2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush
2000 ambush during the Second Chechen War
The 2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush took place on March 29, 2000, when a mechanized column of special Russian Military Police troops was ambushed in the southern Vedensky District of Chechnya. As the result of the attack on the convoy and on Russian relief forces, scores of Russian special police and paramilitary troops were killed or captured. Forty OMON officers in the column and six in a relief column were killed and eleven more were taken hostage, nine of whom were executed soon after Russian command refused to swap them for the arrested Russian commander Yuri Budanov.
Ambush
On the morning of 29 March 2000, a Russian Military Police force led by Major Valentin Simonov, consisting of some 48 men according to the Russian account (41 of them were members of the OMON special police from Perm Krai, mostly from the city of Berezniki, and the rest were attached Chechen policemen and Internal Troops paramilitary soldiers), was on its way to conduct a so-called "clearing" (zachistka) operation in the village of Tsentoroi in Chechnya's southern highlands near Vedeno, travelling in a column of two BTR-series wheeled armoured personnel carriers and heavy-duty military trucks. A Russian airborne unit that was stationed nearby intercepted a rebel communication regarding the preparations for the ambush, but failed to warn the convoy (possibly on purpose, given the widespread loathing of OMON in Russia and especially in the context of Chechen conflict).
At about 7 or 8 am MSK, the column stopped after one of the trucks broke down before entering the ambush site. Major Valentin decided to personally check a bombed-out house nearby and accidentally discovered a small group of rebel fighters hiding there. He was the first to be killed, shot dead as he entered the door (an OMON officer recording this scene with a video camera was also shot just seconds after). Once the firing started, more rebels, who were hiding nearby in the undergrowth and behind trees, encircled the column and joined the attack. They blew up the truck transporting grenade launchers and ammunition with an RPG shot and pinned down the rest of the convoy in a hail of gunfire and grenades.
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