The film opens into Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in late 1988, when army Trainers Petrovsky, Ryaba, Chugun, Stas, Pinochet, Lyutev and Vorobyev are ventured into shape in a training camp by the brutal, sadistic commander, Warrant Officer Dygalo - before to being sent off to the leading lines. After a few one-by-one dalliances with the neighborhood whore, snowwhite, and a cautionary lecture on the history, culture and geography of Afghanistan (which a lot of the men sleep through), the trainees head off to struggle - first to the Bagram air base, subsequently to the Afghani province of Khost to procure supply lines. But nothing can start to organize them for the brutal devastation in which they are plunged, or slaughter's continuous wave that instills tens of thousands of Soviet sufferers in its aftermath.