Grozny OMON fratricide incident The Grozny OMON fratricide incident took place on March 2 , 2000 , when an OMON ( Russian special - purpose police ) unit from Podolsk , supported by paramilitary police from the Sverdlovsk Oblast in armored vehicles , opened fire on a motorized column of OMON from Sergiyev Posad ( Moscow Oblast ) , which had just arrived in Chechnya to replace them . More than 20 were killed and more than 30 injured in friendly fire between the Russian units . Chechen rebels , allegedly helped by the local militia , were initially blamed for the attack , but independent journalists uncovered the facts , forcing the authorities to admit the truth . The ambush . The " Omonovtsy " ( OMON officers ) from Sergiyev Posad were travelling in a marked convoy of nine trucks , a bus , and a command car , with no protection by armored vehicles and no helicopter cover , to a guard post in the Podgornoye area of the Staropromyslovsky city district of the Chechen capital , Grozny . Their approach had been reported , but they had not been identified , and they were suspected to be either Chechen guerrillas attempting to infiltrate the city or reinforcements for the pro - Moscow Chechen militia , which was also in conflict with the Sverdlovsk police . The Podolsk and Sverdlovsk policemen were waiting in a nearby courtyard to ambush them , and when the column approached an improvised roadblock made with an old bus , it suddenly and without warning came under shoot - to - kill fire , including from heavy machine guns and grenade launchers . Of the 98 troops in the convoy , at least 22 were reported killed ( including the unit ' s commander , Colonel Dimitry Markelov , killed in the first minutes of the attack ) and 31 ( or 38 ) were wounded . At least two members of the Podolsk unit were reported to have been killed by return fire . Moscow officials stated at first that only 12 men had been killed . A day later the chief - of - staff of the Russian military in the North Caucasus said that the death toll had risen to 37 . The attack lasted for over an hour . It and its aftermath were videotaped by a Russian serviceman . Official whitewash and reprisals in Chechnya . Immediately after the incident , Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs ( MVD ) officials reported that the convoy had been ambushed by Chechen rebels and that the other Russian forces were reinforcements . Baultdin Bakuyev , a Chechen field commander , also took responsibility , saying the attack was an act of revenge for the OMON ' s atrocities in Chechnya . On the day after the massacre , dozens of local men were detained . Some were killed by Russian OMON troops during the course of the hunt for the alleged Chechen attackers ; others were forcibly disappeared . One of the detainees , Shakhid Baysayev , was videotaped . His body has never been found , but he was declared legally dead by the European Court of Human Rights in 2007 , presumed to have been killed by Russian forces while in custody . Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo attended the funeral of the dead troops and vowed that the rebels responsible for their deaths would be identified and " retribution dealt out accordingly " . He added that any Interior Ministry superiors responsible would also be punished . It was soon announced that three suspected rebels alleged to have been involved in the attack had been charged with murder , and foreign journalists received supposed video footage of the attack on the convoy . The detained " rebels " were later discharged , however , and the video was said to be footage of a different ambush . Criminal negligence trial . In a closed trial in 2002 , a court acquitted two senior Interior Ministry officers , Major - General Boris Fadeyev ( former deputy head of the Moscow Oblast Interior Ministry department and head of the Moscow traffic police ) and Colonel Mikhail Levchenko ( former head of the command group of the Interior Ministry ' s force in Chechnya ) , of criminal negligence . The court instead laid blame posthumously on Colonel Markelov . Major Igor Tikhonov , ex - commander of Podolsk OMON , was excused from the proceedings on health grounds .