The son of an Orenburg Cossack, Obukhov fought on the Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War and commanded cavalry against the Basmachi Revolt until the late 1920s.

He held staff positions during the late 1930s after a stint as an advisor in China and commanded a tank division in Belarus at the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa.

[3] After the end of the war, Obukhov was hospitalized in Petrograd from October 1922, after which he studied at the Red Army Higher Cavalry School in that city.

[4] Obukhov was appointed commander of the 26th Tank Division of the 20th Mechanized Corps of the Western Special Military District on 11 March 1941.

[3][5] On 22 June 1941, when Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began, the division and its corps advanced towards Volkovysk and Belostok.

For four days the division fought in fierce defensive battles with advancing German units on this line, covering the direction of Minsk.

Near Krichev and Propoysk on the Sozh River the division spent all fuel and ammunition in intense fighting, after which Obukhov decided to destroy the remaining equipment and vehicles and head east.

[3] Following his escape from behind German lines, Obukhov was appointed deputy inspector general of the Red Army cavalry on 11 September.

During the offensive, on 19 August, Obukhov was severely wounded in an air attack near Sumy and temporarily replaced in command by the corps chief of staff.

For his leadership of the corps, Obukhov received the title Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin on 4 July 1944.

[7] During this period it captured Vileyka, Smorgon, Molodechno, Vilnius, Šiauliai, Jelgava, and others, as well as participating in the elimination of the Courland Pocket.

He wrote a volume of memoirs about his experiences during the Russian Civil War, Radi nashego shchastya (For the Sake of Our Happiness), published by DOSAAF in 1972.