The current state of health of General Romanov. General Romanov: what happened to the commander of the federal troops in Chechnya

The special forces dealt with the traitorous military leader radically

On October 6, 1995, a radio-controlled land mine exploded under a railway bridge in Grozny. He rushed right under the car of the commander of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the United Group of Federal Forces in Chechnya, Colonel General Anatoly ROMANOV. The military leader was seriously injured and is still in the hospital. And all these years his wife has been selflessly caring for him.

Larisa Vasilievna, first of all, we congratulate your husband on his recent birthday. All the newspaper employees wish him a speedy recovery and admire your courage! Tell me, how did Anatoly Alexandrovich manage to connect his fate with such a woman?

My friend asked me to go on a date with her. And her friend came with Anatoly. At first we somehow didn’t like each other, but then we fell in love. He always looked after us beautifully: he never came without a bouquet of wild flowers. Why the field, I only realized later - he’s a cadet, where did the money come from?

- They probably envied you - the general’s wife, special opportunities, honor, power.

You know, where we lived in military camps, this was not the case. You have to understand that my husband served in special units. These were good towns, with their own infrastructure. Everything was civil. We didn't feel any remoteness. As for envy... He gave no reason.

Katya will treat her grandfather

- Was your husband upset when you gave birth to a daughter and not a son?

No. He named her Victoria - Victory. She is already 37. Her first education was pedagogical, her second was legal. Serves at customs. Heads the HR department. The first husband turned out to be selfish, they divorced. The second one is fine. She was the secretary of the Komsomol organization at school, and he was the secretary of the city Komsomol committee. I worked in a small town in a bookstore; I am a book trade organizer by training. Everyone knew me, and I knew everyone. Sergei, Vika’s second husband, had a family, but he separated from his wife and asked me for shelter. Explaining that it’s hard for him now, and there’s no one to turn to for help. I was on good terms with him, I knew him for 20 years. Vika was also free by that time. Then they got married. Sergei has his own company. They live well. They gave me my granddaughter Katenka.

I watched how you looked at your granddaughter, who performs in the famous Dance Ensemble named after Eliseev of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Do you want Katya to become a soloist?

- Does she have her grandfather's last name?

I think she will eventually choose who she should be - Romanova or Plekhanova. This is not important. Moreover, both the first and second surnames are worth wearing. The main thing is that he grow up to be a kind, well-mannered person.

Threw the boor out of the trolleybus

- Tell me, Anatoly Alexandrovich fought for you in his youth, could he put the boor in his place?

Certainly. Tolya did karate. One day we were walking along the embankment, and a bunch of guys, about six, started making obscenities at us. Well, Anatoly rushed in their direction. The fight was to the death. We barely got him away. Several people remained lying there. And one day my child and I entered the trolleybus through the front door, Tolya, naturally, through the back. At the bus stop, one boor started shouting at me that I was blocking the exit, and even used obscene language. Tolya came up and threw him out of the trolleybus.

I remember your action when General Romanov was awarded the title of Hero of Russia: you were offered to receive an award for him, but you refused.

I replied: “I’m not a widow! He deserves it, give it to him.” But I myself am so offended, I shed so many tears. Only six years later, Army General Tikhomirov arrived at the hospital and attached the Gold Star of the Hero to my husband’s chest.

I think we all walk under God. Today you are mighty, but tomorrow you are nothing. And you need to remain human in any circumstances.

- My husband’s colleagues are coming, don’t they forget?

Not only do they not forget, but they even help financially. Some sponsor the purchase of a wheelchair, others sponsor an anti-bedsore system.

- What, the Ministry of Defense has withdrawn?

Have you seen these defense ministers? We do not have ministers of war. We have managers. The last Minister of Defense graduated from the All-Union Trade Institute. You are a naive person. What is a hospital? This is a budget organization. The hospital can only provide what is budgeted. The fact that my husband was in the Burdenko Hospital is a personal merit Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin. When the wounded husband was flying on the Scalpel (special aircraft. - A.B.), the president ordered him to be admitted to the Burdenko Hospital. 15 years ago it was the best medical institution. But recently reorganization began, and the impression was created that the hospital was simply destroyed. We decided to leave him and move to the departmental hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Balashikha. My husband is now in a stable condition. No surgical interventions required. Rehabilitation is underway. When my husband was shown his granddaughter, he began to cry. So he feels. We are waiting and hoping!

The generals surrendered their

Together with Anatoly Alexandrovich, General Vladimir Shamanov was supposed to go to a meeting with Khasbulatov on that fateful day. But at the last moment, your husband ordered him to fly to the Vvedensky district, where the militant attack began.

Yes, Shamans flew to the rescue of the guys, and Tolya went to Khasbulatov one. Shamanov then told me: “Larissa! It was God who saved me!”

Here's another question that concerns me. After all, the commander himself chooses the route. This is top secret information. So someone betrayed him?

What do you think? Of course we passed! I don’t know the details, but the officers from the special forces told me that they dealt with this man. It is tough. Drastically.

The fate of General Romanov is connected with the army. At all times, the military is at its combat post. And then, in the 90s, the commander of the federal group of troops, General Romanov, took an active part in resolving the military conflict in the Caucasus, including peacefully, in the process of negotiations. Twenty-two years ago, Anatoly Romanov, a general, was very seriously injured in an explosion. What's wrong with him now? Is General Romanov, wounded in Chechnya, alive?

Biography of General Romanov

Anatoly Romanov was born in Bashkiria in 1948. The family had eight children. In a large peasant family, children from an early age were taught to work and responsibility.
1967 - after completing compulsory army service in the protection of special cargo and important government facilities, he entered the military school in the city of Saratov. There he reached the highest position for a conscript soldier: deputy platoon commander.
1972 - graduated from college in Saratov, with a diploma with honors, and remained to serve there. Then, already in absentia, he studied at the Frunze Academy (Moscow).
1984 - appointed to the position of chief of staff in Zlatoust-96 (a closed city in the Chelyabinsk region). He was responsible for guarding the city's defense plant.
1988 - appointed to the position of chief of staff of the 95th division and transferred to the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow.
from 1989 to 1991 - studied at the Military Academy of the USSR General Staff.
in 1991 - commander of the 96th Division in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg).
1992 - awarded the military rank: major general, received appointment to the post of head of the department of special units of internal troops.
1993 - appointment to the position of head of the Department for the Security of State Objects and Special Cargoes, then deputy. Commander of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
1993 - participated in famous events at the White House.
1994 - appointed commander of all groups of federal troops in the North Caucasus.
November 1995 - a month after the assassination attempt, Lieutenant General Anatoly Aleksandrovich Romanov was awarded the star of the Hero of Russia.

General Romanov, photo

Militants blew up the car the general was in in early October 1995.

Negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov were planned that day. But first, General Romanov with a security column went to the city of Grozny to meet with Ruslan Khasbulatov (at that time, a well-known politician, Chechen by origin, acted as a mediator in the negotiations). The meeting with Khasbulatov was scheduled right on that day, spontaneously, by telephone. Romanov could not have gone, but he did not refuse, because at that time it was necessary to use any, even the slightest, chance to stop the insane bloodshed.

A column of our troops was blown up near Minutka Square in Grozny, under a railway bridge, using a radio-controlled land mine. A device equivalent to 30 kg of TNT went off next to the general’s car... nothing remained of the car. A mixture formed on the spot - pieces of concrete, equipment, human bodies.

At the time of the explosion, there were four people in the car: General Anatoly Romanov, driver Vitaly Matviychenko, Rus special forces security soldier Denis Yabrikov and Colonel Alexander Zaslavsky. Everyone except the general died. Anatoly Romanov was identified by his wedding ring and the buckle on the general’s belt. Several dozen people from the armored personnel carrier accompanying the general were wounded and shell-shocked as a result of that explosion.

Immediately after the tragedy, Anatoly Romanov and other wounded were sent by helicopter to Vladikavkaz, from where they were soon transported on a special Scalpel hospital plane to the Burdenko military hospital in Moscow.

Experienced doctors did not expect the general to remain alive. The military doctor in his memoirs says that “General Romanov was practically killed,” the diagnosis was a fracture of the base of the skull, penetrating wounds of the chest, abdomen, shrapnel wounds, concussion. They measured time in minutes - lived a minute, an hour, a day. At first, spontaneous breathing was restored. And on the eighteenth day the general opened his eyes. For a long time, Anatoly Romanov could only look at the ceiling. Gradually some mobility appeared: with eyes, hands, legs.

What's wrong with General Romanov now?

Now next to the general are his wife and relatives: daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. According to his wife, there is a special spiritual connection between grandfather and granddaughter, and from the very first day, when she, a little girl, was brought into the ward.

My wife learned about what happened on that tragic day in October 1995 from the news: the column in which General Romanov was was blown up, what happened to him?

Now many years have passed, that war has become history... Where is General Romanov now, wounded in Chechnya? He is in a hospital in Balashikha. His wife comes to him every day, walks, and looks after him. There are home photos on the walls in the room. A day at the Balashikha military hospital follows a strict schedule: doctor’s visits, physical therapy, massage. On the eighteenth day after being wounded, the general came out of a coma and began to react to light, but even now, after more than twenty years, doctors call his condition “borderline”; such cases are rare in the world. Various methods are used in treatment, stem cells have been tried, but there is no positive dynamics. Comrades in arms do not forget, they often visit and help.

According to his wife’s observations, Anatoly Romanov does not like it when journalists come to his room, he turns away. Journalists want to know how General Romanov is feeling now, and they point their cameras. The general is still unable to speak, but at the same time he is able to respond to information with facial expressions or eye movements and understand the text on paper. He loves military and sports television programs, listens to wartime songs and classical music. Next year, friends and family are planning to gather for the seventieth birthday and drink to the health of General Romanov, today these are plans, nothing can be made.

Zelimkhan Yandarbiev (at that time the head of unrecognized Ichkeria) and Aslan Maskhadov were named among the customers and organizers of the assassination attempt.

A criminal case was opened, but the documents were burned during the shelling of the FSB building in Grozny in 1996.

The fate of General Romanov, wounded in Chechnya, became the topic of a documentary film. Five years ago, the film “General Romanov - The Devoted Peacemaker” was released, on the 65th anniversary of the birthday of Anatoly Romanov, “the general who did not return from that war.”

Fatal October

The fate of General Romanov is mercilessly cut by the drama into two parts of different sizes. In one of them, he is still full of a bright, strong, courageous life, which, as it seems to everyone, is just entering the time of true blossoming. Forty-seven years old. A peasant son who had just become commander of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. A husband and father who found simple human happiness in his close-knit family.

In another part of his life, which lasts almost eighteen long years, he is a seriously wounded man with life still smoldering in him, like a candle flame. Hospital ward and white coats of doctors. An undefeated general whose consciousness has not yet returned from the war...

Since the spring of 1995, he was captured by many journalistic television cameras and cameras, when, after the dramatic assault on the Chechen capital and the displacement of militants into the mountains, the Russian government began to strengthen the peaceful order of life in the cities and villages of Chechnya. Often Romanov, without security, fearlessly entered villages where militants were still hiding. I talked with representatives of rural authorities and clergy, with residents for whom the future world was not an abstract concept, but meant the return of normal life: with the aroma of fresh bread, a sense of security, pensions for the elderly and education for children.

In Chechnya, which until recently lived in separatist dreams, these very things suddenly turned out to be the most scarce. It often happened that after a conversation with Romanov, the residents themselves drove out the remaining militants from the villages, and the flags of Ichkeria hanging on administrative buildings were quickly replaced by the tricolor flags of the Russian state.

In the summer of 1995, Romanov was confirmed as commander of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and appointed commander of the United Group of Federal Forces on the territory of the Chechen Republic. A participant in the negotiation process with the leaders of illegal armed groups, he was responsible for the development and implementation of the so-called military block of issues.

Romanov’s natural diplomatic talent, his ability to translate the most furious disputes into constructive dialogue and transform former enemies into new like-minded people through the mere power of charm made his participation in the peacemaking process unique in its own way.

But most importantly, ordinary Chechens began to trust Romanov. The further - the more. And in this sense, for the ideologists of the rebellion and Chechen separatism, as well as for those who were hiding behind them in those days, General Romanov remained a deadly figure.

This world went downhill on October 6, 1995, the day when General Romanov, who left Khankala for Grozny to meet with Ruslan Khasbulatov, was seriously wounded. A high-explosive charge, equivalent to 30 kilograms of TNT, was remotely detonated at about 13:00, when part of the column of internal troops, including Romanov’s UAZ and several escort armored personnel carriers, had already been pulled into the tunnel near Minutka Square in Grozny.

Of those who were in Romanov's UAZ, the assistant commander, Colonel Alexander Zaslavsky, and the driver, Private Vitaly Matviychenko, immediately died. A little later, a soldier from the special forces detachment “Rus” of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, private Denis Yabrikov, who was guarding the general that day, would die from his wounds. Another two dozen people were wounded and shell-shocked.

Immediately after the explosion, the tunnel was filled with smoke. It was not immediately possible to find Romanov among the human bodies scattered by the explosion. He was identified by his belt with a general's buckle and a gold wedding ring on his right hand...

Rescue Relay

The struggle for the life of General Romanov has already become a story worthy of a detailed story about the courage, patience and professional skill of those people who saved the wounded Romanov, who have been treating him all these years.

In Moscow, the first to learn about Romanov’s injury was the Minister of Internal Affairs, General Anatoly Kulikov. For him, Romanov was not only a military leader, who had recently replaced Kulikov himself as commander of the internal troops and commander of the United Group, but also a close friend.

The minister had just returned from Chechnya the day before, and on the morning of October 6 he managed to talk with Romanov on the phone, receiving his morning report.

The helicopter flight commander (who is also the commander of the Mi-8 helicopter crew), Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Karamyshev (lives in Khabarovsk), was not supposed to fly anywhere that day: it was his birthday free from combat work. But war is war. According to its laws, the crew - in addition to the commander, included captain Andrei Zhezlov (lives in Kostroma) and on-board technician, senior lieutenant Alexander Gorodov (lives in Chita) - still had to fly to the Severny airfield. They had already requested permission for a return flight, when the command came to drop into “the meadow” - that was the name of the Ministry of Internal Affairs helipad in Khankala. They explained: “There are eighteen “three hundred” (seriously wounded) there.

There were indeed wounded. On a stretcher. Everything is covered in blood and torn camouflage. The duty officer at the aviation command post, silently smoking a cigarette and not really explaining anything, finally made a strange reservation: they say, now the commander will fly with you.

The pilot knew the commander of the United Group Romanov well. He respected him for not acting like a master in front of his subordinates. For intelligence. For the fact that forty-seven-year-old Romanov could spin the sun on the horizontal bar, wearing a heavy soldier’s body armor for the load.

He expected to see a fit, tall general with his assistants now, wondering to himself at the suppressed nervousness of the people around him. He did not immediately realize that Romanov himself was wounded, who, along with other victims, should have been immediately evacuated to the Vladikavkaz military hospital.

Concentrating, Karamyshev figured that the shortest route, taking 17 minutes of flight, was the road through Bamut, which was shelling helicopters. A guaranteed safe route would have taken them almost twice as long.

We were in a hurry. We passed Grozny. The G8 was moving ten meters above the ground at a speed of 315-320 kilometers per hour, significantly exceeding the permitted speed. So they jumped out into an open field. Out of the corner of his eye, Karamyshev saw someone’s blurry silhouette suddenly rise from the arable land and soar upward like a candle. I managed to make a maneuver and almost jumped over the eagle flying to intercept it, like an anti-aircraft missile. A powerful blow shook the fuselage. The bird crashed into the taxi headlight with all its might, turning it around and spattering the bottom of the helicopter with eagle blood. This was discovered later, surprised at their own luck: if there had been a frontal impact or a bird hitting the engine, the helicopter could simply have crashed.

Near Bamut, 152-mm self-propelled artillery units fired with all their remarkable force. There was a planned shelling in the squares, and the “eight” had to scour between the plumes of explosions so as not to fall under a flying shell or its fragments.

Karamyshev landed at the airfield on the move. I also looked at my watch - we got there in exactly a quarter of an hour. The wounded were handed over to local doctors. And all they could do was shake their heads: “Another ten minutes, and there would be no need to rush...”

Lieutenant Colonel Karamyshev, who was flying the helicopter, could not know what was happening in flight behind him, in the landing compartment of the helicopter. The medical team on board formed spontaneously even at the moment of loading the wounded.

Lieutenant of the medical service Dmitry Davydov, who had just graduated from the military medical faculty, boarded a helicopter to accompany the wounded soldiers of the Rus special forces detachment, whose chief of medicine he was on this first trip to the war. Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service Evgeniy Kirichenko and nurse Warrant Officer Irina Burmistrova volunteered to board the helicopter.

Among the wounded, Davydov immediately recognized Denis Yabrikov. He was on Romanov’s bodyguard and together with him ended up at the epicenter of the explosion. Denis was still alive, his face was bandaged, but to Davydov’s question “How are you?” He moved his lips quite cheerfully: “Fine.” (Denis Yabrikov will die later, already in the Vladikavkaz garrison hospital, from wounds incompatible with life.)

The condition of two more wounded - a soldier in a gray police uniform and an officer in camouflage - seemed equally serious, if not worse. The officer’s blood pressure was generally “zero.” Only after handing over the wounded alive to the local doctors did they hear from the helicopter crew who had just been delivered to Vladikavkaz and who was wearing an officer’s camouflage torn by the explosion and bloody...

The decision to send the Scalpel military hospital aircraft to Vladikavkaz was made almost instantly. The chief anesthesiologist of the Main Military Clinical Hospital named after Academician N.N. gave his alarm signal. Burdenko, Honored Doctor of Russia, Colonel of the Medical Service Mikhail Rudenko received after returning from another operation.

He was called by the head of the hospital, Major General Vyacheslav Klyuzhev. Rudenko just asked Klyuzhev how many minutes he had left...

“Twenty,” answered the head of the hospital, and Rudenko sighed with relief in response: his suitcases with the necessary equipment, medicines and materials that could be useful in any situation complicated by circumstances were always packed ahead of time.

Soon the entire team of military doctors at the Military Hospital named after. N.N. Burdenko, consisting of Mikhail Ivanovich Rudenko, Sergei Nilovich Alekseev, Grigory Borisovich Tsekhanovsky, Vladimir Borisovich Gorbulenko and Igor Borisovich Maximov, hastily loaded into the car, was already heading towards the Chkalov airfield near Moscow.

Upon arrival in Vladikavkaz, it turned out that Romanov had very severe intra-abdominal bleeding caused by a ruptured liver. Having quickly changed clothes, Rudenko went to the operating room...

We must pay tribute to the medical staff of the Vladikavkaz garrison hospital, led by Colonel Rudolf Nikolaevich An. Everything possible was done there to save the wounded. But the nature of Romanov’s injuries and his condition required the immediate evacuation of the wounded man to Moscow.

General Romanov ended up in the intensive care unit of the Main Military Clinical Hospital named after Burdenko.

In principle, he was killed,” Major General Vyacheslav Klyuzhev would later say about Anatoly Romanov.

However, he will immediately add: “He would have been killed if, from the first minute of his rescue, he had not found himself in the hands of professionals of the highest class...”

The fight continues

Despite the severity of the wound, this eighteen-year struggle for the general’s life does not stop to this day - for doctors, for his wife Larisa and daughter Victoria, for close comrades.

It is possible that Romanov would not have lived a day without Larisa Romanova, his wife, next to him. Love is not called a feat while it lives for pleasure, but any feat becomes possible if it is driven by true love.

For the last four years, General Anatoly Romanov has been in the Central Hospital of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, located in Balashikha near Moscow. Nurses from the internal troops are next to him around the clock. Over the years, many of them have changed, but each of them has invested a considerable share of work, supporting the life of the wounded general in efforts that lasted day and night.

After the reconstruction of the hospital here, through the care of the current Commander-in-Chief of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Army General Nikolai Rogozhkin, a special block for Romanov was equipped in one of the buildings. He often sits in his wheelchair near the window opening, and it is difficult to tell what is in his soul.

Shortly before his injury, General Romanov, without any pathos, told his colleagues: “Each of us is ready to carry out a combat mission, even if it costs him his life. Nobody wants to die, but if necessary...” he fell silent without finishing his sentence.

The important thing is not that at that moment he did not yet know his fate. The important thing is that together we were ready to go to the end. And, having set off on the journey with Romanov, we never regretted it.

The explosion of a radio-controlled landmine occurred when General Romanov’s motorcade drove into a tunnel under the railway bridge, its epicenter falling right on the commander’s UAZ. As Minister of Internal Affairs Kulikov recalled, if Romanov had not been wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet at that moment, he would not have survived. The serious wound received by the major general led to a coma. Romanov was urgently taken to the Vladikavkaz military hospital.

According to the then deputy head of the Russian delegation at the negotiations in the capital of Chechnya, Arkady Volsky, the terrorist attack against the commander of the joint group of troops A. A. Romanov was beneficial to both sides - both supporters of the escalation of the conflict in Moscow and the Chechen separatists. Minister Kulikov believes that the then head of unrecognized Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, was directly related to organizing the assassination attempt on Romanov. In fact, Yandarbiev himself, in an interview published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta in January 1999, confirmed that that terrorist attack was a planned action.

Neither the customers, nor the organizers, nor the perpetrators of the assassination attempt on General Romanov were ever officially identified. In August 1996, all documents on the “Romanov” criminal case were burned as a result of artillery shelling of the FSB building in the Chechen Republic. At the end of the same year, the criminal case was suspended “due to the impossibility of establishing the identity of the accused.” And then there was the “conciliatory” Khasavyurt, the second Chechen campaign... At the end of the 90s, information appeared in the press that the terrorist attack was ordered by Aslan Maskhadov. It is generally accepted that today all the “links” of the chain “customer-organizer-executor” are already rotting in the ground, having been destroyed during numerous counter-terrorist operations carried out by the federals in Chechnya.

... Hero of Russia, Lieutenant General Romanov, has been undergoing treatment for 23 years after the assassination attempt, now in the Balashikha hospital of the internal troops. At the end of September, Anatoly Alexandrovich turned 69 years old. He is unable to speak, but he perceives and reacts to the speech of others. His wife Larisa Vasilievna provides great assistance in the most difficult process of rehabilitation of Romanov; they have been together for 47 years.