106th Guards Airborne Division The 106th Guards " Tula " Red Banner Twice Order of Kutuzov Airborne Division , ( 106 - я гвардейская воздушно - десантная Краснознаменная ордена Кутузова дивизия ) more generally referred to as the Tula Division , is one of the four airborne divisions of the Russian Airborne Troops , the VDV ( ) . Based in the city of Tula , to the south of Moscow , it is administratively located within the Moscow Military District . History 1944 - 1991 . The Division was founded in January 1944 as the 16th Guards Airborne Division , and from then until the end of the Second World War fought in Hungary , Austria and Czechoslovakia ( including in Prague ) , mostly with 38th Guards Rifle Corps of 9th Guards Army . It became the 106th Guards Rifle Division in December 1944 , as all the original VDV divisions and brigades were being reconstituted as Guards Rifle formations . The Division ' s apparent honorifics are ' Red Banner , Order of Kutuzov ' , ( Feskov et al . 2004 , p . 74 ) though an early Western writer reported them as ' Dneipr - Transbaikal ' seemingly incorrectly , at one point in its history . As the attention of the Soviet leadership began to shift towards their ability to project force overseas , the need for a rapidly deployable force to spearhead large - scale operations became apparent and the VDV was once again built up as such an air assault force . The Tula Division , from that point until the present day , was to be one of the most frequently - used elements of it . Two of its regiments took part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan . As nationalist unrest grew in the southern republics of the USSR throughout the end of the 1980s , the division was deployed to Baku , Azerbaijan , in 1988 and to Fergana , Uzbekistan , in 1990 . Throughout this time the division was commanded by General Alexander Lebed . In 1991 , an attempted coup against the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev took place in Moscow . As the coup faltered , and the plotters lost the initiative while support for Boris Yeltsin , the President of the Russian SFSR , grew , the plotters called in reinforcements from the Tula Division , in the form of a battalion from the 137th Parachute Landing Regiment . When they arrived , Lebed stated that he had orders to secure the Parliament building , where Yeltsin ' s supporters were barricaded . He did not , however , give the order for his men , equipped with BMD armoured vehicles , to launch an attack . This may have been because at that point in the coup , the Tamanskaya Division was in the process of switching its own allegiance from the plotters to the parliamentarians , but whatever Lebed ' s rationale , the episode helped to boost his own public profile immensely . Following the failure of the coup and the dissolution of the Soviet Union , in 1992 , he was appointed commander of the Russian 14th Army in Moldova . History since 1991 . In 1994 , the Russian Army was ordered into the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya by Yeltsin , then President of the Russian Federation , after the refusal of the separatist government to surrender to Moscow ' s authority , beginning the First Chechen War . Battalions of the Tula Division were attached to ' Group West ' ( the western element of the three - pronged invasion of Chechnya ) . They took part , in December that year , in the first Battle of Grozny , helping to capture the city ' s central railway station , which had proved to be one of the most difficult and costly strategic points in Grozny for the Russians to capture . In March 1995 , the battalions were transferred to the command of ' Group North ' and continued fighting , notably around Argun . In May , they withdrew from Chechnya . The division ' s losses in the first war are unclear : 36 of its soldiers have been confirmed killed in action , but the number missing in action is around 200 . The Second Chechen War began in 1999 . With Moscow determined to avoid a repeat of the quagmire that the first war had become , the Russian force committed in 1999 was larger , better equipped and better organised . The Tula Division ' s contribution to that force was the 51st and 119th Parachute Landing Regiments . Its losses in this war were still considerable but less than in the first : 67 of its soldiers were reported either killed or missing in action . For its actions in the second campaign , the Tula Division was awarded the MoD Pennant . In 2001 , after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States , paratroopers from the division were sent to Afghanistan to evacuate the staff of the Russian embassy in Kabul , so as to ensure their safety in the face of the American military campaign in support of the Northern Alliance ' s advance towards the city . On 26 April 2004 , the Tula Division celebrated its 60th anniversary . Subordinate units and fighting strength . Modern Russian airborne divisions are relatively smaller formations , in manpower terms ; typically , they number around over 5 , 000 men . The Tula Division was until 2005 the exception to this rule , numbering over 7 , 000 men . The reason for this was that it included 3 Parachute Landing Regiment s , whereas the other 3 VDV divisions had only two such regiments . In 2005 , however , the 119th Parachute Landing Regiment was disbanded and the division was thus bought essentially into line with the other 3 divisions . , the subordinate units of the division are as follows :