Tank battle in the Kantemirovsky division

A fire in Kantemirovskaya a large fire, accompanied by a series of powerful explosions, occurred yesterday morning in the territory of the elite Kantemirovsky tank division located in the Moscow Region. The fire covered one of the hangars of the fleet of military equipment. At the same time, the soldier died and the officer received burns. Firefighters for a long time could not begin to extinguish due to the fact that the ammunition of the T-80 tanks, which stood in boxes covered by fire, began to detonate. To investigate the reasons for the tragedy, the command of the Moscow Military District and representatives of the military prosecutor’s office arrived yesterday.

The Guards Tank Kantemirov Division is deployed on the outskirts of the city of Naro-Fominsk.

Yesterday's morning, as the head of the press service of the Moscow Military District, Colonel Vitaly Gusak, told the newspaper, the personnel of one of the tank companies returned from the next exercises and worked with special equipment in a concrete hangar. There were three T-80U tanks there. They did not participate in the exercises, so they stood with full combat. Each is 45 shells to a 125 mm gun, reactive guided shells and cartridges to a machine gun. Suddenly one of them caught fire.

Senior Lieutenant Rodion Poludnev immediately evacuated the personnel and called firefighters - in the territory of the division there is its own fire. Prior to their arrival, it was a good time, trying to prevent more serious consequences, in another tank he tried to pull out a burning car from the hangar. At that moment, when fire brigades drove up to the place of emergency, the T-80 flame exploded. At the same time, Private Alexei Zakharov, who helped the officer, was killed. Pod afterlife received burns of face and hands.

After a moment, the fire covered the entire room of technical boxing, and soon two more tanks exploded. The explosive wave of fragments and part of the boxing fragments was scattered within a radius of about a hundred meters. Meanwhile, the consequences could be much harder if the shells were stored not in tanks, but nearby. And so the lion's share of the shock wave was taken by the powerful T-80 armor.

After some time, calculations of the fire department of the UGPS of the Moscow Region were to help the military. To avoid new victims, the command of the unit drove heavy army tractors to the scene. Under their cover, the fighters began to extinguish the burning room. The fire was completely extinguished only by three o’clock in the afternoon. As a result, three T-80U 1985 T-80U tanks burned down and nine units of other equipment.

Immediately after receiving the signal about the tragic incident in the fleet of combat equipment of the elite division, the commander of the troops of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Ivan Efremov, went to the scene. It was he who headed the commission to investigate the reasons for what happened. In addition, the operational-investigation group, headed by the prosecutor of the MVO, Lieutenant General Alexander Vertukhin, also arrived in Naro-Fominsk. This group also included representatives of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office.

Experts claim that it is premature to talk about the possible causes of what happened before the results of the examination, which will appear no earlier than two weeks later. Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the Naro-Fominsky garrison, Colonel Alexander Greenbach, told the newspaper that a criminal case had already been instituted under Art. 293 h. 2 (negligence, which entailed by negligence of the death of a person).

According to unofficial data, a faulty wiring or violation of safety regulations could be the reason for the tragedy: perhaps someone lit a cigarette during the work. It is also not excluded that the spontaneous combustion of the oiled rags in hot weather.

Representatives of the GVP note that there was no such incident in the Kantemirovsky division for a very long time. In particular, such cases have not been recorded in the MVO parts of the MVO over the past 10 years. The Kantemirovsky division, along with Tamanskaya, is considered one of the best units of the Russian army, which is under special control among the leaders of the Ministry of Defense. Therefore, any incidents are quite rare here, although they do not deny the GVP that periodically there are cases of desertion and non-confused relations.

It is curious that representatives of the Committee of Soldiers' mothers told the newspaper that from the “punitive divisions - Kantemirov, Taman and separate division of the operational appointment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the former Dzerzhinsky division. - a newspaper) - reports of the lawlessness that has been going on there with frightening regularity.”

07/29/2003 / Ivan Egorov