The film follows a band of young recruits from a farewell ceremony with friends and family back home. They train in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley where they befriend a local woman who is more than happy to support the morale of the soldiers. On their arrival at Baghram air base they greet soldiers returning home who meet an unfortunate fate on their flight out. The story ends at a bloody battle on a mountain top in Afghanistan against the mujahideen.The film is loosely based on a real-life battle that took place at Hill 3234 in early 1988, during the last large-scale Soviet military operation Magistral. Numerous Soviet armored vehicles and aircraft appear in the film which are rarely seen or depicted in Western films.
The picture opens in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in late 1988, when military trainees Petrovsky, Ryaba, Chugun, Stas, Pinochet, Lyutev and Vorobyev are whipped into shape at a training camp by the brutal, sadistic commander, Warrant Officer Dygalo - prior to being sent off to the front lines. After several one-by-one dalliances with the local whore, Snow White, and a cautionary lecture on the history, geography and culture of Afghanistan (which most of the men sleep through), the trainees head off to battle - first to the Bagram air base, then to the Afghani province of Khost to secure supply lines. But nothing can begin to prepare them for the brutal devastation into which they are plunged, or the relentless tide of slaughter that scatters thousands of Soviet victims in its wake.
