The Most Disastrous Month in the History of Russian Spetsnaz
- Vlad Besedovskyy
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
How January 1995 became a reckoning for GRU special forces—and what it reveals about the system that sent them to war
January 1995, in the opening phase of the First Chechen War, stands as the “black month” for Russia’s GRU Spetsnaz. Not because individual operators lacked skill or courage, but because elite units were fed into missions that ignored doctrine, bypassed logistics, and blurred command responsibility. Three events—on the 1st, 7th, and 24th of January—set bleak records: the first Spetsnaz deaths of the campaign, the largest mass surrender in GRU history, and the deadliest single incident the service has ever suffered. Together they sketch a simple conclusion: capability without proper command and purpose is a wasting asset.
From Afghan “golden era” to post-Soviet hollowing
The late Soviet military carried a structural rot into the 1990s. Under Brezhnev, armed forces were routinely diverted to civilian “хозработы” (harvests, factory labor, construction), and the culture of readiness eroded. Career incentives rewarded pleasing superiors and massaging reports more than training and candor. One major exception was Afghanistan. There, GRU Spetsnaz honed repeatable search-ambush methods, synchronized with artillery and aviation, and fed by a real training pipeline: dedicated regiments, Afghan-specific workups, and a cadre of experienced NCOs and warrants.
The 1991 collapse shattered that scaffolding. Of 14 Spetsnaz brigades, one was dissolved and five fell outside Russia’s new borders (Belarus, Ukraine, Uzbekistan). Afghan-blooded detachments were scattered; veteran battalions (отряд or "unit" as they were called in Spetsnaz) ended up in foreign armies. Inside Russia, many of the most promising late-1980s young officers, those who should have been running companies and battalions by 1994 have left amid pay chaos and uncertainty. Training regiments and schools were disbanded; nothing replaced the Afghan pipeline.
By December 1994, eight GRU brigades remained on paper, most understrength, wartime manning never opened. The political theory of action—“take Grozny in two hours”—meant only two composite detachments were mobilized at the outset: the 173rd (22nd Brigade) and the 691st (67th Brigade), each under 200 men.
Spetsnaz tasks - expectations and reality
Doctrinally, GRU Spetsnaz conduct deep reconnaissance and interdiction: map enemy movement, ambush logistics, designate targets for artillery and airstrikes, and execute precise raids. On 1 January 1995, the 691st Spetsnaz Unit, under the command of Maj. Andrei Panferov did exactly that on the Vedeno–Serzen-Yurt road. His team has detonated mine on the lead BTR, two trucks wrecked, clean exfiltration. Classic Afghan craft: small teams shaping the flow of the operation.
But Grozny’s reality quickly dragged Spetsnaz into ad hoc line roles. Conventional formations were understrength and blind; divisional recon companies were shells. Commanders began parcelling Spetsnaz groups to motor-rifle brigades as “recon boosters”—and then as plug-and-play shock troops. Misemployment produced the first tragedy.
1th of January. Eight men into a kill zone
An eight-man group from 691st Spetsnaz Unit, led by Capt. Igor Lelyukh, attached to the 131st Motor Rifle Brigade, had already done its job: scout the entry route. When the brigade became trapped near the rail station, a rear-area “relief column” was thrown together: thirty logistics trucks and a dozen BMPs. It was led by the brigade’s deputy for logistics and deputy for armaments. Lelyukh protested that spearheading a mechanized push through unfamiliar building blocks without proper support wasn’t a Spetsnaz task. Overruled, his men were split among the lead vehicles.
The column rolled into RPG ambushes. The lead BMP took a direct hit; Lelyukh and three of his men dismounted and fought on foot but were quickly outgunned and killed near the burning vehicle. A second BMP was knocked out within 30 meters; two Spetsnaz servicemen (Lt. Dmitry Yerofeyev and Sgt. Vladimir Kazakov) covered the escape of senior officers before being killed in place. Six out of eight Spetsnaz men were killed—the first GRU fatalities of the war and a stark lesson in how not to use an elite unit.
The myth that “Spetsnaz can do anything” becomes, in practice, a license to misuse them.
7th of January. “The most humiliating episode”—a mass surrender
Two detachment groups from 173rd Spetsnaz Unit, totalling 24 men under the command of Maj. Igor Morozov were deployed near Komsomolskoye village on 31 December to mine roads leading to Grozny. Smoke from burning oil wells obscured planned landing zones; pilots dropped the group on an unscouted third site and in full daylight. Locals saw the helicopters; Chechen security mobilized a search.
Morozov realized the compromise and requested extraction. The GRU officer controlling the sector refused, reportedly dismissing the request and insisting no helicopters were available. On 3 January, with clear weather, headquarters flew in two more groups instead—among them the detachment commander, Maj. Andrei Ivanov, and a replacement for Morozov. Suddenly there were 50 men in winter mountains with limited food, tangled leadership, and a 1976 map that didn’t match the ground.
Days of cold marches drained the unit. By 6th of January they were on starvation rations and near frostbite; fires were lit for the first time. At dawn on 7th of January, in fog, Chechen fighters, reportedly including ex-Soviet Spetsnaz with Afghan experience, surrounded their hilltop, killed two sentries, and wounded two more. Weather still grounded Russian helicopters. A discussion followed; officers voted to surrender. Radios and documents were destroyed; weapons stacked. Forty-eight Spetsnaz fighters, including four majors and a detachment commander, descended with hands up - the largest number of surrendered fighters in GRU history.
The outcome was brutal to reputations and merciful to lives: all 48 were exchanged within weeks. The decision traded careers for survival. Morozov later returned to the unit and fought through 1996. The deeper indictment rests with headquarters choices, who refused extraction, ill-judged reinforcement, and a leadership chemistry guaranteed to fail under stress.
“I think I’ll be judged by the parents of my soldiers who came home alive.”
24th of January. An explosion that erased a battalion
The 370th detachment (16th Brigade), a relatively well-manned 250-person unit led by Afghan veteran Lt. Col. Yevgeny Sergeyev, arrived mid-month and attached to the group of forces "West", who were assaulting Grozny. After several days of urban recon, including the rescue of a Russian colonel hiding in a basement for 17 days, the detachment quartered in the former Krasny Molot factory. On 24th of January, a massive internal explosion collapsed an entire wing, killing 46 Spetsnaz fighters immediately (two more died in hospital) and wounding over 20, including the commander. The detachment was destroyed as a fighting force in seconds.
No formal investigation followed; the tragedy was not publicised. Competing explanations circulated: pre-mined building, friendly artillery, but the weight of evidence points to improper storage of explosives inside the living area. A visiting Marine officer recalled demolition charges “laid out everywhere.” Only after the blast did an order mandate burying ammunition stocks in pits. A preventable safety failure obliterated an elite unit, and the institution chose silence.
Why January mattered
Across these vignettes runs a common thread:
Misemployment. Deep-recon detachments recast as column leaders and assault infantry.
Fragmented command. GRU units subordinated to conventional commanders with urgent problems and a belief that “Spetsnaz will fix it.”
Hollow force structure. Understrength brigades, composite detachments, conscripts with thin field training, and no Afghan-style pipeline.
Leadership choices. Refused extractions, outdated maps, friction at the top of small units, and, at Krasny Molot, catastrophic ammunition discipline.
Yet the same month offered a counterexample. The 173rd under Maj. Vladimir Nedobezhkin, attached to Gen. Lev Rokhlin’s group, was used as designed: reconnaissance led operations; commanders listened; artillery, thermobaric teams, even a tank were attached on request. Over twenty days, Nedobezhkin’s group took no losses while helping Rokhlin’s formation meet day-one objectives - the only grouping to do so. Doctrine didn’t fail; institutions did.
Aftershocks and the system critique
Subsequent reforms pushed in the wrong direction. Instead of building a unified special operations command—an organizational safeguard against casual misemployment, GRU brigades were subordinated to military district commands in 2011, the very echelon most tempted to use them as gap-fillers. Earlier, in 2009, more brigades were disbanded or shrunk. The structural lesson from January 1995 went largely unlearned.
And so the final note is not just about Chechnya—it’s about recurrence. The system that rewarded appearances over readiness, broke the training pipeline, and treated Spetsnaz as a universal wrench has not been uprooted. January 1995 remains the case study: when elite soldiers meet broken institutions, bravery cannot close the gap.