December 30, 1941. In Vyazma ('Vyazemsky cauldron') there is a small group of Soviet soldiers, who are trying to reach their own comrades after having escaped a Nazi encirclement. In the movie they are suddenly caught in an unequal battle with a special unit of the Wehrmacht. None of these brave people was born a hero but they became heroes. And were helped in their battle by the Red Ghost. The myth of the red ghost of the movie is about a lone hero who picks off Nazi soldiers one by one. He seems to be able to vanish almost magically into the forests and even to come back from the dead.

Wounded as a tank driver in 1941 during WWII, Kalashnikov sees the latest Soviet machine gun fail. As he's also an inventor, he starts looking for improvements and in 1947 ends up with AK-47 assault rifle.

No meteorites hit Earth, no terrorists put the world in danger, no atomic war was started, but something did go wrong. Contact between most towns on Earth has been severed. A small ring-like area in Eastern Europe still has electricity, and maybe even life is being reported from the Space. What military forces find outside the Ring is shocking. There are dead corpses everywhere: in stores, in cars, on roads, in hospitals and railway stations. Who or what is destroying all life on Earth? How long will the last outpost of mankind survive?

SS Panzer Division uses T-34 manned by Soviet POWs as a target in their training field, but the prisoners plot a daring maneuver.