The picture opens into Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in late 1988, when army Trainers Petrovsky, Ryaba, Chugun, Stas, Pinochet, Lyutev and Vorobyev are whipped into shape in a training camp by the brutal, savage commander, Warrant Officer Dygalo - before to being shipped to the front lines. After a few one by one dalliances with the local whore, Snow White, and a cautionary lecture on the history, geography and culture of Afghanistan (that most of the men sleep ), the trainees head to battle - original towards the Bagram airbase, subsequently towards the Afghani province of Khost to procure supply lines. But nothing can begin to prepare them for the devastation into which they're dropped, or slaughter's constant tide that ignites tens of thousands of Soviet victims in its aftermath.