“THE SAILOR FELL OUT OF THE TRAIN”

ARMY

Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk region. Night. Somewhere not far from the Obozerskaya station, popularly called Obozerka, either affectionately or fervently, a guy in a black naval uniform lies under the railway embankment. The snow is spattered with blood. In the chest...

Arkhangelsk

Arhangelsk region. Night. Somewhere not far from the Obozerskaya station, popularly called Obozerka, either affectionately or fervently, a guy in a black naval uniform lies under the railway embankment. The snow is spattered with blood. A cell phone rings in my breast pocket. But the sailor does not answer. Can't answer.

A month and a half before this December night, Alexei Gornikh asked at the district military registration and enlistment office if he was entitled to a delay, since he and his wife were expecting a child. The answer was categorical: you are going to the army, and when the child is born, we will send you home.

And on December 24, 60 sailors, including the sailor Gornikh, after taking the oath, rode the Arkhangelsk-Nyandoma train. Aleksey's parents also returned to Shoshma in the same composition. At the Obozerskaya station, the conscripts were transferred to another train - to Severomorsk. At parting, Alexei promised to call his wife back. But only 59 fighters reached their destination.

Without waiting for news from her husband, wife Ekaterina herself tried to call her husband on her mobile in the morning. The phone didn't answer. And at 8 o'clock the nurse of the Obozersky first-aid post picked up the phone. It was she who said that Alexei was thrown off the train.

The doctors could not talk to their parents for a long time - they were in a hurry to find a car to send the patient to the Savinskaya hospital. A neurosurgeon was also called there. After the examination, it became clear that Alexei needed to be urgently taken to the hospital in the city of Mirny. On the evening of December 25, the operation was performed there.

Alexey's mom is very grateful to the doctors. Severely frostbitten hands saved. A complicated operation was performed on a broken spine. In addition, the soldier suffered a traumatic brain injury and broken ribs.

“Now we only have legs ... our legs don’t walk yet,” says Elena Mitrofanovna, who returned from Mirny to Shoshma. This week he is being transferred to a Moscow hospital. There will be another operation.

The military contacted Aleksey's parents for the first time only on February 3, a month and a half later. (It is not hard to guess that the scandal with Private Sychev and the publications in the central press about the fate of the sailor Gornikh himself (see Novaya Gazeta, January 30, 2006) frightened the serene officers until then.) The caller introduced himself as “the commander of the unit in which Private Gornikh served ", inquired about the state of his son's health, said that one of those who beat Alexei was arrested. Three more accomplices are being identified. He assured that everyone would be found and punished.

Aleksey Gornikh hardly speaks yet, the stress he has experienced is having an effect. And if he speaks, he remembers a little:

- I almost do not remember anything. I remember that I was beaten by four...

Officially, the headquarters of the Russian Navy stated that “the sailor Gornikh himself tore off the stop-cock and jumped out of the train. The officers accompanying the conscripts are innocent." And those who beat?

So far, the Severodvinsk naval base has evaded comments altogether, trying to play ordinary telephone football. And there is something to comment on: now another sailor who tried to commit suicide is undergoing treatment in Severodvinsk. As Tatyana Vosakhlo, the chairman of the city Severodvinsk Council of Soldiers' Mothers, said, a young man who served on one of the ships experienced the bullying of "grandfathers" for a long time. In the end, he tried to poison himself with drugs. Doctors managed to save his life.

IN THE NEXT ISSUE

Senior warrant officer Oleg Zvyagintsev, 33, was left alone with two children in his arms: the youngest girl is infancy, the eldest is 3.5 years old. Oleg Alexandrovich's wife died of cancer. Serving in the army and living with two small children in a dorm room is a heavy burden, and the authorities refused to receive normal housing. It was then that the senior warrant officer wrote a letter to the Chief of the General Staff, General of the Army Baluyevsky. And he immediately took the most effective part, allocating an apartment from the General Staff fund.

But it was too early to rejoice. The ensign began to take revenge. Even the commander of his native military unit 74048, in the city of Ramenskoye near Moscow, does not issue an elementary certificate for receiving the allowance due to two young children.

Details are in one of the following issues of Novaya Gazeta.

Vyacheslav IZMAILOV, military observer for Novaya Gazeta