The witness dressed Colonel Budanov
Yesterday the trial of Colonel Budanov resumed. Attempts to prove that the officer not only killed, but also raped the Chechen girl were unsuccessful.

The meeting began with a warning issued to the lawyer of the injured party, Abdulla Khamzaev. On May 11, he did not appear at the trial, having gone to Moscow, where his claim against the Ministry of Defense for compensation for the destroyed house in Urus-Martan was considered (his defense lawyer lost), and therefore the Rostov hearings were postponed to May 15.
After this, the court continued the interrogation of Igor Grigoriev, who served as the commander of an infantry fighting vehicle in Yuri Budanov’s regiment. Witness Grigoriev repeated the testimony given during the preliminary investigation, adding some clarifications to it. In particular, he previously claimed that at the moment when, on the orders of Yuri Budanov, he entered the kung, where the colonel was interrogating Elsa Kungaeva, the Chechen woman was lying on the bed completely naked and showed no signs of life, and the regiment commander was wearing only swimming trunks. Now Grigoriev remembered that officer Budanov was wearing a tracksuit, which he tried to take off with the words “I tore the suit, b... Chechen!” Igor Grigoriev confirmed that Budanov ordered him and soldier Artem Lee Yong Shou to bury the girl’s corpse, threatening to “find them everywhere” if they told anyone about what they saw.
From the testimony of Igor Grigoriev, it also became clear that Yuri Budanov began looking for the sniper in Tangi in early March. The colonel ordered the BMP commander to keep the vehicle in constant readiness, since information about where the sniper was could arrive at any moment. Then, allegedly, Yuri Budanov was even able to get her photo, after which he made the decision to detain her. In addition, witness Grigoriev testified that on the night of March 27, the regiment commander was shown the way to the Kungaevs’ house by three Chechens detained on suspicion of collaboration with militants. At the meeting, no answer was received to the question of where Colonel Budanov got the photo of Elza Kungaeva. The defendant's lawyer Anatoly Mukhin also remained silent, promising that everything would become clear during the interrogation of the colonel himself.
Abdulla Khamzaev, judging by his questions, does not give up trying to prove that Yuri Budanov raped the girl. Although the testimony of the BMP commander, where exactly and in what position Elsa was lying when he entered the kung, whether he saw blood on her body, does not allow us to speak confidently about rape.
Yuri Budanov's defense defends the version according to which the colonel committed the murder while in a state of passion. Lawyer Mukhin asked to clarify whether Igor Grigoriev took Colonel Budanov’s threat to him seriously when he said that “he has enough cartridges for everyone”? He replied: “I understood that he would not kill us, but he was scary.”
The interrogation procedure was enlivened only by the question of lawyer Khamzaev: “Do you think, by carrying out the order to bury the girl, did you help Budanov hide traces of the crime or performed the funeral of the deceased?” The mother of the dead girl began to cry. And Igor Grigoriev replied: “At that moment I was carrying out the order.”
Another witness who spoke in court, soldier Artem Lee Yong Shaw, stated that he and other servicemen were under pressure: one of the military investigators, during interrogation in Khankala, threatened to send them to a prison located in Chernokozovo if they did not give the necessary testimony .
ANTON KARMALIN, Rostov-on-Don

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 82 dated May 16, 2001, p. 2