Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Text by the late Kirill Romanovsky appeared on the V Kontakte page of PMC Wagner - military review.
I have tried to identify the various Wagner call signs.
[VK] On March 27, 2016, Wagner PMC units liberated the Syrian Palmyra. The media then said that the ancient city from the cover of history textbooks was taken by Russian troops and units of the Syrian army. However, in reality, no Russian troops, and even more so Syrian ones, were not involved in the assault on Palmyra - all operations on the ground were carried out by Wagner PMC fighters and only they.
War correspondent Kirill Romanovsky (1985 - 2023) left his memories of how the assault on Palmyra took place, and how the heroes of this battle were subsequently treated. Further, his story is about how the Russian generals behaved during the storming of the ancient city, and why the Ministry of Defense decided to disband the Wagner detachments after the Palmyra operation.
March 26, 2016.
When we arrived near Palmyra together with Sedym, of all the Russian troops, only General Alexander Dvornikov was in position with a large retinue and guards. He sat at the command post on the roof of a three-story concrete building. Tellingly, the Russian general was very drunk. There were also a large number of Syrian generals, to whom the batmen constantly carried tea in thin glass cups - Syrian with a "waist," and cold towels. It was hot. The generals were sweating, but they sat and watched. It was like in a theater - white tablecloths, tables. And they see on the roof how ordinary guys will take Palmyra.
The battlefield was perfectly visible, because the building was located ten kilometers from the Palmyra ridges - as in the palm of your hand there was a flat plateau, quarries and Height 939, which Ratibor's detachment was supposed to enter.
Ratibor is Aleksandr Kuznetsov, a Wagner commander. You can read more about Aleksandr Kuznetsov, and his exploits in Libya here.
Dvornikov held a short meeting with his retinue and said loudly: "If Hill 939 is taken, then consider Palmyra has fallen."
Sedym and I arrived at night. And early in the morning they approached the “roof” from somewhere in the camp where the PMC “Wagner”, the Director and the Ninth were located. They greeted Dvornikov. The drunken general behaved boorishly and arrogantly, as he was once again asked what means and support forces would be used by the military.
The director quarreled with Dvornikov, demanding to put in two helicopters for insurance, in case the groups get stuck in front of this height, in order to support them with turntables. Dvornikov was indignant. One of the officers took the Director aside and said that "yes, yes, yes, there will be turntables."
I myself stepped aside, and the Director with the Ninth went to Ratibor, who was leading the first units to the starting line. The movement was to be three kilometers of minefields. When the "comrades" from the Russian Armed Forces sent the boys from the "Wagner" there, they were told that 939 had no minefields, no spirits - nothing. But it was necessary to break through with heavy fighting.
Groups of "Wagners" advanced and immediately began to be raked from machine guns from the heights near the vertical bald entrance to the mountain. And there, behind the folds in the mountain, the ISIS machine gunners were sitting, and stones still hung over them, which made practically prepared pillboxes out of the folds.
You can’t just get the enemy out of there with nothing: neither grenades, nor mines. The only thing left is to go across the open area directly to the machine guns. The guys went ahead and performed tasks that everyone said was impossible.
The assault was heavy and difficult, for several hours Ratibor climbed steep slopes under heavy enemy fire. Mortars worked, every now and then the “Wagner” M-30, a 1943 howitzer, was connected, for which a couple of dozen shells were allocated. The director returned from his positions, Sedoy and Ninth remained there, and began to swear loudly and shout at Dvornikov: “Bitch, give me at least 100 more shells!” Dvornikov no longer talked to him, but the shells still appeared from somewhere. One car arrived and brought 130 pieces.
While Ratibor was moving, the evacuation of the wounded began - they were taken towards Skalbia. In the first few hours, about 30 wounded and 15 killed appeared. "Wagners" field doctors "darned" right on the bus while moving towards the city.
By the end of the day, Ratibor went to the height, and we heard the long-awaited on the radio: "Height 939 is taken, we are moving along the ridge." Ratibor began to move from the opornik to the opornik of the enemy along the ridge to the north.
The director approached Dvornikov and said that Height 939 had been taken, now you can handle it yourself. To which the satisfied Dvornikov immediately began to call someone on the phone to report to the Chief of the General Staff that he had taken Palmyra. Although Palmyra had not yet been taken and a day of heavy fighting was ahead. This was the day before the capture of the ancient city.
Dvornikov patted the Director on the shoulder and said: "Well done, Zhenya, then we ourselves." The director, in turn, spat to the side, silently turned around and went to the exit. Dvornikov jumped up from his chair, caught up with him - and I heard him say: “Come on, don’t be offended, you understand that we won’t do anything ourselves. Let's finish the job, why swear."
After taking Height 939, Ratibor entered the outskirts of Palmyra, a second group of Wagners pulled up to help him. Together they took the substation and the airport. Only after that, the ISIS went to the elevators outside the city, leaving it. And there, the “courageous” Syrian troops, after waiting almost a day, moved towards Palmyra along the back road. We came within shooting distance, checked that everything was safe and rushed to loot and take selfies as a keepsake.
LISTS FOR AWARDS
Further events became known to me in subsequent years. Now I understand that the truth is more important than etiquette. And what I know is the sum of what the Wagner employees told me.
In March 2016, the Director came to the President and asked to reward the fighters who especially distinguished themselves during the storming of Palmyra. Putin agreed, saying that he knew that Wagner PMCs worked in the second echelon.
It was a perennial problem. The Ministry of Defense has always lied about the fact that PMC "Wagner" is not ahead, but behind. There was even such a joke among the fighters: “we are going in the second echelon, but there is no one in the first one.”
It is said that the president agreed that five people would receive the title of Hero of Russia.
Then the Director brought a list for the awarding of Shoigu, which included Sedoy, Tramp, Ninth, Ratibor and another PMC fighter. Shoigu shouted and said indignantly that some gopniks cannot go down in history like those who took Palmyra. And if they are given not just Heroes, but simply any state orders, then this will be a shame for the country. And refused.
The names listed are call signs of Wagner operatives.
They say that the head of the PMC, leaving, slammed the door, stopped in the reception room and said to the assembled deputies of the defense minister: “Well, bitches, have you already screwed holes on your tunics for Palmyra?”
And, indeed, for the capture of Palmyra, the Stars of Heroes were received by the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov. Even commander Alexander Dvornikov, who was sitting drunk at the command post near Palmyra, received the Star of the Hero.
Gray-haired and Tramp were given the title of Heroes of the Russian Federation only a few months after the capture of Palmyra.
"REWARD" FOR HEROES
But the real "reward" for PMC "Wagner" for the storming of Palmyra was not state orders and recognition - but complete disbandment. The next day after the conflict with Shoigu, the Director was summoned to the Chief of the General Staff and said that a decision had been made to disband the "orchestra", and all those present there needed to urgently leave Syria.
The reason for such an order was not only the awards of the Heroes of the Russian Federation for the PMC "Wagner" - but also the case with a strike on the location of the 4th assault detachment, commanded by Brodyaga.
Brodyaga is Andrey Bogatov, a Wagner operative.
It was near Palmyra literally the next day after the Director's conversation. The Su-24 aircraft actually "unloaded" four FAB-500s at the position of the Wagner PMC. The coordinates of the point of temporary deployment of 4 SHO were entered in the target log, and the strike on them was delivered deliberately.
Who entered the location coordinates could not be established. It was rumored that this was Shoigu's answer for the director's incorrect behavior. After this incident, the Tramp, having lost one arm, climbed the mountains for three days and pulled out his fighters. There were many wounded, several people died.
Then there was a scandal, employees of the PMC "Wagner" came to Dvornikov and demanded this pilot - but he said that "if a dozen scum died, then the pilot only benefited - he learned how to accurately drop bombs on moving targets."
The conflict reached the point where the Director was summoned to the Chief of the General Staff. Shoigu himself, who at that moment went hunting, instructed Gerasimov to withdraw all employees of the Wagner PMC from Syria.
The execution of the command began immediately - literally on the third day after Shoigu's decision. Il-76s flew to Syria in large numbers - at first people were loaded into them to return to the Russian Federation. Further, the "Wagners" began to be taken out from the mountains, from different positions. They came in trucks, they were stuffed into planes, and before that they were searched. The military police took away personal belongings, weapons, body armor. All the "good" was piled up on the runway and the military immediately looted it.
There was another highlight as well. The fighters were taken to Latakia immediately after Palmyra. Some time later, the guide was called to the headquarters. Like, "tomorrow the task will follow, urgently get ammunition." The commander blew up the personnel, went to the port, loaded KamAZ trucks with ammunition until the evening. And when he came back, he was again urgently summoned to the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.
- Did you bring it?
- That's right, the task is completed, here is the ammunition.
- And now listen to the introduction: urgently take the ammunition back and prepare for departure to Russia. You have a couple of hours.
WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER
The next day the weather turned bad, there were no planes. Since the Chief of the General Staff hurried Dvornikov every day and said to urgently remove all the "Wagners" from Syria, referring to the order of the Minister of Defense, a crazy decision was made to send about three hundred people on the deck and in the hold of a large landing ship - BDK, which during the next flight just brought ammunition to the Russian group and stood in the port of Latakia.
The fighters were sent along the route Latakia - Novorossiysk through Turkey, without providing medical care to the wounded and without food and water. The journey took almost 3 weeks.
All this time, the “Wagners” were sitting on the ship without supplies - only thanks to the actions of the ship’s crew, it was possible to transfer several containers of water to the fighters. While there were not enough provisions for everyone, the ship's crew shared what they could.
Separately, it is worth mentioning about the wounded "Wagnerites" and the attitude towards them from the Ministry of Defense. Since the hospital in Khmeimim, by order from above, refused to accept fighters from the Wagner PMC, it was necessary to take the wounded for evacuation to the Russian Federation to Latakia from Skalbia, where the main Wagner hospital was located.
The most striking example is when a “Wagnerian” with legs amputated after being wounded was lying in a military hospital, then at some point the military prosecutor was indignant that he was being fed for free. And so the PMC employees began to carry their food separately to the Wagnerian.
Another time, the head of the hospital walked around Khmeimim drunk and yelled that it was not worth spending medicines on the Wagners. It got to the point that the dispatcher, who was responsible for PMC communication with the military, went to Homs himself and brought the necessary painkillers. After a couple of days, the wounded man was taken away and taken to the hospital in Skalbia to his father Abu-Fadi, who did everything to help Wagner PMC.
But back to evacuation. One of the fighters, recalling the voyage on the BDK, said that he was pulled out of the hospital with a fragment in his hand, saying that he had to get ready, there were no options, otherwise he would not return to Russia later.
They pulled out of the hospital and his comrade, whose foot was torn off by a mine, and who could not move independently, hardly jumping on crutches:
“I helped him, we walked together all the time - and since we were in the same platoon, I helped to drag him. When we arrived for loading, he could not go down to the deck. I tried to help him down because the stairs were steep. Military police officers came up and one of them said: “What the hell are you doing?” - pushing him down so that he hung on the stairs and somehow got down in his arms. When we sailed past Turkey, the wounds began to rot and bleed heavily.
So the fighters of PMC "Wagner" returned to Russia. Behind them was the liberated Palmyra - a city that they took with heavy losses - as well as a number of other important victories.
However, instead of awards and honors, wounded soldiers in bloody bandages, like prisoners of war in a Nazi concentration camp, were thrown out of Syria, mocked and mocked. Throwing them out, the military also erased the memory of the "Wagners" from military records. Meanwhile, the “heroic Minister of Defense Shoigu”, in expensive glasses with a thin gilded frame, was engaged in woodcarving on his hunting estate in Tuva.
Every evening, the Chief of the General Staff called him, told him in detail about all the sophistications. And he, sitting in an easy chair by the fireplace, having steamed up in a cedar bath, smiled blissfully and rejoiced, realizing that the Russian power that he was so afraid of was gone. He crushed her.
"FAREWELL CONCERT" OF THE ARMY MEN
Nine months have passed since March 26, 2016.
We fought in Palmyra, there were excursions from important dignitaries and journalists. And on December 9, 2016, about 30 ISIS militants, having shot at a checkpoint on the western entrances of Palmyra, broke into the city.
The Syrian and Russian military began to hastily leave their positions. ISIS pulled up about 100 reserve people. And as a result, several thousand army soldiers shamefully fled from Palmyra, leaving tanks, armored vehicles and artillery along the way, which later fell to ISIS.
And again it was the turn of the "Wagners" to save the honor of the country, whose military functionaries wiped their feet on them a few months ago. But these are other events that I will tell you later.
EPILOGUE
I tell this story, knowing that my days are numbered, and I am unlikely to see its publication. But I ask my friends, to whom I left my archive, to publish it when necessary, in order to help my comrades-in-arms and real Russian heroes, with whom I walked shoulder to shoulder for many years under enemy bullets. They are with machine guns and machine guns, and I am with a camera and a camera.
Kirill Romanovsky
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