Stavropol Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin would now be 38 years old. However, he stopped forever on the threshold of his twentieth birthday. On the first spring day of 2000, eighty-four paratroopers of the sixth company died in an unequal battle in the Argun Gorge. Their feat is a symbol of resilience and courage for all today's soldiers and officers. Vladislav Duhin in this battle proved himself to be an unbending warrior: he held back the enemy’s attack for a long time, and when the ammunition ran out, he rushed at the militants with the last grenade.
Early years
Our hero was born in Stavropol on 1980-26-03. Parents, Anatoly Ivanovich and Galina Vasilievna, named their son in honor of the legendary hockey player Vladislav Tretiak. He grew up like the most ordinary boy: he loved to play with his older brother Eugene, was fond of football, studied at the 24th school. Until the age of fourteen, he slept with a toy gun under his pillow, dreamed of becoming a paratrooper. Sometimes he was naughty, in the diary "fives" were side by side with "twos".
Vlad was a cheerful, cheerful, lively guy, a favorite of girls. Whatever he took on, he did well. Growing up, he loved to play the guitar and sing about Afghan heroes. After leaving school, the parents suggested that their son enter the Stavropol Rocket Engineering School, but he wanted to study at the Ryazan Airborne. He decided that he would first serve in the army, and then go to enter.
Blue beret
Until the age of majority, Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin worked in a car repair shop, and in May 1998 he was called up for military service. To get into the Airborne Forces, he hid a certificate of heart disease from the draft board. As a result, I ended up in Pskov, in the Cheryokhin Airborne Regiment, as I had dreamed of. Combat groups of the 76th division, in which Vlad served, took part in the conflicts in Kosovo, Abkhazia, Herzegovina, and Bosnia as part of the peacekeeping forces. Only the best were selected there. Among them was our hero. For four months he was in Abkhazia. There he received his first combat medal for saving two soldiers whom the Georgians wanted to kidnap.
Then junior sergeant Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin returned to his native regiment. And soon the order came for a business trip to Chechnya. Before going there, the paratrooper came to his father's house on vacation. Parents dissuaded Vlad from going to the war zone, because there was only a month and a half left before the demobilization, but the son did not listen to them.
Feat
The first battle with militants near Duhin took place on 2000-08-02, when he and his squad guardedcheckpoint between Chechnya and Dagestan. Vlad was the first to notice the terrorists and gave the order to shoot. Several bandits were killed, the rest retreated. Subsequently, in less than a month, the sixth company in various skirmishes destroyed almost a battalion of militants, which terrified the enemy.
On February 29, the same battle broke out in the Argun Gorge. Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin and his comrades held the defense at an altitude of 776 meters. The paratroopers fought off attack after attack, and on the morning of March 1 they were attacked by a large group of bandits. Wounded Vlad carried his colleagues from the battlefield under heavy fire. Seeing that the militants were trying to bypass the soldiers from three sides, the junior sergeant opened fire from a machine gun. He held back the enemy and did not let him get closer, until at some point the cartridges ran out. Help was far away, the attackers came close. Duhin took the last grenade in his hand, pulled out the pin and rushed into the thick of the terrorists.
After a fight, more than a dozen corpses of bandits were found next to the body of a paratrooper. In general, in this battle, the "winged infantry" managed to destroy over 1,500 militants. There were only 90 paratroopers themselves, and only six of them survived. For heroism and courage, Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation.
Memory
In October 2003, Vlad's father, together with the pupils of the Russian Knights club, a company of special forces and the local priest Alexander, climbed Mount Belaya Tserkov near the Marukh Pass in the territory of Karachay-Cherkessia. The mountain got its name due to the fact that its shape resembles a temple, andthe summit is always shrouded in white mist. There, those gathered erected an Orthodox worship cross to the glory of the feat of the 6th company of paratroopers. Since that moment, the hill has another name - Duhina Gora.
The names of the dead paratroopers are inscribed in gold letters on the walls of the Pskov temple of A. Nevsky. In Stavropol, one of the streets is named in honor of the Hero of Russia Vladislav Anatolyevich Duhin. The Education Center of the city also bears his name, on the territory of which a bust to a soldier was erected in 2015. Memorial plaques in memory of the paratrooper hang on the buildings of the 24th school and the evening lyceum.
Since 2000, every year a children's mini-football tournament in memory of Vlad Dukhin has been held in Stavropol. Since 2014, the winners of the competition have been awarded an award medal made at Goznak of Russia.
2014-26-03, on the birthday of the Hero, a memorial dedicated to Vladislav was opened on the territory of the 247th air assault regiment.
Warriors of the Spirit
In 2002, on the initiative of the Combat Brotherhood Foundation, the national award "Warriors of the Spirit" was established, which is awarded to strong and courageous people who perform heroic deeds. Its first laureates were paratroopers of the 6th company. The symbol of the award - a figure of a warrior made of platinum, silver and rock crystal - is stored in the museum of the 104th Guards Regiment.
