Colonel Yuri Budanov is a member of the Russian army, a participant in two Chechen wars. In 2003, he was convicted of the murder of a young Chechen girl. Colonel Budanov was sentenced to ten years in prison. In 2009, he was released on parole. In 2011, he was shot dead by unknown assailants.
Career
Colonel Budanov was born in 1963 in the Donetsk region. He studied at the Kharkov Tank School, after which he was sent to serve in Hungary. Colonel Budanov, whose biography is quite rich in travels, continued to serve in the Russian troops after the collapse of the USSR.
Participated in the First Chechen campaign. In 1995 he was wounded in the head. In the second Chechen war, he commanded the 160th tank regiment. He was shell-shocked twice in the fall of 1999. In January 2000, Budanov became a colonel, and already in March he was arrested, accused of raping and murdering a Chechen girl.
The feat of Colonel Budanov: how it was
At the end of December 1999, in the vicinity of the village of Dubai-Yurt, 160 soldiers of the 84th reconnaissance battalion fell into a Wahhabi ambush. The scouts asked the headquarters for help, but they were denied this. A thousand Arab mercenaries of Khattab literallydestroyed Russian soldiers with her fire.
Budanov's tank regiment was nearby. He was ordered to stand still and not get involved in the fight. The village was considered peaceful, and the authorities forbade the introduction of tanks there. Budanov heard the conversations of intelligence officers with the command. He decided to break the order and help the dying guys.
Budanov gathered a regiment and called for volunteers from among the officers. Having equipped the tanks with them, he personally led their battle. The enemy was sure that help for the scouts would not come, so the sudden attack of the tankers demoralized him. Khattab retreated and the scouts were saved. The next morning, the whole of Chechnya was already talking about this feat. Colonel Budanov received a severe reprimand from headquarters for his arbitrariness.
Court
In February 2001, hearings began on the case of Budanov, which had a great public outcry. The accused claimed that the girl he killed was a sniper and killed several dozen of his soldiers in the Argun Gorge.
A year later, the court ordered a medical examination. A total of four psychiatric examinations were carried out. One of them showed that the colonel was in an insane state at the time of the murder. For this reason, the court sent him for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric clinic. But already in 2003, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned this decision and convicted Budanov.
Sentence
The serviceman was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison for negligent homicide, the article on rape was removed from him. He also added six years forkidnapping and five more for abuse of power. In total, the court decided to deprive Budanov of freedom for 10 years. In addition, the colonel lost his officer rank and the Order of Courage he previously deserved.
Freedom
In 2004, Budanov filed a petition for early release. It was approved by the assembled commission. However, frank threats rained down on Budanov, and he was forced to withdraw his petition. When the passions around this case subsided a little, Budanov filed a new petition for early release in 2008. The petition was granted, and he was released from prison in early 2009.
The murder of Colonel Budanov: details
On the afternoon of June 10, 2011, he was shot dead. Who killed Colonel Budanov? The case has not yet been solved. They shot him in Moscow, on Komsomolsky Prospekt. The criminals fired six shots, four of which hit the victim exactly in the head. Those who did this have never been found. The investigating authorities believe that, perhaps, this is a blood feud carried out by immigrants from Chechnya. Some of Budanov's friends claim that high-ranking officials are involved. One way or another, the killers could not be identified.
Funeral
Colonel Yuri Budanov, whose biography was extensive and varied, was buried in the suburbs. He was buried in the church of the holy unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian. The closed coffin with his body was taken out of the temple, carried around it, thenloaded into a car. The funeral took place at the Novoluzhinsky cemetery in Khimki. Yuri Budanov rests next to the Soviet pilots who died during the war with the Nazis.
Memory
We do not undertake to assert who this man was - a hero or a monster, time will judge and put everything in its place. However, his comrades-in-arms honor his deeds and remember him as a hero. In memory of Colonel Budanov, Russia dedicated many poems by the hands of contemporary poets.
Outside ratings, track record and characteristics
His track record at first was not much different from other similar ones. Colonel Budanov gradually climbed the standard officer ladder. A sharp shift in his career occurred on the eve of the Second Chechen campaign. Lieutenant Colonel Budanov was then given command of a tank regiment, which consisted of almost a hundred combat vehicles.
Literally immediately, his military unit was sent to Chechnya. There he received the extraordinary rank of colonel. One of his main achievements is that Budanov went through half the war with virtually no losses. Lost only one driver. None of the other commanders had such indicators.
But at the same time, Colonel Budanov was a hot-tempered person. He could afford to yell at his subordinates, to throw at them everything that came to hand. Once he heard a contract soldier point a finger to a friend at Major Arzumanyan, who was passing nearby, and asked him to “shoot”the officer has a cigarette, calling him a "chock". Budanov became furious and beat the impudent soldier. After that, he went to his tent, took a block of cigarettes and gave it to a contract soldier, explaining to him that you can’t call a military officer a “chock”
The Colonel's lawyer said he didn't consider him a "thug". In his opinion, Budanov was a patriot for whom honor was of great importance. He often went against the orders of the command, if he believed that by his actions he could help comrades or civilians. These antics of his made the colonel many enemies and hidden ill-wishers from the highest command staff.
Budanov lost his nerve when enemy snipers killed many of his comrades-in-arms in the Argun Gorge. He would often sit for long periods in front of photographs of dead friends, swearing to them that he would find these snipers and deal with them. Such a case presented itself. One of the captured militants pointed to several houses, saying that a sniper girl was hiding in one of them. For her, the colonel took an 18-year-old Chechen woman, whom he killed by negligence during interrogation.
As we wrote above, the examination established that at the time of the murder Budanov was in a state of temporary mental disorder, and recognized him as insane. However, this decision was subsequently canceled.
One way or another, Budanov was punished for his crime. Today, some citizens of our country consider him a cruel tyrant and a murderer. Others believe that he is a real hero of Russia. We do not undertake to judge him and give fromsome assessment of his actions. Time will pass, everything will fall into place.
The deceased is survived by his wife Svetlana and two children. The son is Valery, a lieutenant in the reserve, a lawyer, and a schoolgirl daughter named Ekaterina.
