Komsomolskoye was completely destroyed by the bombardment . The village , described by one journalist as " looking like a pile of shattered matchsticks — not a single building was left intact , " was strewn with rotting corpses and wrecked T-80 tanks and armoured personnel carriers . On 29 March , territorial forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Chechnya announced they had found and buried the remains of 552 Chechens and 628 large animals . They located and defused 4,622 pieces of unexploded ordnance . Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya compared the events in Komsomolskoye to the Khatyn massacre and called it " a village that no longer exists " , as the battle left behind " a monstrous conglomerate of burnt houses , ruins , and new graves at the cemetery . " Close to 150 families remained in the village , but they were practically all homeless and lived in improvised huts . Politkovskaya talked with a man " thin as a Buchenwald prisoner " , ill from tuberculosis , whose teenage son angrily confronted her . He asked : " Why was the whole country stirred when the Kursk sailors were dying , but when they were shooting people leaving Komsomolskoe right on the field for several days , you kept silent ? " As of 2004 , most former residents still lived outside the village , mostly in the Urus-Martanovsky District , waiting for compensation for their destroyed houses
Khatyn massacre
Khatyn massacre
Battle of Komsomolskoye