Mulino — a settlement in Volodarsky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, which grew up alongside the Gorokhovets Training Artillery Center — the largest firing range in the area, where artillery and tanks have been tested since the 1920s and strategic exercises are held to this day.[1][2] Administratively, the settlement belongs to the Volodarsky Municipal District, with its center in Volodarsk; the population is approximately 8,400, and the postal code is 606083.[3] Nearby, within the same district, lies the village of Mulino, from which the settlement takes its name.[1][3]

Origins of the firing range

The site for the camp was chosen in the late 1920s on the territory of Gorokhovets Uyezd of Vladimir Governorate. People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs Klim Voroshilov was drawn here by the hunting grounds; on a walk, he came across the site of a former tsarist army camp near the village of Mulino, which had a population of about five hundred, and was told that rifle and artillery regiments had previously come there for field exercises. In November 1927, by order of the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the USSR, the Gorokhovets Training Artillery Center was established — land unsuitable for farming was allocated for the military facility.[1]

Soon the center housed a branch of the Artillery Research and Testing Range operating near Leningrad, and the 17th Nizhny Novgorod Rifle Division was stationed in the neighboring selo of Zolino, for which a garrison town was built. New artillery systems and tanks were tested on Gorokhovets soil: in October 1939, the T-28 with a 76 mm F-34 gun designed at the Gorky Plant No. 92 under the direction of Vasily Grabin; in November 1940, the new T-34, whose gun fired 2,807 rounds over three days. On the basis of these firing trials, the T-34 was adopted into service.[1]

The war and the popular name

During the Great Patriotic War, the Artillery Research and Experimental Range was transferred to the Gorokhovets Center from besieged Leningrad: Soviet and captured guns were tested there, and new Iosif Stalin and T-34-85 tanks were put through shell fire. Over the course of the war, more than three hundred formations were organized at the center and sent to the front, among them the 201st Rifle (later 4th Guards) Latvian Division, the 13th Kyiv Artillery Breakthrough Division, and units of the 1st Army of the Polish Armed Forces.[1]

Conditions for recruits and reservists, particularly in 1941–1942, were harsh: dugouts with double-tier bunks, meager rations, shortages of uniforms and medical care. It was during this period that the popular name "Gorokhovets Camps" became attached to the training center — the name by which it is remembered in veterans' memoirs and in the poems of Boris Slutsky.[1]

In August 1944, with the formation of Vladimir Region, four village soviets of Gorokhovets District — including the settlements of Mulino and Zolino — were transferred to Gorky Region. The range retained its old name — Gorokhovets — even though it has been within Nizhny Novgorod's boundaries ever since.[1]

The garrison settlement

In the late 1940s, the 12th Artillery Breakthrough Division of the Supreme High Command Reserve was relocated to the center, and in 1975 a training artillery division was formed on its basis, preparing up to eight thousand artillery sergeants per year: tens of thousands of conscripts passed through the Mulino training unit.[1] In 1965, a military hospital — originally transferred here from Barnaul in January 1943 — moved from Zolino to Mulino.[1]

In 1993–1994, the 34th Guards Artillery Division and the 47th Guards Tank Division were withdrawn from the former German Democratic Republic to the firing range, and by 1995 a new garrison town had been built in Mulino.[1] Since then the settlement has been divided into two parts: the "old town," built in the 1940s–1950s, where the descendants of former servicemen live, and the "new town," with multi-story apartment buildings, shops, two kindergartens, and School No. 58, which has greenhouses and two swimming pools.[4]

The combat training center and the dispute with Rheinmetall

In June 2011, a contract was signed for the construction of a Ground Forces combat training center near Mulino: the German concern Rheinmetall was to supply training systems and quality control systems and received an advance payment of 50 million euros. The project was valued at approximately one hundred million euros, the area of the future range at around 500 square kilometers, and completion was scheduled for 2014.[1][5]

Following the introduction of sanctions in March 2014, Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics withdrew the concern's authorization to participate in the project. The center was completed without the German side and commissioned in 2015.[5]

The dispute over the money dragged on for another ten years. On 23 July 2026, the Moscow Arbitration Court, on a claim by the Moscow City Military Prosecutor's Office and the joint-stock company Garnizon, ordered three Rheinmetall subsidiaries and two Russian companies to pay 47.2 million euros.[5]

Exercises

The Mulino range is the permanent venue for the concluding phases of joint strategic exercises held by Russia and Belarus every two years. In September 2021, the main phase of the Zapad-2021 exercises took place there: the president observed the exercises on 13 September, and on 15 September the official closing ceremony was held at the Mulino range. A coalition grouping of several states took part in the maneuvers.[6]

The Zapad-2025 exercises ran from 12 to 16 September 2025 across more than forty ranges in the two countries; the main phase was again hosted by Mulino, where the president arrived on 16 September to inspect samples of weapons and military equipment.[2]

Getting there

From Nizhny Novgorod to Mulino, daily bus route No. 1301 operates from the Kanavinsky bus terminal (the Kanavinsky transport hub), with a journey time of about one hour and fifteen minutes; the first departures leave in the early morning around 6 a.m.[7] The nearest railway station is Ilyino, from which local minibuses run to the settlement.[4]

Sources

  1. grhlib.ru — "Uyezdnaya Khronika" (District Chronicle), the local history newspaper of Gorokhovets — Nikolay Frolov. Gorokhovets Camps, issue of 10 October 2014 (archive)
  2. 1prime.ru — PRIME — Putin inspects weapons at the Mulino range, 16 September 2025 (archive)
  3. mojgorod.ru — Moy Gorod — Volodarsky Municipal District of Nizhny Novgorod Region: settlements, population, postal codes
  4. novosmolino.ru — Novosmolinsky Online — Mulino: old and new garrison town, school, infrastructure (archive)
  5. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Moscow court orders Rheinmetall to pay 47.2 million euros in case concerning the Mulino combat training center, 23 July 2026 (archive)
  6. RIA Novosti — Zapad-2021 exercises concluded, 15 September 2021 (archive)
  7. bus.tutu.ru — Tutu.ru — Bus No. 1301 timetable: Mulino — Nizhny Novgorod (archive)