On September 17, 2001, a surface-to-air missile fired by a special Chechen group targeting Russian commanders downed a VIP Mil Mi-8 helicopter over Grozny, killing Major-General Anatoly Pozdnyakov, member of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Major-General Pavel Varfolomeyev, deputy director of staff of the Ministry of Defence of Russia, eight Colonels (Igor Abramov, Igor Khakhalkin, Yuri Makhov, Vladimir Smolennikov, Sergei Toryanik, Nikolai Lyubimsky, Igor Tribuntsov, and Vladimir Talayev), and three crewmembers.

[2][3] According to an alternative version, described by Anna Politkovskaya, the helicopter was downed by corrupt Russian forces.

On that day, 17 September, a helicopter carrying a commission, headed by Major-General Anatoly Pozdnyakov, from the General Staff in Moscow was shot down directly over the city.

Only an hour before the helicopter was shot down, he told me the task of his commission was to gather data on crimes committed by the military, analyse their findings, put them in some order and then submit the information for the president's consideration.

All the members of the commission perished, and since they were already on their way to Khankala airbase to take a plane back to Moscow, so did all the material they had collected.