Volodya Yakut biography. Volodya Yakut: where did the Russian super-sniper of the Chechen war disappear?

Inspired by a post I recently read! Maybe someone will be interested in reading it. Stories like this are the most interesting. From the Internet!
18-year-old Yakut Volodya from a distant deer camp was a sable hunter. It had to happen that I came to Yakutsk for salt and ammunition, and accidentally saw in the dining room on TV piles of corpses of Russian soldiers on the streets of Grozny, smoking tanks and some words about “Dudaev’s snipers.” This got into Volodya’s head, so much so that the hunter returned to the camp, took his earned money, and sold the little gold he had found. He took his grandfather’s rifle and all the cartridges, put the icon of St. Nicholas the Saint in his bosom and went to fight.

It’s better not to remember how I was driving, how I sat in the bullpen, how many times my rifle was taken away. But, nevertheless, a month later the Yakut Volodya arrived in Grozny.
Volodya had only heard about one general who was fighting regularly, and he began to look for him in the February thaw. Finally, the Yakut was lucky and reached the headquarters of General Rokhlin.

The only document besides his passport was a handwritten certificate from the military commissar stating that Vladimir Kolotov, a hunter by profession, was heading to war, signed by the military commissar. The piece of paper, which had become frayed on the road, had saved his life more than once.

Rokhlin, surprised that someone came to the war of his own free will, ordered the Yakut to be allowed to come to him.
- Excuse me, please, are you that General Rokhlya? – Volodya asked respectfully.
“Yes, I’m Rokhlin,” answered the tired general, who peered inquisitively at a short man dressed in a frayed padded jacket, with a backpack and a rifle on his back.
– I was told that you arrived at the war on your own. For what purpose, Kolotov?
“I saw on TV how terrorists were killing ours with snipers. I can't stand this, Comrade General. It's a shame, though. So I came to bring them down. You don't need money, you don't need anything. I, Comrade General Rokhlya, will go hunting at night myself. Let them show me the place where they will put the cartridges and food, and I will do the rest myself. If I get tired, I’ll come back in a week, sleep in the warmth for a day, and go again. You don’t need a walkie-talkie or anything like that... it’s hard.

Surprised, Rokhlin nodded his head.
- Take, Volodya, at least a new SVDashka. Give him a rifle!
“No need, Comrade General, I’m going out into the field with my scythe.” Just give me some ammunition, I only have 30 left now...

So Volodya began his war, the sniper war.

He slept for a day in the headquarters cabins, despite the mine shelling and terrible artillery fire. I took ammunition, food, water and went on my first “hunt”. They forgot about him at headquarters. Only reconnaissance regularly brought cartridges, food and, most importantly, water to the appointed place every three days. Each time I was convinced that the parcel had disappeared.

The first person to remember Volodya at the headquarters meeting was the “interceptor” radio operator.
– Lev Yakovlevich, the enemy is panicking on the radio. They say that we have a certain black sniper who works at night, boldly walks through their territory and shamelessly cuts down their personnel. Maskhadov even put a price of 30 thousand dollars on his head. His handwriting is like this - this fellow hits bandits right in the eye. Why only by sight - the dog knows him...

And then the staff remembered about the Yakut Volodya.
“He regularly takes food and ammunition from the cache,” the intelligence chief reported.
“And so we didn’t exchange a word with him, we didn’t even see him even once.” Well, how did he leave you on the other side...

One way or another, the report noted that our snipers also give their snipers a light. Because Volodin’s work gave such results - from 16 to 30 people were killed by the fisherman with a shot in the eye.

The terrorists realized that the federals had a commercial hunter in Minutka Square. And since the main events of those terrible days took place in this square, a whole detachment of volunteers came out to catch the sniper.

Then, in February 1995, at Minutka, thanks to Rokhlin’s cunning plan, our troops had already reduced almost three quarters of the personnel of the so-called “Abkhaz” battalion of Shamil Basayev. Volodya’s Yakut carbine also played a significant role here. Basayev promised a golden Chechen star to anyone who would bring the body of a Russian sniper. But the nights passed in unsuccessful searches. Five volunteers walked along the front line in search of Volodya’s “beds” and placed tripwires wherever he could appear in direct view of their positions. However, this was a time when groups from both sides broke through the enemy’s defenses and penetrated deeply into its territory. Sometimes it was so deep that there was no longer any chance to break out to our own people. But Volodya slept during the day under the roofs and in the basements of houses. The corpses of the terrorists—the sniper’s night “work”—were buried the next day.

Then, tired of losing 20 people every night, Basayev called from the reserves in the mountains a master of his craft, a teacher from a camp for training young shooters, the Arab sniper Abubakar. Volodya and Abubakar could not help but meet in a night battle, such are the laws of sniper warfare.

And they met two weeks later. More precisely, Abubakar hit Volodya with a drill rifle. A powerful bullet, which once killed Soviet paratroopers right through in Afghanistan at a distance of one and a half kilometers, pierced the padded jacket and slightly caught the arm, just below the shoulder. Volodya, feeling the rush of a hot wave of oozing blood, realized that the hunt had finally begun for him.

The buildings on the opposite side of the square, or rather their ruins, merged into a single line in Volodya's optics. “What flashed, the optics?” thought the hunter, and he knew cases when a sable saw a sight flashing in the sun and went away. The place he chose was located under the roof of a five-story residential building. Snipers always like to be on top so they can see everything. And he lay under the roof - under a sheet of old tin, the wet snow rain, which kept coming and then stopping, did not wet it.

Abubakar tracked down Volodya only on the fifth night - he tracked him down by his pants. The fact is that the Yakuts had ordinary, cotton pants. This is an American camouflage, which was often worn by terrorists, impregnated with a special composition, in which the uniform was indistinctly visible in night vision devices, and the domestic uniform glowed with a bright light green light. So Abubakar “identified” the Yakut into the powerful night optics of his “Bur”, custom-made by English gunsmiths back in the 70s.

One bullet was enough, Volodya rolled out from under the roof and fell painfully with his back on the steps of the stairs. “The main thing is that I didn’t break the rifle,” thought the sniper.
- Well, that means a duel, yes, Mr. Sniper! - the Yakut said to himself mentally without emotion.

Volodya specifically stopped cutting up terrorists. The neat row of 200s with his sniper “autograph” on the eye stopped. “Let them believe that I was killed,” Volodya decided.

All he did was look out for where the enemy sniper got to him from.
Two days later, already in the afternoon, he found Abubakar’s “bed”. He also lay under the roof, under a half-bent roofing sheet on the other side of the square. Volodya would not have noticed him if the Arab sniper had not been betrayed by a bad habit - he was smoking marijuana. Once every two hours, Volodya caught a light bluish haze through his optics, rising above the roofing sheet and immediately being carried away by the wind.

“So I found you! You can't live without drugs! Good..." the Yakut hunter thought triumphantly; he did not know that he was dealing with an Arab sniper who had passed through both Abkhazia and Karabakh. But Volodya did not want to kill him just like that, by shooting through the roofing sheet. This was not the case with snipers, and even less so with fur hunters.
“Okay, you smoke while lying down, but you’ll have to get up to go to the toilet,” Volodya decided calmly and began to wait.

Only three days later did he figure out that Abubakar was crawling out from under the leaf to the right side, and not to the left, quickly did the job and returned to the “bed”. To “get” the enemy, Volodya had to change his position at night. He couldn't do anything anew, because any new roofing sheet would immediately give away his new location. But Volodya found two fallen logs from the rafters with a piece of tin a little to the right, about fifty meters from his point. The place was excellent for shooting, but very inconvenient for a “bed”. For two more days Volodya looked out for the sniper, but he did not show up. Volodya had already decided that the enemy had left for good, when the next morning he suddenly saw that he had “opened up.” Three seconds of aiming with a slight exhalation, and the bullet hit the target. Abubakar was struck on the spot in the right eye. For some reason, against the impact of the bullet, he fell flat from the roof onto the street. A large, greasy stain of blood spread across the mud in the square of Dudayev’s palace, where an Arab sniper was killed on the spot by one hunter’s bullet.

“Well, I got you,” Volodya thought without any enthusiasm or joy. He realized that he had to continue his fight, showing his characteristic style. To prove that he is alive and that the enemy did not kill him a few days ago.

Volodya peered through his optics at the motionless body of the slain enemy. Nearby he saw a “Bur”, which he did not recognize, since he had never seen such rifles before. In a word, a hunter from the deep taiga!

And then he was surprised: the militants began to crawl out into the open to take the sniper’s body. Volodya took aim. Three people came out and bent over the body.
“Let them pick you up and carry you, then I’ll start shooting!” - Volodya triumphed.

The three of the militants actually lifted the body. Three shots were fired. Three bodies fell on top of the dead Abubakar.

Four more militants jumped out of the ruins and, throwing away the bodies of their comrades, tried to pull out the sniper. A Russian machine gun started working from the side, but the bursts fell a little higher, without causing harm to the hunched over bandits.

Four more shots rang out, almost merging into one. Four more corpses had already formed a pile.

Volodya killed 16 militants that morning. He did not know that Basayev had given the order to get the Arab’s body at all costs before it began to get dark. He had to be sent to the mountains to be buried there before sunrise, as an important and respectable Mujahid.

A day later, Volodya returned to Rokhlin’s headquarters. The general immediately received him as a dear guest. The news of the duel between two snipers had already spread throughout the army.
- Well, how are you, Volodya, tired? Do you want to go home?

Volodya warmed his hands at the stove.
“That’s it, Comrade General, I’ve done my job, it’s time to go home.” Spring work at the camp begins. The military commissar only released me for two months. My two younger brothers worked for me all this time. It's time to know...

Rokhlin nodded his head in understanding.
- Take a good rifle, my chief of staff will draw up the documents...
- Why, I have my grandfather’s. – Volodya lovingly hugged the old carbine.

The general did not dare to ask the question for a long time. But curiosity got the better of me.
– How many enemies did you defeat, did you count? They say more than a hundred... the militants were talking...

Volodya lowered his eyes.
– 362 militants, Comrade General.
- Well, go home, now we can handle it ourselves...
- Comrade General, if anything happens, call me again, I’ll sort out the work and come a second time!

Volodya’s face showed frank concern for the entire Russian Army.
- By God, I’ll come!

The Order of Courage found Volodya Kolotov six months later. On this occasion, the entire collective farm celebrated, and the military commissar allowed the sniper to go to Yakutsk to buy new boots - the old ones had become worn out in Grozny. A hunter stepped on some pieces of iron.

On the day when the whole country learned about the death of General Lev Rokhlin, Volodya also heard about what happened on the radio. He drank alcohol on the premises for three days. He was found drunk in a temporary hut by other hunters returning from hunting. Volodya kept repeating drunk:
- It’s okay, Comrade General Rokhlya, if necessary we will come, just tell me...

The real name of Volodya-Yakut is Vladimir Maksimovich Kolotov, originally from the village of Iengra in Yakutia. However, he himself is not a Yakut, but an Evenk.

At the end of the First Campaign, he was patched up in the hospital, and since he was officially a nobody and there was no way to call him, he simply went home.

By the way, his combat score is most likely not exaggerated but understated... Moreover, no one kept an accurate account, and the sniper himself did not particularly brag about it.

After Vladimir Kolotov left for his homeland, scum in officer uniform sold his information to terrorists, who he was, where he came from, where he went, etc. The Yakut Sniper inflicted too many losses on the evil spirits.

Vladimir was killed by a shot from 9 mm. pistol in his yard while he was chopping wood. The criminal case was never solved..."

In the Red Army since September 1941. From December 12 of the same year at the front. He was a machine gunner, a squad commander of a company of machine gunners of the 1243rd Infantry Regiment of the 375th Division of the 30th Army, and from October 1942 - a sniper of the 234th Infantry Regiment of the 179th Division. By June 23, 1944, Sergeant Okhlopkov destroyed with a sniper rifle 429 Hitler's soldiers and officers. Was injured 12 times.
Fedor Matveevich Okhlopkov, born March 2, 1908 in the village. Cross-Khaldzhay, Bayagantaysky ulus, Yakut region, Russian Empire - May 28, 1968, p. Krest-Khaldzhay, Tomponsky district, YASSR), USSR) - sniper of the 234th Infantry Regiment, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Fyodor Matveevich said that the Hero should have been given not to him, but to Ivan Kulbertinov

The "King of Snipers" lived in Yakutia.
Stepan Sivtsev:

I remember how on one of the summer white nights of 1965, a Volga stopped at our house, and respected guests knocked on our house - Hero of the Soviet Union sniper Fyodor Okhlopkov and the first secretary of the district committee of the CPSU Vasily Kolmogorov. Fyodor Matveevich was traveling from Moscow after being awarded the Hero Star. And he came to us in order to express words of gratitude to my father: “We carried your book with the poem “Walan Erilik” close to our hearts. She helped many overcome their fear of the enemy.” But that’s not what we’re talking about today. In his conversation, Fyodor Matveevich said that the Hero should have been given not to him, but to Ivan Kulbertinov. Who is Ivan Kulbertinov?
In 1917, a son was born into the family of a poor Evenk hunter on the banks of the Tyani River. The date of his birth is symbolic in that on this day the Aurora’s shot announced the beginning of a new era. The boy was given the Russian name Ivan. Soon after his birth, his father Nikolai Romanovich Kulbertinov died, and the boy was left with his sick mother Anna Vasilievna. He did not have the opportunity to study; at the age of 10, Ivan learned the secrets of hunting, which his older brother taught him. This is how the nomadic Evenki hunters lived, until alarming news reached a distant Evenki village, which at that time could only be reached in winter by reindeer sleds: “War!” Ivan Kulbertinov went to the recruiting station, explaining to the military commissar: “I’m hitting the beast in the eye, I want to beat the fascists!”

His wish came true - on June 12, 1942, Ivan was drafted into the Red Army. He underwent military training in the Urals. He received his first baptism of fire at the beginning of 1943 on the North-Western Front near Demyansk.

Having become acquainted with the personal file of I.N. Kulbertinov and appreciating the fact that he was from Siberia, he was appointed to the intelligence department for his dexterity and ingenuity. In February 1943, Kulbertinov was assigned to sniper. From 1943 to 1945, according to official data, he defeated 428 German fascists, mostly officers, including one Obersturmbannführer (colonel) with two iron crosses. According to Kulbertinov himself, he brought the list to five hundred Germans, but through no fault of his own, many of his achievements went unnoticed. Front-line statisticians turned out to be “literate” in this regard as well.

Ivan Kulbertinov opened his combat account as a sniper on February 27, 1943. In the battle near Staraya Russkaya, he killed the first enemy soldier with a well-aimed shot. It only takes a split second for a sniper to make a well-aimed shot, but to do this he had to sit for hours, sometimes days, in some shelter, sometimes without the opportunity to drink or eat. What helped him endure all this was that since childhood he had been accustomed to roaming the taiga and tracking down animals.

Here is an excerpt from Kulbertinov’s own memoirs: “I’ve been lying in ambush for the second day, every vein, every nerve is tense - I’m watching the barn where the Germans are located. In difficult moments I imagine the vast expanses of the Olekma taiga and I feel better. I see a wagon with ammunition driving up. Well, I think I’ll give you, Krauts, a “northern lights”!

The Germans began to unload ammunition. I waited until they removed all the boxes from the cart, loaded the sniper rifle with an armor-piercing incendiary cartridge and sent a “sweet gift.” Everything went upside down, a huge column of fire, smoke, and dust rose. More than a dozen fascists died from this explosion."

The homeland adequately appreciated the soldier’s military exploits: he was awarded the Orders of “For Courage”, “Glory” of the third degree, “Red Banner”, “Great Patriotic War” of the first and second degrees. Twice he was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but he was never I didn’t receive this. On January 11, 1944, the newspaper “Stalin’s Banner” of the 4th Ukrainian Front wrote about him: “The best sniper of our front, the guard, senior sergeant Kulbertinov, sent his 232nd Fritz to the grave. Veterans and fellow soldiers recalled with admiration how.” in the Moravian-Ostravian direction, Kulbertinov emerged victorious in three sniper duels with vaunted fascist aces - with direct hits to the heads he defeated one Sturmbannführer and two Obersturmbannführers from the Waffen SS Jaeger special forces unit.

In the area of ​​the city of Chernigov, a murdered German officer with Waffen SS insignia was found with an unsent letter, where he noted, “We are suffering heavy losses from a Russian sniper. He pursues us at every step, does not allow us to raise our heads. We are sitting without water and food, there is no way to get out of the dugout." This sniper was Ivan Kulbertinov.

In the fall, near the city of Mukachevo, a board with the inscription “Achtung Kulbert! (Caution, Kulbert!)” was discovered in one of the city blocks. And in one of the Carpathian villages a German warning was posted: “Achtung - Der sibirischen mitternacht” (Beware - the Siberian owl!" was read with genuine pride by his fellow soldiers. Thus, the name of Kulbertinov was well known to the Germans, they were afraid of him on the front line, and not only.

In combat conditions, Kulbertinov had no equal in physical and psychological preparation. It is not for nothing that he was nicknamed Buskhaa (in Evenki, “mighty”) in his homeland. Only he could kill a deer with a blow of his fist, and playfully break a thick pole into two parts. And in fights he was violent and undaunted. Tokko's old-timers remember well how on the Olekminsky bank he scattered the presumptuous hefty guys who dared to offend his fellow countrymen. And at the front he did not let anyone down. Some warriors, naively believing that the little northerner was not capable of giving back, more than once tried to provoke him into a fight. Kulbertinov beat the tall southerners with lightning speed, without any verbal altercations. Struck by the short man’s disproportionately large fists, they could not understand how they were sprawled on the ground. They were afraid of him, some hated him, they envied him, but they secretly admired him.

It was as if Buskhaa was born for war. Subsequently, when he was asked, “Wasn’t it scary to kill people?”, he answered, “In war I felt like I was on a hunt, and I convinced myself that a fascist is a real beast that must be immediately neutralized.” That’s how a hunter is. from Yakutia with a height not exceeding 1 meter 54 centimeters and a weight of 53 kilograms, destroyed a regiment of Krauts and created serious problems for Wehrmacht units.

The further fate of Ivan Nikolaevich was not crowned with laurels. Envious people prevailed, ill-wishers appeared, and for a long time he was not given the privileges he deserved at the front. The reason for this was his irreconcilable, proud character. Kulbertinov never liked to go through the authorities, prove something, ask, or behave servilely. The “King” of snipers, awarded by the Soviet Army with a personalized “TT” pistol and a “Chaika” vehicle, did not meet with much reverence in his homeland, and did not strive for “laurels”.

The front-line soldier returned home to the Olekminsky district after the restoration of Prague in September 1947 and took up his favorite activity - hunting. In one winter of 1947-1948, he caught and handed over 900 squirrels to the state. In subsequent years he worked as a fur farm hunter, and during this time his hunting amounted to 32 moose, eight bears, 2,500 squirrels, 86 sables. No one else in our region has achieved such great success. For selfless work in peacetime and heroic feats during the war, in 1968 he was awarded a personalized carbine with an optical sight.

Ivan Kulbertinov's sharp eye and faithful hand have always been in demand. Wolves brought a lot of harm to the Tokkinsky state farm. It was then that an experienced hunter was offered to hunt them. Ivan Nikolaevich decided to use the old hunting method - “stamping”. A wolf comes to the bait, begins to pull the bait towards itself, but then the guard is triggered, and a heavy log crushes the animal. But first you need to track down where the wolf pack lives, then set the trap so that the predators do not notice the catch... As a result, in one year, 1979, Ivan Nikolaevich killed 11 gray robbers, saving deer herds from predatory animals. A personalized gift also brought a lot of benefits.

Kulbertinov lived modestly; he gave away the rare gifts that the region and the republic gave him to his relatives. The heart of the great sniper Ivan Kulbertinov stopped beating on February 13, 1993. The hero Buskhaa died without receiving the well-deserved honors in his homeland.

It’s better not to remember how I was driving, how I sat in the bullpen, how many times my rifle was taken away. But, nevertheless, a month later the Yakut Volodya arrived in Grozny.
Volodya had only heard about one general who was fighting regularly, and he began to look for him in the February thaw. Finally, the Yakut was lucky and reached the headquarters of General Rokhlin.

The only document besides his passport was a handwritten certificate from the military commissar stating that Vladimir Kolotov, a hunter by profession, was heading to war, signed by the military commissar. The piece of paper, which had become frayed on the road, had saved his life more than once.

Rokhlin, surprised that someone came to the war of his own free will, ordered the Yakut to be allowed to come to him.
- Excuse me, please, are you that General Rokhlya? – Volodya asked respectfully.
“Yes, I’m Rokhlin,” answered the tired general, who peered inquisitively at a short man dressed in a frayed padded jacket, with a backpack and a rifle on his back.
– I was told that you arrived at the war on your own. For what purpose, Kolotov?
“I saw on TV how terrorists were killing ours with snipers. I can't stand this, Comrade General. It's a shame, though. So I came to bring them down. You don't need money, you don't need anything. I, Comrade General Rokhlya, will go hunting at night myself. Let them show me the place where they will put the cartridges and food, and I will do the rest myself. If I get tired, I’ll come back in a week, sleep in the warmth for a day, and go again. You don’t need a walkie-talkie or anything like that... it’s hard.

Surprised, Rokhlin nodded his head.
- Take, Volodya, at least a new SVDashka. Give him a rifle!
“No need, Comrade General, I’m going out into the field with my scythe.” Just give me some ammunition, I only have 30 left now...

So Volodya began his war, the sniper war.

He slept for a day in the headquarters cabins, despite the mine shelling and terrible artillery fire. I took ammunition, food, water and went on my first “hunt”. They forgot about him at headquarters. Only reconnaissance regularly brought cartridges, food and, most importantly, water to the appointed place every three days. Each time I was convinced that the parcel had disappeared.

The first person to remember Volodya at the headquarters meeting was the “interceptor” radio operator.
– Lev Yakovlevich, the enemy is panicking on the radio. They say that we have a certain black sniper who works at night, boldly walks through their territory and shamelessly cuts down their personnel. Maskhadov even put a price of 30 thousand dollars on his head. His handwriting is like this - this fellow hits bandits right in the eye. Why only by sight - the dog knows him...

And then the staff remembered about the Yakut Volodya.
“He regularly takes food and ammunition from the cache,” the intelligence chief reported.
“And so we didn’t exchange a word with him, we didn’t even see him even once.” Well, how did he leave you on the other side...

One way or another, the report noted that our snipers also give their snipers a light. Because Volodin’s work gave such results - from 16 to 30 people were killed by the fisherman with a shot in the eye.

The terrorists realized that the federals had a commercial hunter in Minutka Square. And since the main events of those terrible days took place in this square, a whole detachment of volunteers came out to catch the sniper.

Then, in February 1995, at Minutka, thanks to Rokhlin’s cunning plan, our troops had already reduced almost three-quarters of the personnel of the so-called “Abkhaz” battalion of Shamil Basayev. Volodya’s Yakut carbine also played a significant role here. Basayev promised a golden Chechen star to anyone who would bring the body of a Russian sniper. But the nights passed in unsuccessful searches. Five volunteers walked along the front line in search of Volodya’s “beds”, placing tripwires wherever he could appear in the direct line of sight of their positions. However, this was a time when groups from both sides broke through the enemy’s defenses and penetrated deeply into its territory. Sometimes it was so deep that there was no longer any chance to break out to our own people. But Volodya slept during the day under the roofs and in the basements of houses. The corpses of the terrorists—the sniper’s night “work”—were buried the next day.

Then, tired of losing 20 people every night, Basayev called from the reserves in the mountains a master of his craft, a teacher from a camp for training young shooters, the Arab sniper Abubakar. Volodya and Abubakar could not help but meet in a night battle, such are the laws of sniper warfare.

And they met two weeks later. More precisely, Abubakar hit Volodya with a drill rifle. A powerful bullet, which once killed Soviet paratroopers right through in Afghanistan at a distance of one and a half kilometers, pierced the padded jacket and slightly caught the arm, just below the shoulder. Volodya, feeling the rush of a hot wave of oozing blood, realized that the hunt had finally begun for him.

The buildings on the opposite side of the square, or rather their ruins, merged into a single line in Volodya's optics. “What flashed, the optics?” thought the hunter, and he knew cases when a sable saw a sight flashing in the sun and went away. The place he chose was located under the roof of a five-story residential building. Snipers always like to be on top so they can see everything. And he lay under the roof - under a sheet of old tin, the wet snow rain, which kept coming and then stopping, did not wet it.

Abubakar tracked down Volodya only on the fifth night - he tracked him down by his pants. The fact is that the Yakuts had ordinary, cotton pants. This is an American camouflage, which was often worn by terrorists, impregnated with a special composition, in which the uniform was indistinctly visible in night vision devices, and the domestic uniform glowed with a bright light green light. So Abubakar “identified” the Yakut into the powerful night optics of his “Bur”, custom-made by English gunsmiths back in the 70s.

One bullet was enough, Volodya rolled out from under the roof and fell painfully with his back on the steps of the stairs. “The main thing is that I didn’t break the rifle,” thought the sniper.
- Well, that means a duel, yes, Mr. Sniper! - the Yakut said to himself mentally without emotion.

Volodya specifically stopped cutting up terrorists. The neat row of 200s with his sniper “autograph” on the eye stopped. “Let them believe that I was killed,” Volodya decided.

All he did was look out for where the enemy sniper got to him from.
Two days later, already in the afternoon, he found Abubakar’s “bed”. He also lay under the roof, under a half-bent roofing sheet on the other side of the square. Volodya would not have noticed him if the Arab sniper had not been betrayed by a bad habit - he was smoking marijuana. Once every two hours, Volodya caught a light bluish haze through his optics, rising above the roofing sheet and immediately being carried away by the wind.

“So I found you! You can’t live without drugs! Good...” the Yakut hunter thought triumphantly; he did not know that he was dealing with an Arab sniper who had passed through both Abkhazia and Karabakh. But Volodya did not want to kill him just like that, by shooting through the roofing sheet. This was not the case with snipers, and even less so with fur hunters.
“Okay, you smoke while lying down, but you’ll have to get up to go to the toilet,” Volodya decided calmly and began to wait.

Only three days later did he figure out that Abubakar was crawling out from under the leaf to the right side, and not to the left, quickly did the job and returned to the “bed”. To “get” the enemy, Volodya had to change his position at night. He couldn't do anything anew, because any new roofing sheet would immediately give away his new location. But Volodya found two fallen logs from the rafters with a piece of tin a little to the right, about fifty meters from his point. The place was excellent for shooting, but very inconvenient for a “bed”. For two more days Volodya looked out for the sniper, but he did not show up. Volodya had already decided that the enemy had left for good, when the next morning he suddenly saw that he had “opened up.” Three seconds of aiming with a slight exhalation, and the bullet hit the target. Abubakar was struck on the spot in the right eye. For some reason, against the impact of the bullet, he fell flat from the roof onto the street. A large, greasy stain of blood spread across the mud in the square of Dudayev’s palace, where an Arab sniper was killed on the spot by one hunter’s bullet.

“Well, I got you,” Volodya thought without any enthusiasm or joy. He realized that he had to continue his fight, showing his characteristic style. To prove that he is alive and that the enemy did not kill him a few days ago.

Volodya peered through his optics at the motionless body of the slain enemy. Nearby he saw a “Bur”, which he did not recognize, since he had never seen such rifles before. In a word, a hunter from the deep taiga!

And then he was surprised: the militants began to crawl out into the open to take the sniper’s body. Volodya took aim. Three people came out and bent over the body.
“Let them pick you up and carry you, then I’ll start shooting!” - Volodya triumphed.

The three of the militants actually lifted the body. Three shots were fired. Three bodies fell on top of the dead Abubakar.

Four more militants jumped out of the ruins and, throwing away the bodies of their comrades, tried to pull out the sniper. A Russian machine gun started working from the side, but the bursts fell a little higher, without causing harm to the hunched over bandits.

Four more shots rang out, almost merging into one. Four more corpses had already formed a pile.

Volodya killed 16 militants that morning. He did not know that Basayev had given the order to get the Arab’s body at all costs before it began to get dark. He had to be sent to the mountains to be buried there before sunrise, as an important and respectable Mujahid.

A day later, Volodya returned to Rokhlin’s headquarters. The general immediately received him as a dear guest. The news of the duel between two snipers had already spread throughout the army.
- Well, how are you, Volodya, tired? Do you want to go home?

Volodya warmed his hands at the stove.
“That’s it, Comrade General, I’ve done my job, it’s time to go home.” Spring work at the camp begins. The military commissar only released me for two months. My two younger brothers worked for me all this time. It's time to know...

Rokhlin nodded his head in understanding.
- Take a good rifle, my chief of staff will draw up the documents...
- Why, I have my grandfather’s. – Volodya lovingly hugged the old carbine.

The general did not dare to ask the question for a long time. But curiosity got the better of me.
– How many enemies did you defeat, did you count? They say more than a hundred... the militants were talking...

Volodya lowered his eyes.
– 362 militants, Comrade General.
- Well, go home, now we can handle it ourselves...
- Comrade General, if anything happens, call me again, I’ll sort out the work and come a second time!

Volodya’s face showed frank concern for the entire Russian Army.
- By God, I’ll come!

The Order of Courage found Volodya Kolotov six months later. On this occasion, the entire collective farm celebrated, and the military commissar allowed the sniper to go to Yakutsk to buy new boots - the old ones had become worn out in Grozny. A hunter stepped on some pieces of iron.

On the day when the whole country learned about the death of General Lev Rokhlin, Volodya also heard about what happened on the radio. He drank alcohol on the premises for three days. He was found drunk in a temporary hut by other hunters returning from hunting. Volodya kept repeating drunk:
- It’s okay, Comrade General Rokhlya, if necessary we will come, just tell me...

The real name of Volodya-Yakut is Vladimir Maksimovich Kolotov, originally from the village of Iengra in Yakutia. However, he himself is not a Yakut, but an Evenk.

At the end of the First Campaign, he was patched up in the hospital, and since he was officially a nobody and there was no way to call him, he simply went home.

By the way, his combat score is most likely not exaggerated but understated... Moreover, no one kept an accurate account, and the sniper himself did not particularly brag about it.

After Vladimir Kolotov left for his homeland, scum in officer's uniform sold his data to terrorists, who he is, where he came from, where he went, etc. The Yakut Sniper inflicted too many losses on the evil spirits.

Vladimir was killed by a shot from 9 mm. pistol in his yard while he was chopping wood. "The criminal case was never solved..."

18-year-old Yakut Volodya from a distant deer camp was a sable hunter. It had to happen that I came to Yakutsk for salt and ammunition, and accidentally saw in the dining room on TV piles of corpses of Russian soldiers on the streets of Grozny, smoking tanks and some words about “Dudaev’s snipers.” This got into Volodya’s head, so much so that the hunter returned to the camp, took his earned money, and sold the little gold he had found. He took his grandfather’s rifle and all the cartridges, put the icon of St. Nicholas the Saint in his bosom and went to fight. It’s better not to remember how I was driving, how I sat in the bullpen, how many times my rifle was taken away. But, nevertheless, a month later the Yakut Volodya arrived in Grozny.

Volodya had only heard about one general who was regularly fighting in Chechnya, and he began to look for him in the February mudslide. Finally, the Yakut was lucky and reached the headquarters of General Rokhlin. The only document besides his passport was a handwritten certificate from the military commissar stating that Vladimir Kolotov, a hunter by profession, was heading to war, signed by the military commissar. The piece of paper, which had become frayed on the road, had saved his life more than once. Rokhlin, surprised that someone came to the war of his own free will, ordered the Yakut to be allowed to come to him. - Excuse me, please, are you that General Rokhlya? - Volodya asked respectfully.

Yes, I’m Rokhlin,” answered the tired general, who peered inquisitively at a short man dressed in a frayed padded jacket, with a backpack and a rifle on his back. - I was told that you came to the war on your own. For what purpose, Kolotov? - I saw on TV how the Chechens were killing our people with snipers. I can't stand this, Comrade General. It's a shame, though. So I came to bring them down. You don't need money, you don't need anything. I, Comrade General Rokhlya, will go hunting at night myself. Let them show me the place where they will put the cartridges and food, and I will do the rest myself. If I get tired, I’ll come back in a week, sleep in the warmth for a day and go again. You don't need a walkie-talkie or anything like that... it's hard. Surprised, Rokhlin nodded his head.

Take, Volodya, at least a new SVDashka. Give him a rifle! - No need, Comrade General, I’m going out into the field with my scythe. Just give me some ammunition, I only have 30 left now... So Volodya began his war, the sniper war. He slept for a day in the headquarters cabins, despite the mine shelling and terrible artillery fire. I took ammunition, food, water and went on my first “hunt”. They forgot about him at headquarters. Only reconnaissance regularly brought cartridges, food and, most importantly, water to the appointed place every three days. Each time I was convinced that the parcel had disappeared. The first person to remember Volodya at the headquarters meeting was the “interceptor” radio operator. - Lev Yakovlevich, the “Czechs” are in panic on the radio. They say that the Russians, that is, we, have a certain black sniper who works at night, boldly walks through their territory and shamelessly cuts down their personnel.

Maskhadov even put a price of 30 thousand dollars on his head. His handwriting is like this - this fellow hits Chechens right in the eye. Why only by sight - the dog knows him... And then the staff remembered about the Yakut Volodya. “He regularly takes food and ammunition from the cache,” the intelligence chief reported. “And so we didn’t exchange a word with him, we didn’t even see him even once.” Well, how did he leave you on the other side then... One way or another, the report noted that our snipers also give their snipers a light. Because Volodin’s work gave such results - from 16 to 30 people were killed by the fisherman with a shot in the eye. The Chechens figured out that the federals had a commercial hunter on Minutka Square. And since the main events of those terrible days took place in this square, a whole detachment of Chechen volunteers came out to catch the sniper.

Then, in February 1995, at Minutka, thanks to Rokhlin’s cunning plan, our troops had already reduced almost three-quarters of the personnel of the so-called “Abkhaz” battalion of Shamil Basayev. Volodya’s Yakut carbine also played a significant role here. Basayev promised a golden Chechen star to anyone who would bring the body of a Russian sniper. But the nights passed in unsuccessful searches. Five volunteers walked along the front line in search of Volodya’s “beds”, placing tripwires wherever he could appear in the direct line of sight of their positions. However, this was a time when groups from both sides broke through the enemy’s defenses and penetrated deeply into its territory. Sometimes it was so deep that there was no longer any chance to break out to our own people.

But Volodya slept during the day under the roofs and in the basements of houses. The corpses of Chechens - the night "work" of a sniper - were buried the next day. Then, tired of losing 20 people every night, Basayev called from the reserves in the mountains a master of his craft, a teacher from a camp for training young shooters, the Arab sniper Abubakar. Volodya and Abubakar could not help but meet in a night battle, such are the laws of sniper warfare. And they met two weeks later. More precisely, Abubakar hit Volodya with a drill rifle. A powerful bullet, which once killed Soviet paratroopers right through in Afghanistan at a distance of one and a half kilometers, pierced the padded jacket and slightly caught the arm, just below the shoulder.

Volodya, feeling the rush of a hot wave of oozing blood, realized that the hunt had finally begun for him. The buildings on the opposite side of the square, or rather their ruins, merged into a single line in Volodya's optics. “What sparkled, the optics?” thought the hunter, and he knew cases when a sable saw a sight glinting in the sun and went away. The place he chose was located under the roof of a five-story residential building. Snipers always like to be on top so they can see everything. And he lay under the roof - under a sheet of old tin, the wet snow rain, which kept coming and then stopping, did not wet it. Abubakar tracked down Volodya only on the fifth night - he tracked him down by his pants. The fact is that the Yakuts had ordinary, cotton pants. This is an American camouflage, which was often worn by Chechens, impregnated with a special composition, in which the uniform was indistinctly visible in night vision devices, and the domestic uniform glowed with a bright light green light.

So Abubakar “identified” the Yakut into the powerful night optics of his “Bur”, custom-made by English gunsmiths back in the 70s. One bullet was enough, Volodya rolled out from under the roof and fell painfully with his back on the steps of the stairs. “The main thing is that I didn’t break the rifle,” thought the sniper. - Well, that means a duel, yes, Mr. Chechen sniper! - the Yakut said to himself mentally without emotion. Volodya specifically stopped shredding the “Chechen order.” The neat row of 200s with his sniper “autograph” on the eye stopped.
“Let them believe that I was killed,” Volodya decided. All he did was look out for where the enemy sniper got to him from. Two days later, already during the day, he found Abubakar’s “bed”. He also lay under the roof, under a half-bent roofing sheet on the other side of the square. Volodya would not have noticed him if the Arab sniper had not been betrayed by a bad habit - he was smoking marijuana.

Once every two hours, Volodya caught in his optics a light bluish haze that rose above the roofing sheet and was immediately carried away by the wind. “So I found you, abrek! You can’t live without drugs! Good...” the Yakut hunter thought triumphantly; he did not know that he was dealing with an Arab sniper who had passed through both Abkhazia and Karabakh. But Volodya did not want to kill him just like that, by shooting through the roofing sheet. This was not the case with snipers, and even less so with fur hunters. “Okay, you smoke while lying down, but you’ll have to get up to go to the toilet,” Volodya decided calmly and began to wait. Only three days later did he figure out that Abubakar was crawling out from under the leaf to the right side, and not to the left, quickly did the job and returned to the “bed”. To “get” the enemy, Volodya had to change his position at night. He couldn't do anything anew, because any new roofing sheet would immediately give away his new location.

But Volodya found two fallen logs from the rafters with a piece of tin a little to the right, about fifty meters from his point. The place was excellent for shooting, but very inconvenient for a “bed”. For two more days Volodya looked out for the sniper, but he did not show up. Volodya had already decided that the enemy had left for good, when the next morning he suddenly saw that he had “opened up”. Three seconds of aiming with a slight exhalation, and the bullet hit the target. Abubakar was struck on the spot in the right eye. For some reason, against the impact of the bullet, he fell flat from the roof onto the street. A large fat stain of blood spread across the mud in the square of Dudayev’s palace, where an Arab sniper was killed on the spot by one hunter’s bullet. “Well, I got you,” Volodya thought without any enthusiasm or joy.

He realized that he had to continue his fight, showing his characteristic style. To prove that he is alive and that the enemy did not kill him a few days ago. Volodya peered through his optics at the motionless body of the slain enemy. Nearby he saw a “Bur”, which he did not recognize, since he had never seen such rifles before. In a word, a hunter from the deep taiga! And then he was surprised: the Chechens began to crawl out into the open to take the sniper’s body. Volodya took aim. Three people came out and bent over the body. “Let them pick you up and carry you, then I’ll start shooting!” - Volodya triumphed. The three Chechens actually lifted the body. Three shots were fired. Three bodies fell on top of the dead Abubakar. Four more Chechen volunteers jumped out of the ruins and, throwing away the bodies of their comrades, tried to pull out the sniper.

A Russian machine gun started working from the side, but the bursts fell a little higher, without causing harm to the hunched Chechens. Four more shots sounded, almost merging into one. Four more corpses had already formed a pile. Volodya killed 16 militants that morning. He did not know that Basayev had given the order to get the Arab’s body at all costs before it began to get dark. He had to be sent to the mountains to be buried there before sunrise, as an important and respectable Mujahid. A day later, Volodya returned to Rokhlin’s headquarters. The general immediately received him as a dear guest. The news of the duel between two snipers had already spread throughout the army. - Well, how are you, Volodya, tired? Do you want to go home? Volodya warmed his hands at the stove. - That’s it, Comrade General, I’ve done my job, it’s time to go home. Spring work at the camp begins. The military commissar only released me for two months.

My two younger brothers worked for me all this time. It's time to know... Rokhlin nodded his head understandingly. - Take a good rifle, my chief of staff will draw up the documents... - Why, I have my grandfather’s. - Volodya lovingly hugged the old carbine. The general did not dare to ask the question for a long time. But curiosity got the better of me. - How many enemies did you defeat, did you count? They say that more than a hundred... Chechens were talking to each other.
Volodya lowered his eyes. - 362 militants, Comrade General. - Well, go home, now we can handle it ourselves... - Comrade General, if anything happens, call me again, I’ll sort out the work and come a second time! Volodya’s face showed frank concern for the entire Russian Army. - By God, I’ll come!

The Order of Courage found Volodya Kolotov after some time. On this occasion, the entire collective farm celebrated, and the military commissar allowed the sniper to go to Yakutsk to buy new boots - the old ones had become worn out in Chechnya. A hunter stepped on some pieces of iron. On the day when the whole country learned about the death of General Lev Rokhlin, Volodya also heard about what happened on the radio. He drank alcohol on the premises for three days. He was found drunk in a temporary hut by other hunters returning from hunting. Volodya kept repeating drunk: “Nothing, Comrade General Rokhlya, if necessary we will come, just tell me...

Here’s what else I found online about Volodya, the hero of the First Chechen War:
"...Later, in 2003-2004, one of my friends and comrades told me that he personally knew this guy, and that indeed HE WAS. Whether there was that same duel with Abubakar, and whether the Czechs actually had such a super sniper, to be honest, I don’t know, they had enough serious snipers, and especially in the First Campaign. And there were serious weapons, including South African SSVs, and porridge (including prototypes of the B-94, which were just entering pre-series, the spirits already had, and with numbers in the first hundred - Pakhomych will not let you lie.

“The Kolotov family from the Yakut reindeer herding village of Iengra made the President happy with valuable gifts. Medvedev presented them with the Order of Parental Glory and the Order of Courage, to which one of the Kolotovs, Vladimir Maksimovich, a former sniper, was nominated during the Chechen War, but the awards for various reasons, the well-deserved reward finally found the hero and the grateful Yakuts decided not to remain in debt.

Immediately after the award, the family of the Evenk hunter-trader presented the President with a panel made by rural craftswomen and a symbol of power - paizu - an imperative plaque with a special inscription. But the attraction of reindeer herders’ generosity did not end there either. The Kolotovs also decided to give Medvedev a reindeer, which is considered a symbol of prosperity and prosperity among the Evenks. This information was accompanied by the following comment: “Medvedev’s deer will live in Iengra until his owner comes for him - this is what local custom requires.”
The President thanked the Kolotovs for their sincere gift, but did not yet take the deer to the Kremlin, expressing the hope that the animal would continue to live in its usual environment.
http://cyclowiki.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%8F-%D0%AF%D0%BA%D1%83%D1% 82 more versions of the fate of the legendary sniper

18-year-old Yakut Volodya from a distant deer camp was a sable hunter. It had to happen that I came to Yakutsk for salt and ammunition, and accidentally saw in the dining room on TV piles of corpses of Russian soldiers on the streets of Grozny, smoking tanks and some words about “Dudaev’s snipers.” This got into Volodya’s head, so much so that the hunter returned to the camp, took his earned money, and sold the little gold he had found. He took his grandfather’s rifle and all the cartridges, put the icon of St. Nicholas the Saint in his bosom and went to fight.

It’s better not to remember how I was driving, how I sat in the bullpen, how many times my rifle was taken away. But, nevertheless, a month later the Yakut Volodya arrived in Grozny.
Volodya had only heard about one general who was regularly fighting in Chechnya, and he began to look for him in the February mudslide. Finally, the Yakut was lucky and reached the headquarters of General Rokhlin.

The only document besides his passport was a handwritten certificate from the military commissar stating that Vladimir Kolotov, a hunter by profession, was heading to war, signed by the military commissar. The piece of paper, which had become frayed on the road, had saved his life more than once.

Rokhlin, surprised that someone came to the war of his own free will, ordered the Yakut to be allowed to come to him.
- Excuse me, please, are you that General Rokhlya? – Volodya asked respectfully.
“Yes, I’m Rokhlin,” answered the tired general, who peered inquisitively at a short man dressed in a frayed padded jacket, with a backpack and a rifle on his back.
– I was told that you arrived at the war on your own. For what purpose, Kolotov?
“I saw on TV how the Chechens were killing our people with snipers. I can't stand this, Comrade General. It's a shame, though. So I came to bring them down. You don't need money, you don't need anything. I, Comrade General Rokhlya, will go hunting at night myself. Let them show me the place where they will put the cartridges and food, and I will do the rest myself. If I get tired, I’ll come back in a week, sleep in the warmth for a day, and go again. You don’t need a walkie-talkie or anything like that... it’s hard.

Surprised, Rokhlin nodded his head.
- Take, Volodya, at least a new SVDashka. Give him a rifle!
“No need, Comrade General, I’m going out into the field with my scythe.” Just give me some ammunition, I only have 30 left now...

So Volodya began his war, the sniper war.

He slept for a day in the headquarters cabins, despite the mine shelling and terrible artillery fire. I took ammunition, food, water and went on my first “hunt”. They forgot about him at headquarters. Only reconnaissance regularly brought cartridges, food and, most importantly, water to the appointed place every three days. Each time I was convinced that the parcel had disappeared.

The first person to remember Volodya at the headquarters meeting was the “interceptor” radio operator.
– Lev Yakovlevich, the “Czechs” are in panic on the radio. They say that the Russians, that is, we, have a certain black sniper who works at night, boldly walks through their territory and shamelessly cuts down their personnel. Maskhadov even put a price of 30 thousand dollars on his head. His handwriting is like this – this fellow hits Chechens right in the eye. Why only by sight - the dog knows him...

And then the staff remembered about the Yakut Volodya.
“He regularly takes food and ammunition from the cache,” the intelligence chief reported.
“And so we didn’t exchange a word with him, we didn’t even see him even once.” Well, how did he leave you on the other side...

One way or another, the report noted that our snipers also give their snipers a light. Because Volodin’s work gave such results - from 16 to 30 people were killed by the fisherman with a shot in the eye.

The Chechens figured out that the federals had a commercial hunter on Minutka Square. And since the main events of those terrible days took place in this square, a whole detachment of Chechen volunteers came out to catch the sniper.

Then, in February 1995, at Minutka, thanks to Rokhlin’s cunning plan, our troops had already reduced almost three quarters of the personnel of the so-called “Abkhaz” battalion of Shamil Basayev. Volodya’s Yakut carbine also played a significant role here. Basayev promised a golden Chechen star to anyone who would bring the body of a Russian sniper. But the nights passed in unsuccessful searches. Five volunteers walked along the front line in search of Volodya’s “beds” and placed tripwires wherever he could appear in direct view of their positions. However, this was a time when groups from both sides broke through the enemy’s defenses and penetrated deeply into its territory. Sometimes it was so deep that there was no longer any chance to break out to our own people. But Volodya slept during the day under the roofs and in the basements of houses. The corpses of Chechens – the night “work” of a sniper – were buried the next day.

Then, tired of losing 20 people every night, Basayev called from the reserves in the mountains a master of his craft, a teacher from a camp for training young shooters, the Arab sniper Abubakar. Volodya and Abubakar could not help but meet in a night battle, such are the laws of sniper warfare.

And they met two weeks later. More precisely, Abubakar hit Volodya with a drill rifle. A powerful bullet, which once killed Soviet paratroopers right through in Afghanistan at a distance of one and a half kilometers, pierced the padded jacket and slightly caught the arm, just below the shoulder. Volodya, feeling the rush of a hot wave of oozing blood, realized that the hunt had finally begun for him.

The buildings on the opposite side of the square, or rather their ruins, merged into a single line in Volodya's optics. “What flashed, the optics?” thought the hunter, and he knew cases when a sable saw a sight flashing in the sun and went away. The place he chose was located under the roof of a five-story residential building. Snipers always like to be on top so they can see everything. And he lay under the roof - under a sheet of old tin, the wet snow rain, which kept coming and then stopping, did not wet it.

Abubakar tracked down Volodya only on the fifth night - he tracked him down by his pants. The fact is that the Yakuts had ordinary, cotton pants. This is an American camouflage, which was often worn by Chechens, impregnated with a special composition, in which the uniform was indistinctly visible in night vision devices, and the domestic uniform glowed with a bright light green light. So Abubakar “identified” the Yakut into the powerful night optics of his “Bur”, custom-made by English gunsmiths back in the 70s.

One bullet was enough, Volodya rolled out from under the roof and fell painfully with his back on the steps of the stairs. “The main thing is that I didn’t break the rifle,” thought the sniper.
- Well, that means a duel, yes, Mr. Chechen sniper! - the Yakut said to himself mentally without emotion.

Volodya specifically stopped shredding the “Chechen order.” The neat row of 200s with his sniper “autograph” on the eye stopped. “Let them believe that I was killed,” Volodya decided.

All he did was look out for where the enemy sniper got to him from.
Two days later, already in the afternoon, he found Abubakar’s “bed”. He also lay under the roof, under a half-bent roofing sheet on the other side of the square. Volodya would not have noticed him if the Arab sniper had not been betrayed by a bad habit - he was smoking marijuana. Once every two hours, Volodya caught a light bluish haze through his optics, rising above the roofing sheet and immediately being carried away by the wind.

“So I found you, abrek! You can't live without drugs! Good..." the Yakut hunter thought triumphantly; he did not know that he was dealing with an Arab sniper who had passed through both Abkhazia and Karabakh. But Volodya did not want to kill him just like that, by shooting through the roofing sheet. This was not the case with snipers, and even less so with fur hunters.
“Okay, you smoke while lying down, but you’ll have to get up to go to the toilet,” Volodya decided calmly and began to wait.

Only three days later did he figure out that Abubakar was crawling out from under the leaf to the right side, and not to the left, quickly did the job and returned to the “bed”. To “get” the enemy, Volodya had to change his position at night. He couldn't do anything anew, because any new roofing sheet would immediately give away his new location. But Volodya found two fallen logs from the rafters with a piece of tin a little to the right, about fifty meters from his point. The place was excellent for shooting, but very inconvenient for a “bed”. For two more days Volodya looked out for the sniper, but he did not show up. Volodya had already decided that the enemy had left for good, when the next morning he suddenly saw that he had “opened up.” Three seconds of aiming with a slight exhalation, and the bullet hit the target. Abubakar was struck on the spot in the right eye. For some reason, against the impact of the bullet, he fell flat from the roof onto the street. A large, greasy stain of blood spread across the mud in the square of Dudayev’s palace, where an Arab sniper was killed on the spot by one hunter’s bullet.

“Well, I got you,” Volodya thought without any enthusiasm or joy. He realized that he had to continue his fight, showing his characteristic style. To prove that he is alive and that the enemy did not kill him a few days ago.

Volodya peered through his optics at the motionless body of the slain enemy. Nearby he saw a “Bur”, which he did not recognize, since he had never seen such rifles before. In a word, a hunter from the deep taiga!

And then he was surprised: the Chechens began to crawl out into the open to take the sniper’s body. Volodya took aim. Three people came out and bent over the body.
“Let them pick you up and carry you, then I’ll start shooting!” - Volodya triumphed.

The three of the Chechens actually lifted the body. Three shots were fired. Three bodies fell on top of the dead Abubakar.

Four more Chechen volunteers jumped out of the ruins and, throwing away the bodies of their comrades, tried to pull out the sniper. A Russian machine gun started working from the side, but the bursts fell a little higher, without causing harm to the hunched Chechens.

Four more shots rang out, almost merging into one. Four more corpses had already formed a pile.

Volodya killed 16 militants that morning. He did not know that Basayev had given the order to get the Arab’s body at all costs before it began to get dark. He had to be sent to the mountains to be buried there before sunrise, as an important and respectable Mujahid.

A day later, Volodya returned to Rokhlin’s headquarters. The general immediately received him as a dear guest. The news of the duel between two snipers had already spread throughout the army.
- Well, how are you, Volodya, tired? Do you want to go home?

Volodya warmed his hands at the stove.
“That’s it, Comrade General, I’ve done my job, it’s time to go home.” Spring work at the camp begins. The military commissar only released me for two months. My two younger brothers worked for me all this time. It's time to know...

Rokhlin nodded his head in understanding.
- Take a good rifle, my chief of staff will draw up the documents...
- Why, I have my grandfather’s. – Volodya lovingly hugged the old carbine.

The general did not dare to ask the question for a long time. But curiosity got the better of me.
– How many enemies did you defeat, did you count? They say more than a hundred... Chechens were talking to each other.

Volodya lowered his eyes.
– 362 militants, Comrade General.
- Well, go home, now we can handle it ourselves...
- Comrade General, if anything happens, call me again, I’ll sort out the work and come a second time!

Volodya’s face showed frank concern for the entire Russian Army.
- By God, I’ll come!

The Order of Courage found Volodya Kolotov six months later. On this occasion, the entire collective farm celebrated, and the military commissar allowed the sniper to go to Yakutsk to buy new boots - the old ones had become worn out in Chechnya. A hunter stepped on some pieces of iron.

On the day when the whole country learned about the death of General Lev Rokhlin, Volodya also heard about what happened on the radio. He drank alcohol on the premises for three days. He was found drunk in a temporary hut by other hunters returning from hunting. Volodya kept repeating drunk:
- It’s okay, Comrade General Rokhlya, if necessary we will come, just tell me...

After Vladimir Kolotov left for his homeland, scum in officer uniform sold his information to Chechen terrorists, who he was, where he came from, where he went, etc. The Yakut Sniper inflicted too many losses on the evil spirits.

Vladimir was killed by a shot from 9 mm. pistol in his yard while he was chopping wood. The criminal case was never solved.

The first Chechen war. How it all started.
***
For the first time I heard the legend of Volodya the sniper, or as he was also called - Yakut (and the nickname is so textured that it even migrated to the famous television series about those days). They told it in different ways, along with legends about the Eternal Tank, the Death Girl and other army folklore. Moreover, the most amazing thing is that in the story about Volodya the sniper, an almost letter-by-word similarity was surprisingly traced with the story of the great Zaitsev, who killed Hans, a major, the head of the Berlin sniper school in Stalingrad. To be honest, at that time I perceived it as... well, let’s say, like folklore - at a rest stop - and it was believed and not believed. Then there was a lot of things, as, indeed, in any war, which you won’t believe, but turns out to be TRUE. Life is generally more complex and unexpected than any fiction.

Later, in 2003-2004, one of my friends and comrades told me that he personally knew this guy, and that indeed HE WAS. Whether there was that same duel with Abubakar, and whether the Czechs actually had such a super sniper, to be honest, I don’t know, they had enough serious snipers, and especially during the Air Campaign. And there were serious weapons, including South African SSVs, and porridge (including prototypes of the B-94, which were just entering pre-series, the spirits already had, and with numbers in the first hundred - Pakhomych will not let you lie.
How they ended up with them is a separate story, but nevertheless, the Czechs had such trunks. And they themselves made semi-handicraft SCVs near Grozny.)

Volodya the Yakut really worked alone, he worked exactly as described - by eye. And the rifle he had was exactly the one described - an old Mosin three-line rifle of pre-revolutionary production, also with a faceted breech and a long barrel - an infantry model of 1891.

The real name of Volodya-Yakut is Vladimir Maksimovich Kolotov, originally from the village of Iengra in Yakutia. However, he himself is not a Yakut, but an Evenk.

At the end of the First Campaign, he was patched up in the hospital, and since he was officially a nobody and there was no way to call him, he simply went home.

By the way, his combat score is most likely not exaggerated but understated... Moreover, no one kept an accurate account, and the sniper himself did not particularly brag about it.

Dmitry Travin

Rokhlin, Lev Yakovlevich
From December 1, 1994 to February 1995, he headed the 8th Guards Army Corps in Chechnya. Under his leadership, a number of areas of Grozny were captured, including the presidential palace. On January 17, 1995, generals Lev Rokhlin and Ivan Babichev were appointed by the military command to contact the Chechen field commanders with the aim of a ceasefire.

Murder of a General
On the night of July 2-3, 1998, he was found murdered at his own dacha in the village of Klokovo, Naro-Fominsk district, Moscow region. According to the official version, his wife, Tamara Rokhlina, shot at the sleeping Rokhlin; the reason was given as a family quarrel.

In November 2000, the Naro-Fominsk City Court found Tamara Rokhlina guilty of the premeditated murder of her husband. In 2005, Tamara Rokhlina appealed to the ECHR, complaining about the long period of pre-trial detention and the delay in the trial. The complaint was upheld and monetary compensation was awarded (EUR 8,000). After a new consideration of the case, on November 29, 2005, the Naro-Fominsk City Court for the second time found Rokhlina guilty of murdering her husband and sentenced her to four years of suspended imprisonment, also assigning her a probationary period of 2.5 years.

During the investigation of the murder, three charred corpses were found in a forested area near the crime scene. According to the official version, their death occurred shortly before the assassination of the general, and has nothing to do with him. However, many of Rokhlin’s associates believed that they were real murderers who were eliminated by the Kremlin’s special services, “covering their tracks”

For his participation in the Chechen campaign, he was nominated for the highest honorary title of Hero of the Russian Federation, but refused to accept this title, stating that he “has no moral right to receive this award for military operations on the territory of his own country.”