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2023-10-05 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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Heroes of the Syrian Desert: How the fighters of the PMC defeated ISIS
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Direct Translation via Google Translate.
Text taken from the article in the link, via Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
This is a bit of "inside baseball" of the Russian role in the defeat of ISIS in 2017 in Syria.
[BOOSTY] In the fall of 2017, an incident occurred in the Syrian Arab Republic that immortalized for all time the names of two Russian citizens who bravely fought in the Syrian desert and were captured by militants of the Islamic State terrorist group banned in the Russian Federation. After a fierce battle in the village of Ash-Shola, southwest of Deir ez-Zor, press reports appeared that militants had captured two Russian fighters from the Wagner PMC - Grigory Tsurkana and Roman Zabolotny. Soon, reports arrived that they had been killed on October 3, 2017.
The names of Grigory Turcanu and Roman Zabolotny subsequently surfaced more than once in the media. Patriotic media noted the courage and heroism with which the two fighters entered into an unequal battle with superior enemy forces. Years later, the names of the two fighters forever entered the pantheon of Russian heroes; The IS militants responsible for their deaths were eliminated, and a monument to Tsurkan and Zabolotny was erected near the chapel of the Wagner PMC in Goryachiy Klyuch.
Commissioner Yarrick, head of the military-political Telegram channel Astra Militarum, talks about how the heroes of the Syrian war who came from Russia to protect civilians from international terrorism fought.
DEEP IN THE DESERT
September 2017 in the Syrian Arab Republic marked a radical turning point in the protracted war against Islamic State militants. At the beginning of the month, forces on the side of the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad managed to break the siege of Deir ez-Zor and begin the systematic destruction of the terrorist underground on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. And at the forefront of the forces going on the offensive against the militants’ positions was a group of Russian military specialists and volunteers, which became known as the Wagner PMC.
As we already know from previous texts on the history of the Orchestra, the Wagner Group included experienced and motivated fighters. The main core of volunteers and military specialists previously participated in battles in the Donbass, where, through the efforts of a small detachment of “musicians,” they managed to stop the advance of Ukrainian troops on Lugansk and protect civilians from the massacre unleashed by Ukrainian formations. A detachment of the future PMC "Wagner", which at that time was a small battalion-tactical group, stormed the Lugansk airport - the key stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Lugansk region, thereby driving Ukrainian forces away from the capital of the LPR.
By 2017, the Wagnerites had already achieved a considerable number of feats of arms as part of the operation in Syria. Since 2015, Wagner fighters have taken part in the most complex and dangerous operations as effective and efficient assault infantry - the culmination of their activities were the two assaults on Palmyra in 2016 and 2017, which we will definitely talk about in the very near future. After stabilizing the situation around Palmyra, liberating the gas fields of Al-Shair and storming the ISIS fortified area in Akerbat , Wagner PMC units broke through the siege of Deir ez-Zor and crossed the Euphrates River , thereby bringing the military defeat of the jihadists closer.
Among the attack aircraft that successfully operated in Deir ez-Zor and the desert areas along the M-20 highway were two heroes of our history. Their fate turned out to be inseparably linked with the fate of bloodless Syria, to the defense of which two volunteers from Russia rose up.
Little is known about the personalities and lives of Grigory Turcanu and Roman Zabolotny before the fateful Syrian events. According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, Tsurkanu was born in 1978 in Syktyvkar, in 1996-1998 he served in an airborne reconnaissance company in the Moscow region, and signed a contract there after military service. In 2012, after serving in the 137th Guards Parachute Regiment in Ryazan, BMD mechanic-driver Tsurkanu retired from the army and changed several occupations.
The fact that Tsurkanu, even before joining the Wagner PMC, decided to devote his life to protecting peace, order and justice around the world, is evidenced by several facts from his biography. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Turcanu went to fight as a volunteer in other hot spots even before the “Orchestra” was created - in particular, he went to the war in Yugoslavia, but nothing is known about his participation in hostilities there. It is known that Tsurkanu was already familiar with Syria from a previous trip - in 2013, he came to the SAR along with other Russian specialists to guard oil production facilities, where, apparently, he met the future commander of the Wagner PMC, Dmitry Utkin.
After a short business trip to Syria, Tsurcanu is engaged in public work as part of the branch of the veterans’ charity organization “Combat Brotherhood” at his place of residence in Domodedovo. Several photographs have been preserved online from meetings of the Combat Brotherhood organization, at which Turcanu is present. However, after the outbreak of hostilities in Donbass, the retired paratrooper voluntarily decides to join the ranks of the militia. Thanks to his acquaintance with Dmitry Utkin, Tsurcanu joins the battalion-tactical group he created under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin, consisting of Russian volunteers and veterans of hot spots.
As the head of the GRAY ZONE Telegram channel, who personally knew Grigory Turcanu, recalls, among the “musicians” he bore the call sign “Gal”. His other comrades recall that the former paratrooper was modest and taciturn throughout his life. We will remember this character trait of “Gala” in this text.
“I knew Turcanu personally; we met him in 2014. Grisha was a fighting man, he fought for a long time in different locations, if you don’t give away all the secrets, said the GRAY ZONE administrator. “5 years ago, fortune turned away from him: despite the fact that he is a trained pro, there are situations in life that we cannot change.”
Even less information has been preserved on the Internet about Roman Zabolotny. It is known that he was born in 1979 in the Rostov region into a family of hereditary Don Cossacks. The memory of his great ancestors led Zabolotny to the Russian Cossack movement: after serving in the border troops, the young man joined the organization of the All-Great Don Army, took part in reviews and public activities of the military-patriotic movement.
In 2014, like many Cossacks from the Don, Zabolotny went to Donbass to fight as part of the militia after the coup in Ukraine and the outbreak of the civil war. It is known that Roman Zabolotny took part in the battles at Saur-Mogila and Novoazovsk, as well as in the operation near Zelenopole. After the end of the “hot” phase of the conflict in Donbass, Zabolotny returned to Rostov and changed a number of civilian professions, in particular he worked as a cook. However, when the Cossack heard about the recruitment of volunteers for the Wagner PMC, he made a decision and went to Syria - to meet his fate.
BATTLE OF ASH-SHOLA
In the fall of 2017, when attack aircraft from the Wagner PMC had already crossed the Euphrates and began fighting with Islamic State terrorists on the eastern bank of the great river, the militants tried to turn the situation around by complicating the position of pro-government forces near Deir ez-Zor. For this purpose, IS flying squads in pickup trucks planned a series of attacks on the Damascus-Palmyra-Deir ez-Zor highway in order to tie up the supply of the advancing forces. At that time, attack aircraft from the Wagner PMC drove the militants away from the key highway, but fast and maneuverable IS units could easily break through to the highway - especially in those places that were controlled exclusively by soldiers of the Syrian army. According to the recollections of the fighters of the Wagner PMC, the militants had the opportunity to cross the highway without hindrance - somewhere they slipped past a checkpoint,
The most dangerous section of the Damascus-Palmyra-Deir ez-Zor route was considered to be the route between the city of Es-Sukhneh in Homs province and the village of Ash-Shola, southwest of Deir ez-Zor. At that time, these settlements were located deep in the rear, but the militants had the opportunity to conduct raids and raids, using the vast and uncontrolled spaces of the Syrian desert for their own purposes. In addition, the Syrian army and various local militias lacked the discipline and organization to properly protect communications, and therefore the command decided to use fighters from the Wagner PMC to escort Syrian convoys.
Apparently, the IS militants knew nothing about this. And so, on September 28, 2017, in the area of the village of Ash-Shola, militant groups attacked a small column of Syrian troops. Similar incidents occurred that day in three places along the highway section - in particular, near Es-Sukhneh, and in the area of the village of Kabajib, and therefore, as news agencies Al Masdar News and DeirEzzor 24 reported at the time, traffic on the Deir Ezzor highway -Zor - Palmyra was suspended. This, however, did not prevent the “flying” IS units from going deep into the rear of the Syrian army and, two days after the breakthrough, briefly capturing the city of El-Qaryatein, southwest of Palmyra.
The media then reported that at least ten Syrian soldiers were killed during the clashes near Ash-Shola, but the convoy managed to avoid complete destruction and withdraw from the battle. The militants moved in mobile groups, mainly consisting of pickup trucks with ZU-23 or heavy machine guns mounted on board. At the same time, as the sources note, not only Syrian soldiers traveling in buses and minibuses came under fire from the jihadists, but also civilians traveling separately in a passenger car and stopping at the request of the militants.
In that very convoy near Ash-Shola were the heroes of our story today - Grigory Tsurkanu and Roman Zabolotny: their detachment was tasked with escorting the convoy and preventing an attack by militants. According to the testimony of a Syrian soldier who survived the battle, cited by Arab media, a detachment of 50-80 terrorists in pickup trucks was waiting for the convoy in an ambush near Ash-Shola.
The Syrian military was unable to provide adequate resistance to the militants and died one after another in an attempt to escape from the battlefield under fire. According to eyewitnesses, Tsurkanu and Zabolotny were able to stop the stampede of the Syrians and organize a retreat, covering the surviving fighters. Despite the disparity in strength, Russian specialists managed to hold the line, even when a group of militants began to bypass them under the cover of machine-gun fire.
“Since there were and are conversations about whether there was a battle (contact) or not, we will make our contribution: a group of 10 of our fighters and two small buses with gardeners, went for some little thing from point A to point B, where and the situation happened. The Sadyks were the first to be taken out of the battle while they were on wheels; most did not even have time to dismount,” the head of the GRAY ZONE Telegram channel later said. – Based on the results of the battle, there were seven 200s on our side, two were captured and one survived. How he got to his people is a separate miracle and a separate story.”
CAPTIVITY
The fact that individual soldiers of the Syrian army managed to survive is, of course, the merit of the Wagnerites. However, as a result of the battle, Tsurkanu and Zabolotny were captured after a fierce hand-to-hand fight: as eyewitnesses testify, shell-shocked and having spent all their ammunition, they did not lose their dignity and continued to fight in close combat.
Islamic State propagandists tried to use prisoners and force them to declare on camera that they would go over to the Islamic State. However, they did not fall for the militants’ tricks, and in the video published by the IS media center they only gave their names. As a result, the militants had no choice but to release a video of captured soldiers of the Wagner PMC (who, due to ignorance, were simply called “Russian military”) on the Internet through the IS-controlled propaganda organ Al-Amak.
While captured by the militants, the “Wagnerites” also showed themselves with dignity. Grigory Turcanu, who had one eye blackened during the battle near Ash-Shola, remained silent during interrogations - this was especially affected by the fact that “Gal”, in principle, was a man of few words in life. Roman Zabolotny mainly spoke for the two: he provided the militants with obviously false and incorrect information, trying to confuse the enemy as much as possible with his testimony. This detail subsequently became known after the publication of a video recording that captured the moment Turcanu and Zabolotny were captured after being shell-shocked.
In the recording, the Cossack told the militants that the minibus they were traveling in when they were ambushed by ISIS was moving towards the headquarters - although in fact the headquarters was in a completely different direction. A number of media outlets, including the Damascus Herald portal, suggested then that Zabolotny deliberately misinformed the militants by sending IS on a false trail, because if Zabolotny had agreed to cooperate with the militants, the defense of the Syrian army in Deir ez-Zor would have collapsed overnight.
BLOOD FOR BLOOD
Realizing that the prisoners would not agree with the demands of the Islamists, would not go over to their side and were openly fooling them, the militants executed Tsurkana and Zabolotny on October 3, 2017. In the same message from the Al-Amaq portal on September 28, the terrorists immediately announced that they intended to execute prisoners publicly in IS-controlled territory. However, the circumstances surrounding the death of the two Russians are still the subject of controversy.
One of the versions of the death of Turcanu and Zabolotny, which appeared in the media at the end of 2017, states that the captured Russians and another unknown person were brutally executed by militants in al-Jardak Square in the city of Al-Mayadeen by beheading and burning. According to this version, the execution of the prisoners was immediately followed by at least 50 raids by Russian and Syrian aircraft. However, no confirmation of this version was subsequently found.
The reprisal of two captured Wagnerites did not in any way ease the situation for the terrorists. By October 2017, the situation of the Islamic State in the province of Deir ez-Zor had become catastrophic. The assault troops of the Wagner PMC were already breaking into the defenses of the Islamists on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, while the militants themselves in Deir ez-Zor, deprived of supplies due to the advance of the “musicians,” were surrendering block after block to the Syrian army. In November 2017, the Syrian military will enter Al-Mayadin, which by that time the militants had declared their “capital” - already the third after Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. At this time, the “Wagnerites” completed the defeat of the Islamic State in Deir ez-Zor and cleared the last fortified area of the militants on the island of Huwayja Katya. And already in December 2017, pro-government forces and Russia jointly inflicted a military defeat on the forces of the pseudo-caliphate.
During the battle for the last stronghold of the Islamic State in Al-Bu Kemal, the field commander of the Islamic State, who was responsible for the capture and execution of Grigory Turcanu and Roman Zabolotny, was eliminated. The terrorists involved in the capture of the Russians were eliminated during a special operation carried out by detachments of the Wagner PMC together with the forces of the Syrian special forces “ISIS Hunters” - the latter, by the way, promised to take revenge on ISIS for the execution of two Russians. The terrorist field commander and his accomplices were discovered north of the city of Al Bu Kamal, in the desert region of Deir ez-Zor province. When the terrorists realized that their location was known, they attempted a breakout, during which they were eliminated.
EVERLASTING MEMORY
Unfortunately, in the first days after the capture and execution of Turcanu and Zabolotny, Russian official agencies did not help in any way in the rescue of prisoners from the dungeons of the Islamic State. On September 28, when IS militants published the first video of the interrogation of Tsurkana and Zabolotny, representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense denied statements about the capture of “Russian military personnel” in Syria and stated that there were no incidents in Deir ez-Zor or other areas of the country.
“All military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation located in the Syrian Arab Republic are performing their assigned tasks as intended,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Representatives of the Wagner PMC had a different opinion on the substance of the issue. Since for a long time nothing was known about the fate of Turcanu and Zabolotny, representatives of the “orchestra” tried to get their comrades out of captivity by any possible means. In particular, the only official communication channel at that time was used for these purposes - the official Twitter account of ISIS Hunters. So, on October 4, a proposal was published there to pay one million dollars for each Russian. In November, “Hunters” offered to exchange 250 Islamic State militants captured on the island of Huveyja Katya for Tsurkana and Zabolotny. Neither proposal was ever considered by the leaders of the Islamic State, since the militants had already executed the captives by that time.
Grigory Turcanu and Roman Zabolotny remained in the memory of people as exemplary warriors who fought bravely and died with dignity. The memory of two heroes who bravely fought in the Syrian desert and were captured by IS militants is still alive today. Former and current fighters of the Wagner PMC annually remember the feat of Turcanu and Zabolotny. The fact that two Russians were in the ranks of the “orchestra” was officially confirmed by Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 - talking about the events near Palmyra and the subsequent battles of the “orchestra”, the head of the Wagner PMC especially noted the feat of the two heroes in the battle near Ash-Shola. Finally, the memory of the fighters was immortalized in the legendary chapel of the Wagner PMC in Goryachiy Klyuch - a monument standing in the park near the temple recorded the moment of the last battle between Turcan and Zabolotny.
The battle that two heroes from Russia gave in the middle of the distant Syrian desert...
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Posted by badanov 2023-10-05 00:00||
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