10 years since the elimination of Russian airborne company in Ulus-Kert

28 February 2010

The end of February and the beginning of March is an anniversary of the battle of Ulus-Kert, a village of Chechnya in which a company of Russian commandos from the Pskov Region of Russia was destroyed.

Despite the fact that the Kremlin propaganda always lies about this battle and the lie was repeatedly refuted by the Chechen side, Moscow, as before, tries to impose it into the minds of its ordinary citizens its version of that unprecedented battle in which the Mujahideen tired by a 2-week long passage through winter mountains completely routed out an elite subdivision of Russian troops.

10 years ago, on 29 February of 2000, a fierce fighting occurred near Ulus-Kerta between an elite detachment of Russian invaders and a unit of the Chechen Mujahideen.

70 Chechen volunteer fighters stormed the height where a company of Pskov commandos was stationed, which the Russian propaganda calls an attack by 2,000 "militant".

1300 Mujahideen were moving from Shatoi village in the direction of Dargo-Vedeno village. Tried by a long passage, frozen, injured, sick, the Mujahideen came to the gorge of the Vashtar River (Abazulgol). A reconnaissance party reported that at the height between Ulus-Kert and Duba-Yurt a detachment of invaders armed with mortars was positioned.

Eyewitnesses and participants of that battle say that after a short conference, injured Shamil Basayev (he was carried on stretchers with a torn foot) ordered Khattab to form an assault group and attack the Russian commandos.

At first Khattab refused saying that the column (under the enemy fire) could pass the Russians by, without entering into a contact battle. However, Shamil drew his attention to the fact that if the Mujahideen pass under the fire of the enemy the losses will be much worse, and that the rear of the column could be threatened by the Russian mortar fire.

Shamil Basayev turned to Khattab and said: "If you do not carry out my order now, then on the Judgment Day I will testify before Allah that you didn't obey the order of your Emir".

After hearing these words, Khattab apologized and started to form an assault team, which he headed himself. As Khattab later said, he was frightened by the Shamil's words that on Judgment Day he will not be able to justify his conduct before the Most High.

Khattab selected the group of 70 volunteer fighters. Before the battle, Shamil addressed to the Mujahideen with a speech. Then the assault began.

As the participants of the battle report, they climbed to the height under a hurricane fire by the enemy very slowly. They were exhausted and unable to move quicker. The Mujahideen used their hands to help their feet to move.

An aimed fire at the Russian commandos was impossible in such conditions. But when the advance group climbed the height, they saw an impressive and at the same time strange picture.

About 100 Russian corpses were laying in one heap, as if someone specially dragged them into one place. A horror was written on the faces of all the commandos. Their faces had a sulfur-ashy color. Almost all of them had bullet holes in the head and breast just under the throat.

The Mujahideen lost 25 fighters (according to other sources, 21). Almost all of them were buried in settlements of the Vedeno district: Tevzana, Makhkety, Khattuni.

As Khattab and the fighters in assault team later said, all the participants in that battle had an impression that it were not they but some other force, the force of Allah and His Angels, who killed the Russians.

Khattab who liked to speak about different episodes of various battles, practically never spoke about the battle of Ulus-Kert. The other fighters also didn't speak much. When the Mujahideen asked Khattab to tell them about that battle, he usually answered briefly: "This was not our work...".

Meanwhile, the Russian propaganda tries to distort the real events of the battle and continues to tell fiction stories "about hordes of militants and a handful Russian heroes".

Articles and the books are written, films and settings are shot, generals and politicians appear on TV with their stories.

Every year, the Russian state propaganda gives different numbers for Mujahideen casualties: 500, or 1500, or 700 (the latest version). But Moscow's propagandists never answered a simple question, where the mass grave of "militants" is.

By the way, in those days in Ulus-Kert, Mujahideen killed up to 200 elite airborne troops of the Russian army. However, the Russians recognized the losses of only Pskov paratroopers, which were impossible to ignore because all of them were from one unit and they all came from one and the same town, so all the inhabitants of the Pskov Region knew about these losses.

A week after the Battle of Ulus-Kert, the Russian invaders executed 42 injured and unarmed Mujahideen in the town of Duts-Khoti in the Selmentauzen rural administration whom they captured through a betrayal of local apostates. The Mujahideen command decided to leave these wounded fighters for a while in a building on the outskirts of the village.

Later the traitors were found and eliminated by the Mujahideen.

Said Irbakhayev,
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/02/28/11521.shtml.