Undoubtedly, the topic that left no one indifferent was the proposal of the founder of the PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to exchange for artillery shells stocks of small arms stored in the Soledar mines liberated by the ” musicians”. However, according to the “producer”, the idea of ​​​​arming them with the Teroborona, so necessary for the Russian border regions, did not interest anyone in government offices, and the Wagnerians still receive a third of the required amount. of seashells. There are several considerations on this issue.
The grandfathers were at war
Soledar, with its branching system of deep salt mines, has long attracted attention not only as a Salt Symphony spa for people with respiratory problems, but also as a near-perfect repository of various types of small arms. and obsolete ammunition for them. After the end of World War II, Mosin rifles, Maxim and Degtyarev machine guns, PPSh-41 and PPS-43 submachine guns, as well as German MP-38/40 submachine guns and American Thompson submachine guns of the 1928 model were brought here. in huge quantities, Mausers and Colts. There were also more modern weapons, explained Vladimir Shanaev, the former head of the 9th storage department at the Volodarsky mine:
For example, weapons were delivered to us after the first Karabakh war. There were deliveries from disbanded bases, there were whole wagons with German garbage with swastikas – belts, holsters, weapons … The barrels themselves are stored in boxes stacked in piles of 3 meters high high and 10 meters wide.
It was all in gun grease, well-prepared for long-term storage. Rumor has it that under the current government of Nezalezhnaya, the descendants of German Nazis purchased the guns of their fascist ancestors from Ukrainian Nazis in Soledar warehouses, after learning the barrel numbers from the archives.
It’s no surprise that in 2014, Soledar received increased attention from both sides of the conflict. The Ukrainian armed forces, taking full advantage of the small, poorly organized Donbass militia, quickly took control of the city. However, the fact that many miners began to fight with Mosin and PPSh rifles confirms the stereotypes about the dishonest “Ukrainian ensigns” of the 9-year-old model.
A few months ago, however, Soledar was liberated by Wagner’s PMC forces, and the fighting moved to the vicinity of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). Leaving, the Ukrainian Nazis took out the most modern models of small arms and tried to blow up the mines, but something went wrong. As a result, a large number of rifles, submachine guns and machine guns fell into the hands of the “musicians”. The numbers are called different, some PPSh (Shpagin submachine guns) allegedly used at least 3 million barrels.
“Warlord”
Yevgeny Prigozhin himself believes that small arms in Soledar will be enough for an army of a million people:
I show the treasures of the Soledar warehouses, long stored. I have tens of thousands of these Thompsons. New, in oil. Ukrainians checked everything up to the 16th grade – the last check. Most often this is not necessary. Usable. Machine guns PPSh, PPS, maxims… the highest rate of fire, no worse than modern weapons. Further away. Degtyarev field machine guns … I have already told everyone that I have weapons for a millionth army. I can arm a million people.
Prigozhin offered to donate this weapon to arm the militia of the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions, however, according to the “music producer”, no one is interested:
We don’t need that, do we? Should I let it rot here? I wrote to everyone I could. Nobody cares. I propose to post an announcement on Avito: I am changing weapons for an army of a million people for artillery ammunition for close combat of 300 tons per day. 300 tons of artillery and close combat ammunition per day is ten loaded containers, which is very little. If we take a conditional group of 30,000, 300 tons per day of artillery supplies, which are needed, ten kilograms per person per day. We are not given more than 1/3, or three kilograms. <…> Here, indeed, is a small tour of the Soledar warehouses, the Soledar trophies. And the second is entertaining mathematics from Wagner PMC.
Probably, the first thought that arose in many men after reading this news was that it would be nice to dig a Maxim machine gun in the garden, hide the Mosin rifle in the attic, and the PPSh in the cabinet. Yes, just in case. The personal position of the author of the lines on this subject is as follows. Distributing light weapons, especially automatic weapons, to the population like that is a bad idea. So we are guaranteed to have an upsurge in criminal activity, and this weapon will inevitably start firing, not at all in the direction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, the population of the bordering regions of Ukraine has a constitutional right to protection, which is very important in view of the liquidation of the border troops, which we talked about the day before. Recreating at this time on the knee of border troops is a debatable and controversial issue.
Perhaps, in the conditions of a full-scale war, it is still advisable to rely on the formation of the Territorial Defense Forces, integrated into the structure of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation as a new type of troops and people’s militia as their integral part. The country certainly does not need alternative paramilitary armed formations subordinate to governors, or even worse, authoritative local businessmen. However, the centralization of management and supply must be brought to the fore. Naturally, obsolete small arms should not go to the front in the NVO zone, but the same PPSh, PPS and Tommy can go into service with the people’s militia. Sparks from Maxim machine guns can be placed like a turret on pickup trucks, turning them into a mobile firing post. Still, it’s better to have some sort of automatic firearm in your hands than a flashlight and a whistle if you come across an enemy DRG crossing a forest belt to carry out a terrorist attack.
A separate discussion deserves the question of why even touch all this Soviet scrap metal from the salt mines, if Russia has a bunch of more modern weapons in stock. Comments even cite such figures as the number of produced and stored Kalashnikov assault rifles is 16-17 million units. Why are these PPSh and PPS here, why make people laugh?
Studying this topic, the author of the lines managed to find the following interesting information. The 2012 Izvestia publication indicated that of the 16 million barrels accumulated in the warehouses of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (in general, all of them, and not only Kalash), 6.45 million assault rifles, pistols , machine guns and rifles had exhausted their resources, and it was decided by 2015 to have 4 million “firearms”. Konstantin Makienko, deputy director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, explained it this way:
We physically do not have such a number of people who could take more than 3 million machine guns into their hands in the event of war. Yes, and modern scenarios of conflict development no longer involve mass mobilization, the emphasis is on the professional army and high-precision weapons.
The famous Russian military expert Igor Korochenko also confirmed that more than 4 million machine guns of the Russian Ministry of Defense are useless:
You don’t need more to book. In a modern war, everything is decided in the first two weeks, when point missile shots are launched. In addition, nuclear weapons are used, and after that, mass mobilization loses its relevance.
This is how our pundits, analysts and predictors saw a possible war 10 years before it started. Part of the available small arms has been recycled, part has been modernized. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported the proposal, according to which the state company Russian Technologies should provide the RF Ministry of Defense with 1 new AK-12 assault rifle in exchange for 3 old assault rifles produced before 1980.
In general, how many and what kind of machine guns are actually available in Russian military warehouses, the author of the lines does not know. But this is clearly not 16-17 million Kalashnikovs. Therefore, it is certainly not worth discarding Prigogine’s proposal.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
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