Wikipedia Kirichenko Yevgeny Yurievich military journalist, political scientist, teacher of social sciences

Evgeny Kirichenko: general data

• Full name: Evgeniy Kirichenko
• Date of Birth: October 6, 1958
• Place of birth: –
• Height: –
• Weight: –
• Brief biography: well-known TV journalist Colonel of the Reserve Yevgeny Kirichenko. The same one that once hosted the Forgotten Regiment program on NTV, and then on the Zvezda TV channel – Russian Character.

Education:

• In 1980 he graduated from the Kiev Higher Radio Engineering School of the Air Defense Forces of the country. A. Pokryshkina.
• In 1991 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the Leningrad Political Science Institute. Specialty: journalist-political scientist, teacher of social sciences.

Awards:

• Winner of the first prize named after. Artem Borovik “Honor. Courage. Mastery”, Author and director of documentaries: “Penalty Souls”, “Nameless Height”, “General’s Son”, “Black October”, “Unknown Hero”, “Immortal Company”, “Voices”, War of Commanders: Chuikov vs. Paulus” , “The Battle for Moscow: Unknown Heroes”, “The Battle for the Dnieper: Unknown Heroes”, “The Tarutino Maneuver: The Mystery of Kutuzov”.
• The film “The General’s Son” in 2003 was awarded the honorary prize of the Ministry of Internal Affairs “Crystal Flask” for winning the competition of television military programs.
• For the script of the film “Black October” in 2004 he was awarded the prize of the Union of Writers of Russia named after. E. Volodin in the nomination “Dramaturgy”.
• Documentary films Blessed are the Peacemakers, Iron Boys, His Name Was Forrest and On Parole and on the Same Wing in 2009 were awarded diplomas of the VI International Film Festival Radiant Angel under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Church.
• In 2010, the Forgotten Regiment Internet portal was awarded a diploma of the winner of the IX All-Russian competition “Patriot of Russia” for the best coverage of the topic of patriotic education in the electronic media.
• The film “Taruta Maneuver: The Mystery of Kutuzov” in 2013 won the Gold Medal of St. George of the International Military Film Festival. Yuri Ozerov.

Field of activity of Evgeny Kirichenko by years

Participant in hostilities in Abkhazia, Angola, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and the Chechen Republic. Has state awards.

• From 1980 to 1986 – head of the shift of the combat crew of the command post of the air defense formation, freelance correspondent for the newspapers “At the combat post” and “Krasnaya Zvezda”.
• From 1986 to 1989 – Correspondent of the Department of Combat Training of Ground Forces and Aviation of the newspaper of the Leningrad Air Defense Army “Sentinel Motherland”.
• From 1989 to 1995 – correspondent of the combat training department, head of the propaganda department of the newspaper of the Moscow Air Defense District “On a combat post”.
• From 1996 to 1998 – editor of the Central Television and Radio Studio of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
• From 1998 to 2001 – officer of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, war correspondent for NTV.
• From June 22, 2000 to June 22, 2003 – author and host of the Forgotten Regiment program. The program was twice a finalist of the TEFI television award in 2001 and 2002, the Dove of Peace international award, and the interregional Eurasian television program competition.
• From 2004 to 2006 – Head of the Information Agency of the Motherland Party, member of the Expert Council on Ideological Issues.
• From 2006 to 2007 – special correspondent of the newspaper “Trud”, consultant of the international department of the Committee for the Affairs of Warriors-Internationalists under the Council of Heads of State of the CIS.
• From 2007 to 2008 – host of the television program “In the war – like in the war”, Zvezda TV channel.
• From 2008 to 2009 – author and producer of the television documentary cycle “Russian Character”, TV channel “Zvezda”.
• From 2009 to 2010 – presenter of the documentary series about the civil war “Brother against Brother”.
• From 2010 to the present – military observer of the Zvezda TV channel, head of the military historical Internet portal Forgotten Regiment, member of the Public Expert Council of the Office for Perpetuating the Memory of Defenders of the Fatherland.

Interview with Yevgeny Kirichenko on the air of the Ekho Moskvy radio station on September 22, 2001

Hosted by: Ksenia Larina, Rinat Valiulin

K. LARINA: Let’s start with biographical data. Please Eugene already many questions came from our listeners to tell about your life before television. What happened before that, where did you serve?

E. KIRICHENKO: I am a regular military man, I graduated from a military school, an engineering university in the city of Kyiv. I have Kyiv roots, my grandfather is buried in Kyiv, my father is from Kiev. When my grandfather was imprisoned in 1929, my dad ended up in an orphanage, and he was given a different name, a different fatherland, a different surname. That is, now I bear the surname that my father was given in the orphanage. My real name is Limansky. My grandfather was a Cossack, fought with the Red Army, and paid for it. Father was named Yuri Zakharovich Kirichenko.

K. LARINA: And how did he find out about his real name and surname?

E. KIRICHENKO: He learned from his relatives. There was a famine in Ukraine, and the eldest daughter, who was already over 20 years old, she took her two-year-old brother to a policeman on Khreshchatyk and said – so I found a boy, he must be crying, hungry. Take it. And in this way she saved his life, but distorted fate, because when his father became an adult, he spent his whole life trying to find his grandfather. He found it in 1965 – his childhood memory preserved the corners of the city. Our house stood on Krasnoarmeyskaya Street, and there was a very green yard. Every year my father went on vacation to Kyiv and walked around these yards and asked questions. And thus he found his father, almost 40 years later. My grandfather went through the Stalinist camps, the war, was captured twice, but survived. My uncle told me that they first clung to each other, kissed, and then began to bite each other. Because my dad was the youngest in the family, and grandfather, of course, was very worried that the boy was gone. Maybe this is somehow reflected in what I’m doing now – that is, I’m trying to find my second grandfather. He went missing in the Vyazemsky cauldron, which hit five armies at once, 600 thousand people. It was a huge tragedy for the army. Grandmother received a notice that grandfather was missing. My grandmother raised three children – my mother, my uncle Sasha and my youngest daughter, who was born in the 40th year, aunt Lyusya. And then, after the war, policemen came and brought watches, supposedly from my grandfather. He was, apparently, a prisoner, a partisan, and then ended up in a filtration camp after the war, and, apparently, disappeared there. I still don’t know where his grave is.

K. LARINA: Why did you decide to become a military man?

E. KIRICHENKO: I don’t know, maybe the hut in which we lived. By the way, my cousin, the son of Aunt Lucy, he is a Hero of Russia, Seryozha. We graduated from one school in Kyiv. He became the head of intelligence, fought in Chechnya, Dagestan. By the way, today is his birthday. I take this opportunity and wish Seryoga a happy birthday. And in the hut we had a tin star, they were after the war in all the huts. My grandmother told me that in 1947, military registration and enlistment office officers went around the villages and asked who had returned from the war. That is, in this way they tried to calculate how many went missing after all in the war. Because the official figure is about several hundred thousand, but in reality it is millions. And this is a great tragedy, because for some reason the missing person is not considered a participant in the war according to the law. It was believed that if you were captured, then you are a traitor. Although, in fact, the generals who gave the corresponding orders should be considered traitors, for example, today I brought several documents, copies of documents, where it was ordered to “retreat at a speed of 60 kilometers per day.”
R. VALIULIN: May I read a fragment of the order? This is indeed a very serious document of the beginning of the war.

K. LARINA: We are talking about the first month of the war, the 41st year.

E. KIRICHENKO: Yes, please, this is an analysis report for the first month of the war. This document is from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. By the way, this is really a huge tragedy, tens of thousands of people disappeared in the first days of the war, and no one knew where to look for them.

R. VALIULIN: And, besides what was said, the true losses of the Red Army were probably hushed up then, in the first days of the war?

K. LARINA: And then for sure.

E. KIRICHENKO: It was a huge shock, because no one expected an attack from the West, if you remember, we signed the Non-Aggression Pact, and Stalin did not believe in its possibility until the last day. I know that on the first day of the war, by the end of the day, the commander of the Aviation of the Western District shot himself, because all aviation was destroyed – more than 700 aircraft were smashed at the airfields. Not a single plane was able to take off.

K. LARINA: You said that the Commander of the Special Western District was sentenced to death.

E. KIRICHENKO: Yes, the commander of the Special Western District, General Pavlov, was later shot by Stalin for failing to organize a proper defense.

K. LARINA: And where did you personally serve?

E. KIRICHENKO: I graduated from KVIRTA Air Defense, this is the Kiev Higher Radio Engineering School of Air Defense Forces named after Alexander Pokryshkin. We were taught to shoot down planes. Well, it was considered a dissident school, and there were two similar schools that did not accept party power, and protested in such a strange way: I remember that during the parade, these schools, passing by the podium where the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine stood, switched to marching step, and saluted the Stolichny restaurant. Ahead of us was the Morpolit School, which trained deputy politicians for the Navy. Why such a tradition existed, no one explained to us, I only got to this parade as a third-year cadet, and only then did I find out that honor had to be saluted twice to the podium where the party leaders and the nomenklatura stood, and to the restaurant, which was 150 meters from the podium . The officers who walked in front with sabers and a banner also saluted twice, because since the battalion was marching in parade formation, they were obliged to do so. This is probably how we dissented. I studied at the school for five years.

K. LARINA: Where did you serve then?

E. KIRICHENKO: I served in the Yaroslavl Air Defense Corps for 6 years, we were on combat duty underground. These shifts were very nervous, they were not allowed to have lunch, for example. I will explain that this is such a thing in the fact that at 13 o’clock Moscow time, a British intelligence officer took off from NATO bases in the region of Norway and swiftly rushed towards the state border of the USSR. All air defense assets and forces were put on high alert, which meant that the shift had to be at the workplace. And this scout rushed to the state border, and no one knew whether he would cross it or not. And we had to track the whole thing. And it happened almost every day.

K. LARINA: Why did NATO do this?

E. KIRICHENKO: I think it was some kind of joke. When I was on an internship in the Arkhangelsk army, our rocket men decided to play a joke in the same way. They began to “irradiate” the plane, and then simulate the launch of a rocket, while the pilots have all the sensors on board, and he knows that he was spotted in this way by the duty forces on the Kola Peninsula and drove away the NATO reconnaissance. And it was visible on the tablet how a sharp line goes down, and then, near the border, it turns around and goes around the border to the east. And we knew his route every day.

V. VALIULIN: Please tell me then, as a specialist, how did we let Rust into Red Square?

E. KIRICHENKO: And in fact, no one passes him. At one time I served in the army newspaper. It all happened on the Day of the Border Guard, I believe that it was a pre-planned provocation, because Matthias Rust timed his visit to Moscow to coincide with the Day of the Border Guard, and the border is guarded not only by people in green = caps, but also by air defense troops. I know that he simulated a fall into the Gulf, leaving first from the Finnish air defense fighters, he abruptly went into a dive, and a pre-prepared barrel of fuel could be dropped. The guys who later conducted the investigation said that where he disappeared from the radar visibility zone, a rainbow spot spread out on the water of the bay. And the Finnish air defense saw him, and our interceptors took to the air twice, trying to force him to land. But according to the law, any violator of the state border, if he is not going to carry out interceptor commands, must be shot down. But in 1983, when a South Korean plane with people on board was shot down, there was too much scandal, and after it such attempts were very severely suppressed. Sports, civilian aircraft tried not to shoot down.

V. VALIULIN: So they just took pity on him?

E. KIRICHENKO: Of course. I met with pilots who reported on Rust’s plane, and apparently the officer on duty simply did not have the will to order the destruction of the plane.

K. LARINA: Question on the pager: “Why did you receive an order from the hands of the president?”

E. KIRICHENKO: This is not a warrant, this is a medal “For Services to the Fatherland of the second degree”. I received it along with other journalists who participated in the coverage of this operation. The submission was signed a year ago, but for a very long time these awards went to journalists. From the hands of the president, this is my only reward. True, I have commemorative medals from the Minister of Defense. Such is the fate of a military journalist, he very rarely receives state awards.

K. LARINA: But you took part in military operations even before you became a journalist?

E. KIRICHENKO: I was on combat duty in the Yaroslavl Corps. Every day we actually worked in combat mode – our command post was closed and we did not know what was happening outside. That is, we were always preparing for war. And the current modern doctrine presupposes the beginning of the war precisely from the air. Another confirmation of this event in Yugoslavia.

K. LARINA: Do you think it was technologically possible to protect the airspace of New York from planes with terrorists?

E. KIRICHENKO: As a specialist, I can say that the air defense system is American, it combines the air defense systems of Canada and America – this is a common system. We had something similar. That is, the border of the detection of aircraft, it was very far away. Radar reconnaissance ships worked in this system. It was the same in the USSR, we had a lot of time to get the means to repulse the raid ready. After the collapse of the Union, our air defense system collapsed. Ukraine began to build its own air defense systems, Russia – its own, that is, we now do not have a single air defense system. And what happened in America can very easily happen to us. I know that Moscow’s air defense system, which was built along three defense rings, it was built under Stalin, was very dense, but ten years ago they began to destroy it, to change one system for another. Now they are installing S-300 complexes, and I know that there are holes in this system, especially in the region of Siberia and the Urals. When Yeltsin flew to Yekaterinburg, there was even a panic – the lettered presidential plane simply disappeared from the radar screens for 20-30 minutes. Because low-altitude radar posts for lack of fuel were turned off and reduced. And the fact that now, as a result of the military reform, we received not air defense, but air defense, I, as an air defense specialist, do not like it very much. Even the vaunted American NARA system, which should respond not only to external flights, but also to domestic ones, as we see, did not work in America. Why were they unable to respond to the pilots’ signals in time? I am convinced that the crews were able to report that the terrorists were on board and they were captured. It was immediately necessary to put air defense systems on high alert, to somehow respond. In my opinion, the Americans calmed down, they believed that their continent would not be touched. Why can terrorists enter a plane with a knife? I often fly on business trips around our country, and I constantly have to convince the policeman at customs that I use my penknife to cut sausage.

V. VALIULIN: The fact is that there were knives that folded and put away in a plastic case, and it could not be found on the x-ray machine.

E. KIRICHENKO: I remember when I flew out of Israel after a business trip, we were simply “shaken”, although, for example, I was accompanied by a person from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They suspect all foreigners, without exception. And not in America. This is a country of emigrants, and they are used to the fact that people of different nations and religions live with them. But in this story, something else confuses me at one time there were reports that Osama bin Laden was financing the CIA, there were reports that Chechen fighters had American instructors, and this was directly connected with Osama bin Laden. Why now, when bin Laden’s guilt has not been proven, when several terrorist organizations, including the Japanese Red Army, have taken responsibility for the explosions, why did Washington decide to start military operations against Afghanistan and bin Laden? It seems to me that this explosion and attacks simply served as a formal pretext for starting a war. It is here, in the Central Asian region, because this vector, this arc, it has always attracted the attention of Americans. At one time, we, in order to maintain our military presence and authority in this direction, sent troops to Afghanistan, but even Alexander the Great could not conquer it historically hard to fight in this country, the British sent an expeditionary force there three times difficult climatic conditions, and if our paratroopers could not hold out there for 10 years – and we simply did not have enough resources – although our soldiers are hardened, unpretentious. I remember when I read the diaries of a German officer, it was written there “I am amazed at the courage of Russian soldiers who go on the attack without weapons, holding hands, and sing songs.” In the same way, the Afghans will defend their homeland, even if it is torn apart by civil war. The Americans will not be able to change anything there, because they cannot fight without bio-toilets and without vitamins. I was struck by the fact that Russia has now played along with the Americans by agreeing to participate “in the fight against international terrorism” – we cannot restore order in the North Caucasus, we are getting involved in a new American adventure. Lots of questions, of course.

K. LARINA: It turns out that wars begin with such terrorist acts, it is enough to remember even our recent history, when houses were blown up in Moscow. Was it after this that the second Chechen war began?

E. KIRICHENKO: I talked with my friends, whom I have many in law enforcement agencies, and the special services have a common opinion: the state should be behind these acts. Terrorists cannot plan everything in such an organized way.

K. LARINA: So you admit that the rumors that special services were involved in the explosions in Moscow are grounded?

E. KIRICHENKO: No, I don’t want to draw parallels between the explosions in Moscow and the explosions in America, although there are a lot of similarities. The fact that any terrorist attack can serve as a pretext for war. I do not know who organized the terrorist attacks in Moscow, because these people have not been found so far. The Americans claim that the terrorist attacks in America were organized by the Arabs, and they, however, have more evidence – these people were really on the planes, so I would not say that this action was planned by the Bush administration or the Pentagon. But there is another opinion terrorists, no matter how fanatical they are loyal to any leader, they do not have enough resources and abilities to carry out this terrible operation. And the guys told me yesterday that some events in Moscow could become the next act of this tragedy, because Russia, having agreed to participate together with the Americans against Bin Laden, thereby crossed the border and declared war.

K. LARINA: What do you suggest? To oppose yourself again to the whole world? Where to go? Say no? Then we will be put on the same board with the same Hussein? What to do?

E. KIRICHENKO: As Egor Yakovlev said in Obshchaya Gazeta, the third world war has already begun, there is simply no one to declare it. We well remember the mood in Russian society when the First World War began, what was played then? On patriotism. The war was unleashed on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, if you remember. Russia then entered the war with the Germans on the side of Serbia. We have lost several generations at once. World War II was a special case, it was a direct attack on the country. And now? Yes, maybe there are some explanations that we should help in the fight against terrorism. But any war is a disgusting thing. When people die, and not only the military, civilians, women and children suffer first of all from the war. Even the operation in Chechnya showed that the militants still retained centralized control, saved resources, continue to fight, and civilians are dying

R. VALIULIN: We have a little time left on the air, let’s get back to that order from the times of the Great Patriotic War that you wanted to read to us.

E. KIRICHENKO: Yes. Here are a few pages from this order, completely incomprehensible to me, as a military man. Everyone knows the heroic defense of Brest. But on the very first day of the war, two full-blooded divisions left Brest, 12 thousand people concentrated in the fortress, suffered heavy losses, left it disorganized, leaving a large number of materiel and all supplies. I know that the garrison remained in the fortress, and he fought. They simply forgot about this garrison. I know that the defense was organized by junior commanders, lieutenants. The most senior there was Major Fomin, he was a commissar and was not trained militarily. But Brest fought, and the Nazis could not take it for a long time. When the fortress fell, Hitler brought Mussolini there to boast that the Russian citadel had collapsed. But this happened in the fall. This order, the order of the Chief of Staff of the Fourth Army of the army, continuing the defense of the occupied lines from the morning of June 23, go on the offensive around Brest-Litovsk. And further instructions on which corps to occupy the defense. That is, the command had confidence that the war would soon end. But receiving truthful reports about the defeat of the units, the Headquarters deceived their commanders with the second paragraph of the order, which says that the Fourth Army is going on the offensive. And the result of the first day of the war on the first day of the war aviation of the western front lost 738 aircraft, of which 528 were destroyed by the enemy on the ground. The commander of the front and the main culprit in the death of aircraft, Major General Kopets, apparently wanting to avoid punishment and would not yet receive data on losses, shot himself that evening.

K. LARINA: Tell me, Eugene, out of all the documentary literature that has been published in the near future, in your opinion, are there any truthful publications? Or is that time not yet?

E. KIRICHENKO: The most truthful works of Simonov, who could not lie, may be Vasily Grossman, I would also name Bondarev, Boris Vasiliev, that is, people who themselves participated in these events.

K. LARINA: And from memoir literature?

E. KIRICHENKO: I think that, after all, military censorship did not allow even Zhukov, who rewrote the introductory part of his memoirs several times, to tell the truth.

K. LARINA: Why, if Stalin was preparing to enter Europe and both equipment and people were prepared for this, why did the country suffer such terrible losses in the first years of the war?

E. KIRICHENKO: The fact is that attack and defense are two different tactical operations. If we are building a defense, then it is known that Karbyshev erected several well-fortified lines along the entire western front. But then all this was broken, because during the offensive, the defense line interfered with the development of the necessary speeds. Near Brest, they showed me one such pillbox, which was taken out in front of the fortress, although in theory we were supposed to sit in these pillboxes and wait for the Germans, but when the war began, these pillboxes were empty, we gave up this line. And there is such an explanation for all this that Stalin was going to cross the state border and invade Western Europe.

K. LARINA: How often does your program refer to the history of the Great Patriotic War?

E. KIRICHENKO: We try to touch on some “blank spots” of military history in every program. Although a lot of material remains behind the scenes. Now we are preparing a program dedicated to the counter-offensive near Moscow, and we would like to show some interesting facts to the audience. The program will be released in December. For example, I am outraged by the monument that was erected on Shemyakin’s Bolotnaya Square to children – victims of human vices. And on this square on July 22, 1941, an entire female division of anti-aircraft gunners died from a direct hit by an air bomb. And we are going, if the Moscow government allows us, to install a memorial plaque there. We are going to tell the truth about the defense of Moscow, no one knows that in October 41, in the Khimki direction, the Germans had already entered Moscow. It’s hidden. Although even in the memoirs of German officers there are such confirmations. They even stood at tram stops. That is, the front line passed through Moscow. And by some miracle, Moscow survived. Nobody knows that on November 7, 1941, when there was a military parade on Red Square, this parade was completely organized by the NKVD division. And there are veterans who tell how they sat in GUM at night and altered the buttonholes on their tunics – it was a propaganda action: units of the Red Army went straight from the parade to the front. But in fact, they reached the station and returned back to the Lubyanka. Stalin kept a huge number of NKVD troops in Moscow. Nobody knows that the population of especially Ukrainian villages greeted the Germans as liberators. I found footage in the Krasnogorsk archive where grandmothers come out with icons and bless the SS men who “liberated the villages from the Bolsheviks.”

K. LARINA: Unfortunately, our time on the air is running out. Thank you very much for taking the time for us. When is the next program coming out on TV-6?

E. KIRICHENKO: The next program will be released on October 8th.

K. LARINA: Thank you. Our guest was Yevgeny Kirichenko, the host of the Forgotten Regiment program on TV-6.