Translated material
Cooler than the highlanders
What are the officers of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs study in the mountains
Officers of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs learn to fight in the mountains. And how else, if there is a war in the Caucasus and, for the success of operations in Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan, mountaineering skills are necessary. How these skills are gaining - The New Times watched at mountain training fees in Elbrusie
Ilya Barabanov
Terskol - Moscow
In a clearing by the slope next to the village of Tegenekli, officers are divided into groups of 10-12 people. Each group has its own instructor. They are kneaded, stand on ski tours-the so-called skis for lifting along the slope. They are distinguished by another type of fastening and camus - a special tape that is glued to skis during lifting. The instructor shows how to climb the slope of the "Christmas tree". How, going down, slow down with a “plow”. How to fall. Students are falling often. Although they all arrived on fees from their units in Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and most of them have repeatedly participated in special operations in the mountains, many went skiing for the first time in their lives. “So far you are young and strong, go to the tops on the date,” calls an advertising shield pinned to the pine tree. A dozen people in khaki build, one by one, rise to the slope of the "Christmas tree". “I took part in the dates, more likely,” one of them drops, “and they certainly ended better.”
In conversations, the commanders often remember Grigory Shiryaev. Captain Shiryaev died in the Achkhoy-Martan district of Chechnya on February 4, 2010. Then, as President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov announced, during a special operation, law enforcement officers destroyed six militants. Nothing was reported about the losses from the security forces. Captain Shiryaev was well prepared for the battles in the mountain-lazel areas. He, the deputy commander of the mountain training group of military unit No. 6761, regularly went to the training camp in the mountains, and in September 2009 he received a certificate of mining training instructor. The operation to capture Dokarov, which stretched for several weeks, became the latter for Shiryaev.
"We are not preparing saboteurs"
Colonel of the Interior Ministry of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Mikhail Illarionov passed both Chechen campaigns. Then there were no specialized mountainous units in the armed forces. The need to learn to fight in the mountains, according to him, was spoke after the operation to destroy Ruslan Gelaev. On December 15, 2003, a detachment of a field commander was seen in the Tsuntinsky district of Dagestan. The operation lasted several weeks, Gelaev was killed on February 28, 2004. “The GRU special forces worked there. People received frostbite. It turned out that they are not ready for operations in the mountains, ”recalls Illarionov. By that time, mining training was taught only at the FSB. In 2005, a training center earned in the Akhmedovsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, where military personnel were taught to fight in a mountain-laziness area. Mostly officers come to Elbrus training camps: they are preparing instructors, who then will train subordinates in their parts. “The work is in two directions: mining training of instructors and combined arms, combat training,” says Colonel Alexander Ukrainian, deputy head of the department of physical training of the Armed Forces of the Ministry of Defense. “We are not preparing here not ordinary saboteurs!”
The number of mountain parts of the Interior Ministry of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is about 4 thousand people: 2 operational battalions and 2 intelligence battalions. “Many do not need to fight in the mountains,” one of the officers is sure. “Prepared people should quickly occupy a height, keep it - the next task.” 
Future instructors, for the first time rising on the skis, go in a chain along the Adyl-Su gorge. At the head of a small detachment is an instructor from the Federation of Climbing Russia. The military has concluded an agreement on cooperation with the headlights: civilians have to be involved, since there are not enough their specialists yet. One of the skiers falls on the snow: “Climbers, damn it,” he grumbles, getting out of the snowdrift. - I want to go home! " The New Times correspondent follows them without skis, falling into the snow, knee -deep, or even a waist. Around - the beautiful mountains, the bright sun is reflected from dazzling white snow, so it is impossible to move without sunglasses. The detachment gets stuck in a turn: you need to go between two huge boulders, the fallen tree overlaps the road, and the men clumsily lift the skis. "We will overcome the obstacle - and a smoke break!" - the instructor encourages the wards. “You photograph guys from the Ministry of Internal Affairs in such funny situations calmly,” says his colleague, “but with officers from the Ministry of Defense, be more careful. Their bosses react very nervously when a photograph appears somewhere, for example, with their fighter who has fallen on a ski descent. It would seem that the exercises are held for this in order to not how to ride to do this, and at the same time fall correctly, but in the General Staff, apparently, they believe that the fallen military man will disgrace the uniform. ” 
At the training camp of officers, they settled in the Elbrus educational and methodological center. To get there, it is necessary to pass the border post - Georgia is already beginning to be behind the ridge. In the corridor of the room where the head of the fees lives, there is a large green locked box. On it is a sign: "Means of moral and psychological support." “The chest of political instructor,” the officers smile, “but no one knows what he keeps in it.” “I am from the Voronezh region, the mountains there, of course, no,” Sergei shares his impressions. “On the first day, having risen skiing, he constantly fell, on the third - he went normally, and today he had already done 7 descents on the training slopes and never fell.”
Foreign packaging
For fees in the Elbrusier, officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense arrived without weapons, so from the outside you might think that several dozen men in Haki simply decided to gather and learn to go skiing. However, their classes are not limited to skiing. Mining includes avoiding avalanches. The military learn to use the beepers (a sensor for detecting an object under an avalanche), learn the probing rules (look for with special probes-zonds that come under an avalanche).
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The need to learn to fight in the mountains
They spoke after the operation to destroy
Ruslan Gelaeva
“Fight in the mountains officers study on Austrian skis and Italian boots - the ammunition of the proper level in Russia is simply not produced.“ His carbine, well, gave this to this iron, ”says Colonel Illarionov, analyzing the backpack.“ There are no light protective helmets. It draws a scheme of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: the duffel service is responsible for the supply of ammunition to the troops, but when the thermos or first -aid kits are requested from it, the quartermasters offer to contact related services, food or medical ones.
Sergei, after several hours of skating on the slopes, unfasten his Italian shoes and sits on the log. He is the captain, he came to fees from Ingushetia, willingly talks about work where the skills obtained on the exercises are very useful. “In the mountains, you often have to face even terrorists, but with the Kadyrovites, and you will not always understand who is more dangerous,” he says. - If you look from the side, what we are doing here, you might think that all this is wasted, but there, in combat conditions, to be able to move correctly in the mountains, of course, you need to. The route, which will take away without this preparation a day and a half, can be done in 6–8 hours. ” 
However, no preparation is insured from mistakes. Sergei tells how surgery was to be destroyed by Said Buryat. To blow up the leader of the Ingush militants, the FSB officers prepared an ambush and laid 30 kg of explosives. When the security forces finally blew up Buryatsky and hastened to inform the media about their success, then about six wounded shyly fell silent. “In the federal media, taboos on the coverage of our operations in the Caucasus,” says Colonel Illarionov. - Inhabitants are informed about 10% of what is happening. In this case, only the most successful operations are reported. As a result, the population is confident that underground is defeated. ” 
The fact that this is not so, the correspondent of The New Times was convinced after a couple of days, being in Nalchik. On March 24, a special operation was held to destroy the next leader of the militants - Anzor Astemirov. And after another 5 days, on Black Monday, March 29, the whole country found out that the defeat of the underground was still very far away. 
Most officers got skiing for the first time on these exercises, although operations against militants in the mountains for them are everyday practice