Karabakh War hero with "wings": The story of Victor Seregin

Lots of time has passed, yet it seems like no one has forgotten the ugly and bloody war for Nagorno-Karabakh, that took way lives of many brave men, as well as women, elderly, and children. During the war in Karabakh, many others fought alongsinde Azerbaijanis on the hellish battlegrounds, such as Russians, Lezghins, Tatars, Jews, Avars, Talyshs, and others. And, sadly many of them died defending their land from Armenian aggressors. Upon their death, they were awarded with the most honorable title - National Hero of Azerbaijan. This is the story of such war hero, Viktor V. Seregin, who tragically died on 28th of January 1992 while evacuating people from Shusha. His widow, Galina Seregina tells the story of a war hero, a national hero of Azerbaijan.

We should note, that in Buzovna district of Baku, where Seregin used to live, there's a street named after him. Seregin was born in 1944 in Tbilisi. When he two years old, the family moved to Kharkov. In 1964, at the end of summer school, Seregin was moved to Azerbaijan, Zabrat airline.

"In Zabrat Viktor flew on all brands of helicopters, from Mi-1" to "Mi-8", - says Galina. - He was an instructor, then commander of the squadron. Victor was awarded the "Best pilot." He has repeatedly in unusual situations, saved the aircraft and crew. Once he had to land a helicopter on an oil rig at sea, and at this point the helicopter engine failed, yet Victor managed to land the helicopter and avoid catastrophe. For us, Azerbaijan became the second homeland ".


How did Victor Vasilyevich reacted on the Karabakh war?

He was very stressed because of it. He devoted himself completely to the national interests of our land. Victor used to fly to the warzone quite often, and when he usually came back, there were lots of bullet holes on the sides of his chopper, yet he reacted normally to that. In fact he would always ask his superiors to send him into the warzone, to help out.  He would transport soldiers into the conflict zone, as well as food for the civilians in the warzone. He flew to Agdam, Shusha too. Once he went into one populated area in Nagorno Karabakh, I sadly cannot recall its name.  He went there to help evacuating the people. His helicopter was full, but all of a sudden a woman approaches and begs for the people inside the chopper to take her baby. She knew, that there was no place for her inside, so she was asking them to save the baby. The baby was taken aboard, but we never found out what happened to the woman afterwards.

Do you remember the last day of his life?

Of course I do. On that day he was to fly to Shusha. This flight was unofficial, yet Victor asked the superiors to send him there. Back then I was working as an inspector at the airport in Bina, and we were living in Buzovna district. Victor told me, that he has another flight to do, which takes a week, and then he can take a vacation. I was not expecting anything bad.

And in the evening of 28th of January 1992, I was told that Victor, along with other 44 people died. On that day, Victor in his chopper was evacuating people from Shusha. And the armenian soldiers fired a "Stinger" rocket into the chopper. They saw, that it was not a military helicopter, yet they fired anyway. On the radio, conductor were screaming to Victor, that there's a rocket launched at him. Yet, he said, he can get away from it. What he didnt know, is that "Stinger" rockets react to the engine heat, and a simple helicopter cannot escape it. So the rocket hit the engine, and the helicopter started going down. Victor managed to drag the falling chopper away from the populated area, yet the burning chopper fell down anyway, near one of Shusha's transmission towers.

The bodies of the deceased were taken out only the next day. There were just pieces of them everywhere. On that day, Armenians, for the first time used the "Stinger" rockets against civilian population. Our daughter Oxana, who was living in Riga at that time couldnt come to her father's funeral in time. The whole city gathered to pay respect to Victor. He was buried on the Alley of Martyrs. That same year he was named the National Hero of Azerbaijan.

When did you move to Kharkov?

We moved to Ukraine in 2001. Victor's mother needed constant care, so we couldnt bring her to Azerbaijan, so we had to move there. Yet we keep contact with Azerbaijan all the time, because I am a honorary member of the ukrainian-azeri friendship society in Kharkov, and I take parts in every azerbaijani diapora event organized here. Last time I was in Baku in 2004. Before that, in 2001, late President Heydar Aliyev invited me in Baku as the leader of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Kharkov.


/Vesti.Az/