Читать книгу Confessions of a fighter. Revelations of a Volunteer - Bondo Dorovskikh - Страница 3

The desire to defend my country arose in me way back in the days when our forces were in Afghanistan. At that time, when I was still a boy, I dreamed of being there, where I would have the honor of being an international warrior. In Dushanbe, where I was born, everything was dominated by the fact that the Tajik SSR bordered on Afghanistan. One could often see columns of Soviet troops coming down from the mountain valleys and into our city, and though still a child, I felt an unusual interest in this. Soldiers often came into our school to tell us about Afghanistan, and we listened to them, fascinated. Many friends of my parents went there to work. Once when I woke early, I saw an army pistol, and it was a wonder I didn’t take it to nursery school with me. But to my great regret, our forces were withdrawn before the time came for my military service.

In the spring of 1992, when I went to the draft office, I asked to be sent to a war zone somewhere. The warrant officer shrugged his shoulders and said there were no conflict zones with Russian involvement apart from Yugoslavia, where we had a peacekeeping contingent, and only conscripts who had finished their time in the Army could be sent there. There was no internet then, and I was living in a small town in Tver province. Nothing had been written about this in the newspapers, information was not as available as it is now, so I did not know that a warrior could always find a place free at any time. All you needed was the desire and the money. But then, in 1992, the only thing I could do was enter a chemical technology institute, because serving in an army which was not fighting seemed a waste of time to me.

Request from DCOC KM MIA Ivanovo Province, 2002.

In 2000, I set up a business selling refined oil products. Every month my companies sold thousands of tons of oil products, as a result of which I became able to provide sponsorship, including to the security forces.

The cost of a barrel of oil at that time, in 2002, was only 25 dollars, so entrepreneurs in Russia carried the State’s burden of debt in the form of covering the activities of some state organizations.

Almost all the district internal affairs departments of the city of Ivanovo ran on my gasoline, and during the second Chechen campaign, I more than once financed the sending of SRRU (Special Rapid Reaction Unit) fighters to armed conflict zones.

With an RPG-7, 10 km. from Ivanovo, 2002

With a PK (machine gun), 10 km. from Ivanovo

With an RGP7 grenade launcher, 10 km. from Ivanovo

In gratitude, these fighters arranged training for me in certain weapons, namely the PKM (a modernized version of the AK-47)1, the RPG-7 rocket launcher2, the SSR3 sniper’s rifle, the original AK-47 and others. Some of them also served as my bodyguard.

We also helped the FSB Directorate for Ivanovo Province with money. The head of security of my company was an FSB lieutenant-colonel. We also had some other FSB Directorate agents working for us.

As a result of this, I received dozens of letters of gratitude from the heads of various sub-units of the All-Russian MIA and FSB.