Translated material
"I fought on the eastern front"
—Where did the war find you in Abkhazia?
- I am a former officer of the internal troops. After graduating from college, he served in Tbilisi, then in Sukhumi. In 1988, I retired from military service and went home to Kazan. When Georgia invaded Abkhazia, I decided to return to Sukhumi and volunteer to fight on the Abkhaz side.
- Why did you decide to voluntarily go to war?
- I learned about the beginning of the war from television news - Georgia attacked little Abkhazia. I had many friends in Abkhazia. Therefore, for me there was no question whether to stay at home or support the people whom I had come to love during my military service. Many Russians who fought for the independence of Abkhazia thought so. There were many volunteers. Guys from Kazan, Sverdlovsk, and Moscow were traveling to Abkhazia.
I remember when I was already on the Eastern Front, a young guy arrived from Sverdlovsk. He reached the port of Poti in Georgia, from there he walked on foot to the city of Ochamchira, captured by the Georgians, where he declared: “I want to fight for the independence of Abkhazia.” He was immediately imprisoned. True, we later managed to exchange the poor fellow for captured Georgians. So the guy got where he wanted. True, he died in battle at the end of the war. The last name somehow faded from my memory, but I remember that his name was Radik.
— How was the situation for the Abkhazians at the beginning of the war?
- I fought on the eastern front. After Tbilisi began hostilities in 1992, the situation for Abkhazia became critical. There weren't enough weapons. In the first battles, many were armed with hunting rifles. In Tkvarcheli we even made homemade grenades from scraps of pipes filled with ammonal - we lit the fuse and threw them. They even tried to make mortars from pipes. When testing the first homemade mortar, the commander was wounded and the gunner was killed.
The Georgians were fully armed. They got almost all the weapons of the Transcaucasian Military District: a lot of armored vehicles, aircraft, guns. Even after the war, we found entire arsenals of shells left by the Georgian army in school buildings. We had to seize weapons from the Georgians or buy them from the Russian military. For this, the entire people collected money and valuables and donated them to the defense fund.
—What is the eastern front of the Georgian-Abkhaz war?
— After the Georgians captured Sukhumi, the Abkhazians managed to hold their positions on the right bank of the Gumista River, and the Gumista Front was formed there. The Abkhaz repelled the attacks of the Georgians, who were rushing to the city of Gudauta. A real guerrilla war began in the area of the city of Ochamchira. The Ochamchira sector, together with the mountainous Tkvarcheli, surrounded by Georgian troops, began to be called the eastern front.
How did the fighting on the eastern front develop?
- Here the Georgians held a narrow coastal strip with the Tbilisi-Ochamchira-Sukhumi highway, which was constantly attacked by Abkhaz partisans and volunteers who prevented the delivery of ammunition and food from Tbilisi to Sukhumi. Manpower, military equipment and ammunition for the Georgian army had to be transported by air or by sea. When Georgian troops tried to break through the front with the help of armored vehicles, the infantry was cut off by fire, and the tanks were burned or captured. In the Ochamchira region and Tkvarcheli, we managed to knock out dozens of Georgian armored vehicles, several combat aircraft and helicopters.
The fighting in Abkhazia was fierce and full-scale. The Georgians used Grad rocket launchers, artillery, and aviation. At the very beginning of the war, they even tried to land an amphibious assault force in the Gulripsha area, but it was destroyed. Abkhazia also launched amphibious assaults twice. The first failed due to a strong storm. The second Abkhaz naval landing from Gudauta, with the support of boats of the Abkhazian naval forces, was landed on the morning of July 2, 1993 in the area of the village of Tamysh on the eastern front. About 300 Abkhaz paratroopers, together with fighters of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus and Cossacks, joined forces with local partisan detachments and cut the Sukhumi-Tbilisi highway. The fighting did not stop for ten days. As a result, the Georgian army in Sukhumi found itself surrounded. At the end of September 1993, Sukhumi was liberated. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze fled the city. He was taken from the airport on a Tu-134 plane. The personal presidential Yak-40 was abandoned and still stands at Sukhumi airport.
— How many Russian volunteers and Cossacks fought on the side of the Abkhazians?
- I don’t know the total number of volunteers. I think that there were about ten percent of the entire Abkhaz army, but their support was of enormous moral and military importance. Volunteers from Siberia, Moscow, Tatarstan fought here, and many died. Many Cossacks from Stavropol, Krasnodar, and Rostov fought in Abkhazia. They fought desperately along with the fighters of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, among whom there were many Chechens, guys from Kabarda, Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia. Even volunteers from Turkey and small groups of fighters from Transnistria fought on the side of Abkhazia.
— In Moscow at that time they wrote that mercenaries were fighting on the side of the Abkhazians. How true is this?
- What mercenaries?! I can declare that not a single one of the volunteers, Cossacks or Confederates received a single penny from the authorities of Abkhazia. The guys came to help the people of Abkhazia. We didn't receive any money.