First Chechen War: The moment when ‘Russia’s democratic post-Soviet dream ended’
WASHINGTON — Brutal tactics employed by Russia in its war on Ukraine have shocked much of the world but come as no surprise to older residents of Chechnya, who this week marked the 30th anniversary of an equally brutal war — one that many believe bore the seeds of the current conflict in Ukraine. It was on December 11, 1994, that then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin launched an armed response to a bid by Chechnya, an autonomous republic in southern Russia’s North Caucasus region, to break away from the Russian Federation. To thwart the self-styled Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’s independence bid, the Russian military threw poorly trained and equipped conscripts against highly motivated Chechen guerrillas. Between December 1994 and August 1996, when the two sides signed the Khasavyurt Accords ending the First Chechen War, an estimated 8,000 Russian troops were killed or listed as missing in action, and more than 50,000 wounded. The conflict also killed an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Chechen civilians and fighters, and claimed the lives of as many as 35,000 ethnic Russian residents of Chechnya. British journalist Thomas de Waal, who had worked in Chechnya before the war, returned to the Chechen capital of Grozny in January 1995 and found a horrific scene. “Already the city had fallen to the Russian forces, but [only] after the most intense bombardment I think anyone had seen … certainly Russia had seen since the end of the Second World War,” De Waal, now a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, recently told Voice of America’s Russian Service. “Most of the city lay in ruins,” he said. “Entire blocks had been destroyed, leaving gaping holes in their place. People were coming out of the basements where they had been hiding for weeks.” Among those hiding from Russian bombing in Grozny’s basements was Abubakar Yangulbayev, now a lawyer and human rights activist, who was then 2 years old. The First Chechen War left a deep imprint on him. “It was total devastation,” he told VOA. “There was nothing, everything was broken, everything was destroyed. And here is my first understanding: Is there any peace anywhere, where everything is not destroyed, where there are roads, where there is normal life without mud, without those constant annoying tanks, armored personnel carriers and all that?” One general’s bid Chechnya’s independence bid was launched by Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet general who had commanded strategic nuclear … “First Chechen War: The moment when ‘Russia’s democratic post-Soviet dream ended’” →