Leonid Khabarov (; born May 8, 1947) is a former Soviet military officer whose battalion was the first Soviet Army unit to cross the border into the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan on December 25, 1979, marking the de facto beginning of the decade-long Soviet–Afghan War.
After a distinguished military and academic career, in 2011 Khabarov received widespread media attention after he was arrested on charges of fomenting a coup d'état while serving as a Russian Reserve Officer Training (ROT) chief. He was accused of attempting to illegally purchase weapons as part of a master plot to overthrow local authorities in the Ural region of Russia and launch a nationwide rebellion.
The sessions of Khabarov's trial were routinely rescheduled, but on February 26, 2013 the Sverdlovsk Regional Court sentenced him to years in prison, despite nationwide protest. He appealed to the Supreme Court of Russia, but his case was rejected. On July 2, 2014 he was released on parole.
Early years
Khabarov was born to a military family in Shadrinsk, Kurgan Oblast, Russia on May 8, 1947. His father Vasily Khabarov was a Red Army officer and World War II veteran who died from battle injuries soon after his son was born. Khabarov's mother moved to Nizhny Tagil, where he successfully finished evening school and then vocational school. Having received a work qualification he then worked for a year as an excavator operator in the Tagil industrial area. In addition to working and studying he also participated in amateur boxing, winning several local championships.
When Khabarov became eligible for conscription he planned to attend a military aviation school but was rejected due to a nasal fracture acquired during his boxing career. He was permitted to join the Russian Airborne Troops instead. Although it was possible for a civilian to enrol directly in the airborne school without having served as a conscript, Khabarov decided to voluntarily complete his mandatory military service first. During a training jump he received a spinal injury but this did not prevent him from continuing his service. After three years as a conscript he began attending the airborne school at Ryazan, leaving the enlisted ranks as a sergeant.
First command
After successfully graduating from the airborne school, Khabarov was assigned as commanding officer (CO) of the 100th Separate Reconnaissance Company of the Soviet Airborne Forces (VDV). He insisted on an exhausting training regime for his troops, conducting training missions in the Taklamakan Desert and climbing the Pamir peaks, one of which was named "VDV Peak" as a result.
After two years in command of the company during which it twice won the Soviet Airborne Troops Team Championship, by now Senior Lieutenant Khabarov was chosen to be the protagonist of Skies on the Shoulders, a Soviet Armed Forces half-hour promotional video that aired in 1975 across the Soviet Union and was particularly successful with conscription-eligible youths. Thus for several years he served as a military celebrity, appearing on the front page of Pravda several times.
Vasily Margelov, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Airborne Troops, noted during large-scale military exercises that "[Khabarov] has great prospects". Margelov insisted that Khabarov attend the Vystrel Higher Military Courses in Moscow, and following his graduation had him assigned to the 105th Guards Airborne Division as a battalion commander in Chirchik, north-east Uzbekistan.
Service in Afghanistan
First deployment
At 12:00 AM on December 25, 1979 Khabarov led his battalion across the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan as part of the wider Soviet invasion, becoming the first unit to cross the border. He and his men quickly advanced through Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, and Puli Khumri, covering 279 miles in less than eighteen hours in temperatures of minus 22 °F, in order to seize the Salang Pass, a strategic location on the way to Kabul. Khabarov and his garrison faced several counter-attacks over the following three months, with the first of these attacks coming in a matter of hours, only to be successfully repelled and leaving 80 mujahideen dead and nearly 150 wounded. Despite the frequent blizzards, stormy wind, and mujahideen activity, there were no Soviet casualties during that time.Yuri Tukharinov, then Commander of the Soviet Forces in Afghanistan, later noted that despite almost all of the land-transported Soviet troops having to use the Salang Pass and hence all of them hearing Khabarov's name, Tukharinov himself had never met Khabarov in person. He had only heard Khabarov via radio transmissions, leading to this junior commander seeming to be a mythical King in the mountain, a hero from ancient sagas. Tukharinov was amazed when he finally met Khabarov and found him to be nothing more than a thin redheaded everyman in his thirties.
After a few months spent defending the Salang, Khabarov and his men were dispatched to Kunduz Province where they engaged in several military operations before they were called back to Kabul under the direct order of Tukharinov. The Afghani resistance had intensified its insurgency, blowing up bridges, springing ambushes in deep ravines, and setting up heavy machine-guns in caves, and Khabarov was now needed in the capital.
Panjshir offensive
In March 1980 Khabarov received an order to prepare his troops for a major offensive in Panjshir Province, a stronghold of the mujahideen. Based between Jabal-ul-Siraj and Charikar, his battalion was ordered to move through the Panjshir Valley to the very end of it and then back again in order to lure out and confront the resistance and their leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who had mined the only road in the valley. In the course of the mission Khabarov's troops covered the stretch from Kabul in Afghanistan to Shahimardan in Fergana Province, Uzbekistan, defeating several rebel groups and seizing documentation belonging to the Afghan National Islamic Committee along the way, including portfolios on all rebel leaders and their detailed plans.
On April 13, 1980, Khabarov and his battalion, in cooperation with units of the Afghan National Army, confronted a large group of mujahideen fighters. After killing several of them Khabarov received a shot to the head from a Type 56 assault rifle which his helmet absorbed, before being hit by a .50 caliber round that crippled his right hand, leaving him unable to fight or use the radio. Despite this he continued to command his troops via the battalion's radioman until a helicopter arrived to evacuate casualties. Khabarov ordered the most badly wounded to be evacuated first, expecting there would be no place left for him. But despite his protestations he was loaded aboard the helicopter by his subordinates.
Delivered to Kabul military hospital he nearly had his hand amputated by medical interns before his patron, Colonel General Yuri Maximov, intervened. Maximov realized that handicapping one of his most prominent officers would affect troop morale and cause negative publicity in the USSR, so he had expert surgeons operate on Khabarov, saving his life and hand. Khabarov was transferred to Tashkent and then to Burdenko General Military Clinical Hospital in Moscow, where he began his physical rehabilitation. While recovering he was promoted to major, graduated from Frunze Military Academy, and was assigned to command a mechanised infantry regiment located near the Afghan border.
Second deployment Disliking serving as an infantry commander, Khabarov accepted a demotion from Regiment Commander to Chief-of-Staff of a brigade in order to transfer back to the 56th Air Assault Brigade. He spent 11 months with his brigade from October 1984 to September 1985, until the supply convoy he was escorting was ambushed near Barikot. His vehicle was hit by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG), turning it upside down, and Khabarov was left with a broken collarbone, three fractured ribs, and further injuries to his right hand. He was again treated in Kabul and Tashkent military hospitals, but as he recovered then-President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Geneva Accords, leading to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Khabarov saw this act as a direct betrayal of the friendly Afghani government headed by the pro-Soviet president Mohammad Najibullah.
Khabarov was curious to know who had shot him, since military intelligence plants had reported that the Afghan insurgency priced his life at Afs 500,000. Throughout his two deployments to Afghanistan Khabarov's goal had been to find and capture Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Panjshir Lion, the informal leader of the Afghan resistance, and he wondered if Massoud had been involved somehow. Khabarov and his men had encountered Massoudi troops, but Khabarov had never faced Massoud personally. While in hospital he was asked what he would have done to Massoud if he had succeeded in capturing him. Khabarov replied that there was no chance a dedicated mujahideen such as Massoud would allow himself to be captured alive by the Shuravi (Soviets) unless he was wounded and in a near-death condition, unable to resist. And in any case, Khabarov was reported as saying, even if he had captured Massoud he would have treated him not like a fierce enemy but rather as his close ally. Khabarov never did find out who shot him.
Staff officer and academic career + Dates of rank:click on the shoulder strap to see the rank Insignia Rank Component Date Trooper Airborne Troops 1965 Jr. Sgt. Airborne Troops 1966 Sgt. Airborne Troops 1967 Lt. Airborne Troops 1972 Sr. Lt. Airborne Troops 1975 Capt. Airborne Troops 1979 Maj. 40th Army 1980 Lt. Col. Turkestan Military District 1984 Lt. Col. 40th Army 1986 Lt. Col. Carpathian Military District 1987 Col. Airborne Troops 1991
Refusing retirement Having recovered from his injuries Khabarov was assigned to a staff position at the Carpathian Military District, quartered in Lviv, Ukraine. He was given a large apartment in the city and a quiet office job, later describing his life in Lviv as idyllic and his work the equivalent of "fraying pants".
In 1991 Khabarov celebrated 25 years of active duty service and faced approaching retirement age. He had the option of retiring early with a medical discharge, due to the severity of the injuries he had suffered. However, he decided not to go on the pension and asked his superiors for a chance to remain in service. The high-ranking airborne officer Georgy Shpak, then Volga–Urals Military District Deputy Chief, aided Khabarov in getting a transfer from the Carpathian Military District to the Urals, where he received the unusual assignment of a chair in military studies at the Ural State University in Yekaterinburg.
Academic success Times were tough for military education as a plethora of educational facilities had been closed due to budget revisions and the chaotic situation which emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Khabarov embraced the challenge, discovering a completely new military realm for himself in the training of reserve officers. The official objective of such education was to cross-train civil specialists, engineers, and medics in order to give them a set of supplementary military skills in addition to their basic university degree program. In fact it had turned out to be a safe harbor for draft evaders, providing them with the opportunity to dodge the mandatory active duty and receive officer's rank as a plus. Military officers who led these facilities were not keen to turn them into boot camps and thus the situation had remained stale for decades.The Ural program was no exception, with the Joint Military Chair of the Ural Industrial Institute not having experienced any significant changes since its establishment in 1937.