia, is more difficult than to investigate the circumstances of the death of a Chechen sniper girl during the fighting, but this must be done. Otherwise, our fellow citizens may have an opinion about our police, and it will not be very good.