The general's name was Mammoth

In Rostov-on-Don, on the Walk of Fame of the largest cemetery in Europe, yesterday they buried Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant General Mikhail Rudchenko, who died in Chechnya as a result of the explosion of an Mi-8 helicopter. They said goodbye to the chief policeman of the Southern Federal District for two days: first in Moscow, then on the Don. Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, and the Ministry of Defense from almost all corners of Russia came to the memorial service at the district House of Officers. The correspondent of the newspaper Vremya Novostei counted about fifty generals alone. And from Saratov, where 56-year-old Mikhail Rudchenko began his service as a criminal investigation inspector, a special plane with his former colleagues even flew to Rostov-on-Don.

“We called Rudchenko Mammoth,” Major General Oleg Latukhin, first deputy head of the Saratov Region Central Internal Affairs Directorate, told the Vremya Novostei newspaper. “For an opera, this is a very respectful nickname; there was no stronger professional in the criminal police of the Saratov region.” “He flew to Chechnya to prepare the trip of the Minister of Internal Affairs Boris Gryzlov,” said the deputy. Head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate for the Rostov Region Anatoly Korolkov. “As the head of the Southern District Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Mikhail Rudchenko spent a lot of time in Chechnya.”

Commenting on the investigation into the circumstances of the Mi-8 crash, which resulted in the death of 13 other officers in addition to Rudchenko, Vladimir Ponomarev said yesterday that the causes of the explosion will apparently be named within a week: “If this is an explosion from within, which is being talked about as the main version , then it will be easy for criminologists to confirm this hypothesis.”

Igor BURAKOV, Rostov-on-Don