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First Chechen War
Date 1994 - August 31, 1996 Location Chechnya Parts of Ingushetia, Stavropol Krai and Dagestan Result De facto independence of Chechnya Casus belli Rejection of the Russian disarmament and surrender ultimatum
Combatants
Russian Federation	Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Commanders
Pavel Grachev Anatoly Kulikov (MVD) Vyacheslav Tikhomirov	Aslan Maskhadov
Strength
(December 11, 1994) 20,000 Russian Army 20,000 MVD	(December 11, 1994) 3,000 regulars 10,000 irregulars (est.)
Casualties
Military: At least 5,700 dead or missing Civilian: At least 161 outside Chechnya[1]	Military: At least 3,000 dead Civilian: 50,000-100,000 dead

Conflicts in the former Soviet Union
Nagorno-Karabakh – South Ossetia – Abkhazia – Georgia – North Ossetia – Transnistria – Tajikistan – 1st Chechnya – Dagestan – 2nd Chechnya

The First Chechen War (Russian: первая чеченская война) was fought between Russia and Chechnya from 1994 to 1996 and resulted in Chechnya's de facto independence from Russia.

After the intital campaign of 1994-1995, culminating in the devastating Battle of Grozny, Russian federal forces attempted to control the mountainous area of Chechnya but were set back by Chechen guerrilla warfare and raids on the flatlands (including mass hostage takings beyond Chechnya) in spite of Russia's overwhelming manpower, weaponry, and air support. The resulting widespread demoralization of federal forces, and the almost universal opposition of the Russian public to the brutal conflict, led the government Boris Yeltsin to declare a ceasefire in 1996 and sign a peace treaty a year later.

The war was a humiliating defeat for Russia as well as a disaster for Chechnya. By one conservative estimate there were 7,500 Russian military, 4,000 Chechen combatant, and more than 35,000 civilian deaths.^[2] Other estimates put the number of casualties between 80,000 to 100,000 killed. More than 500,000 persons were displaced by the conflict. [1] Cities and villages were left in ruins. In 1999 the conflict resumed in the form of the Second Chechen War.

Contents 1 Origins of the war in Chechnya 1.1 The collapse of the Soviet Union 1.2 The Russian Federation Treaty 2 The history of Chechen conflicts 2.1 Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union 2.2 Chechen declaration of independence 2.3 Internal conflict in Chechnya 2.4 Covert support of opposition forces 3 The War in Chechnya 3.1 Invasion 3.2 Battle for Grozny 3.3 Quagmire 3.4 Spread of the war 3.5 Endgame 3.6 Grozny again 3.7 The Khasav-Yurt Accord 4 Aftermath 4.1 The Moscow peace treaty 4.2 Casualties 4.3 Prisoners 5 Notes 6 See also 7 External links

Russia became an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. While Russia was widely accepted as the successor state to Soviet Union, it lost most of its military and economic power. While ethnic Russians made up more than 70% of the population, significant ethnic and religious differences posed a threat of political disintegration in some regions.

In the Soviet period, some of Russia's approximately 100 nationalities were granted ethnic enclaves that had various formal federal rights attached. Relations of these entities with the federal government and demands for autonomy erupted into a major political issue in the early 1990s.

President Yeltsin incorporated these demands into his 1990 election campaign by claiming that their resolution was a high priority. There was an urgent need for a law to clearly define the powers of each federal subject. Such a law was passed on March 31, 1992, when Yeltsin and Ruslan Khasbulatov, then chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet and an ethnic Chechen himself, signed the Federation Treaty bilaterally with 86 out of 88 federal subjects. In almost all cases, demands for greater autonomy or independence were satisfied by concessions of regional autonomy and tax privileges. The treaty outlined three basic types of federal subjects and the powers that were reserved for local and federal government.

The only federal subjects which did not sign the treaty were Chechnya and Tatarstan. Eventually, in the spring of 1994, President Yeltsin signed a special political accord with Mintimer Şäymiev, the president of Tatarstan, granting many of its demands for greater autonomy for the republic within Russia.

Thus, Chechnya remained the only federal subject which did not sign the treaty. Neither Yeltsin nor the Chechen government attempted any serious negotiations and the situation would deteriorate into a full-scale conflict.

Russian Cossacks had lived in lowland Chechnya (Terek) since the 16th century. Russia first invaded the Chechen highlands during the reign of Peter the Great, in the early 18th century, as a countermeasure to Chechen raids on Russian settlements. After a series of fierce battles, Russia defeated Chechnya and annexed it in the 1870s.

Chechnya's subsequent attempts at gaining independence after the fall of the Russian Empire failed. In 1922 Chechnya was incorporated into Bolshevist Russia and later into the USSR.

In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin created the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). In 1944, on the orders of NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria, more than 1 million Chechens, Ingushes, and other North Caucasian peoples were deported to Siberia and Central Asia, officially as punishment for alleged collaboration with the invading Nazis. Stalin's policy made the state of Chechnya a non-entity. Eventually, Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev granted the Chechen and Ingush peoples permission to return to their homeland and restored the republic in 1957.

On September 6, 1991, with the aim of asserting independence, militants of the All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP), led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, stormed a session of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR Supreme Soviet. They killed the Communist Party chief for Grozny, Vitali Kutsenko, brutalized several other party members, and effectively dissolved the government of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

In the following month Dudayev won overwhelming popular support to oust the interim central government-supported administration. He was made president in an allegedly fraudulent election.^{[citation needed]} Dudayev then declared independence from the USSR. In November 1991, President Yeltsin dispatched troops to Grozny. They were forced to withdraw when Dudayev's forces prevented them from leaving the airport.

After Chechnya had made its initial declaration of sovereignty, the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic split in two in June 1992. Ingushetia joined the Russian Federation, while Chechnya declared full independence in 1993, which was not recognized by other countries.^{[citation needed]} From 1991 to 1994, tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity, mostly Russians, left the republic amidst reports of violence against the non-Chechen population[2]. Chechen industry began to fail as a result of many Russian engineers and workers leaving or being expelled from the republic. During the Chechen Civil War, factions both sympathetic and opposed to Dudayev fought for power, sometimes in pitched battles with heavy weaponry.

In March 1992, the opposition attempted a coup d'état , but their attempt was crushed by force. A month later, Dudayev introduced direct presidential rule, and in June 1993, dissolved the Parliament to avoid a referendum on a vote of non-confidence. He also ordered the opposition dislodged from Grozny to Nadterechny district.^{[citation needed]} Federal forces dispatched to the Ossetian-Ingush conflict were ordered to move to the Chechen border in late October 1992. Dudayev, perceiving this as "an act of aggression against the Chechen Republic," declared a state of emergency and threatened general mobilization if the Russian troops did not withdraw from the Chechen border. After staging another coup attempt in December 1993, the opposition organized a Provisional Council as a potential alternative government for Chechnya, calling on Moscow for assistance.

Chechnya long had a reputation in Russia as a center of organized crime. The proportion of Chechens and other Caucasian peoples in Russia's emerging market economy was much higher than their representation in the population as a whole.^{[citation needed]} In its campaign to justify military action against Chechnya, the Russian government played upon stereotypes of Chechens as criminals and dishonest businessmen. 71% of Russians believed Chechnya was invaded to halt Chechen-inspired crime.^{[citation needed]}

In August 1994, when the coalition of the opposition factions, based in the north of Chechnya, launched an armed campaign to remove Dudayev's government, Moscow supplied rebel forces with financial support, military equipment, and mercenaries. Russia suspended all civilian flights to Grozny while the air defence aviation and border troops set up a military blockade of the republic. On October 30 unmarked Russian aircraft began bombing Grozny; on November 23, Russian aviation subjected the city of Shali and a tank unit deployed on its outskirts to an aerial rocket bombardment.

The opposition forces, who were joined by Russian troops, launched a clandestine but badly organized assault on Grozny in mid-October 1994. It was followed by a second, larger attack on November 26-27 1994. Dudayev's National Guard forces, improvising their defence, repulsed the attacks and succeeded in capturing some 20 Russian Army regulars and about 50 other Russian citizens secretly hired by the FSB.^{[citation needed]} Five aircraft manned by Russian "advisors" were also shot down, including a jet fighter.^{[citation needed]}

On November 29, President Boris Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to all warring factions in Chechnya ordering them to disarm and surrender. When the government in Grozny refused, President Yeltsin ordered an attack to restore the constitutional order. By December 1, Russian forces were carrying out heavy aerial bombardments of Chechnya, targeting both military sites and the capital Grozny. On December 11, 1994, five days after Dudayev and Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev of Russia had agreed to avoid the further use of force, Russian troops invaded Chechnya.

The Chechen Air Force was destroyed in the first few hours of the war. Nevertheless, Boris Yeltsin's expectations of a quick surgical strike, quickly followed by Chechen capitulation, were horribly misguided, and Russia soon found itself in a quagmire.

On December 11 1994 Russian forces lauched a three-pronged ground attack towards Grozny. The main attack was halted by deputy commander of Russian ground forces, Colonel-General Eduard Vorobyov, who resigned in protest, stating that he would not attack fellow Russians. Yeltsin's advisor on nationality affairs, Emil Pain, and Russia's Deputy Minister of Defense, Colonel-General Boris Gromov (esteemed hero of the Soviet-Afghan War), also resigned in protest of the invasion, as did Major-General Borys Poliakov. More than 800 professional soldiers and officers refused to take part in the operation. Of these, 83 were convicted by military courts, and the rest were discharged.

The morale of the troops was low from the beginning, for they were poorly prepared and did not understand why they were sent into battle. Some Russian units resisted the order to advance, and in some cases the troops sabotaged their own equipment. In Ingushetia, civilian protestors stopped the western column and set 30 military vehicles on fire. About 70 conscripts deserted their units. Advance of the western column was halted at Dolinskoye. A group of 50 Russian paratroopers surrendered to the local militia, after being deployed by helicopters behind enemy lines and then abandoned.

Around 500 people took advantage of the December 13-17 1994 amnesty declared by Boris Yeltsin for members of Dzhokhar Dudayev's armed groups. Yeltsin ordered Russian commanders to show restraint, but they were neither prepared nor trained for this. Other problems occurred as Yeltsin sent in freshly trained conscripts from neighboring regions rather than regular soldiers. Highly mobile units of Chechen fighters caused humiliating losses to Russia's ill-prepared, demoralized troops. The Russian military command then resorted to the carpet bombing tactics and indiscriminate tube and rocket artillery barrages, causing enormous casualties among the Chechen and Russian civilian population.

On December 26, Dudayev's son, Avlur, was mortally wounded in the fighting. [3] With the Russians closing up on the capital, only then the Chechens started to prepare bunkers and set up fighting positions in Grozny; on December 29, Russian forces repelled a Chechen armored counterattack in the battle of Khankala.

Main article: Battle of Grozny (1994-1995)

When Russians attacked the Chechen capital of Grozny from December 1994 to January 1995, thousands of civilians died from a week-long series of air raids and artillery bombardment of the sealed-off city. After armored assaults failed, the Russian military set out to pulverize the city into submission. Russian aircraft bombarded Grozny while armored forces and artillery hammered the city from the ground. The Russian assault fell mainly on Grozny's civilians, mostly ethnic Russians, as separatist forces operated from buildings filled with Russian civilians as shields.

The first attack led to heavy Russian casualties and nearly a complete breakdown of morale. Estimated 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers died in the disastrous New Year's Eve assault alone. All units of the Maikop Brigade sent into the city, numbering more than 1,000 men, were destroyed during the 60-hour fight for, and around, Grozny's central railway station, leaving only few survivors. Several other Russian armored columns each lost hundreds of men during the first two days and nights of the siege. [4] Many soldiers were captured.

Despite the early Chechen defeat of the New Year assault and many further casualties, Grozny was eventually conquered by Russian forces amidst bitter urban warfare. On January 7, 1995, Russia's Major-General Viktor Vorobyov was killed by mortar fire; he became the first on a long list of generals to be killed in Chechnya. On January 19, despite heavy casualties, Russian forces seized the ruins of the presidential palace, which had been heavily contested for more than three weeks as Chechens finally abandoned their positions in the destroyed downtown area. The front then largely stabilized along the river Sunzha, dividing Grozny in half. On February 8, a truce was announced, and the remaining Chechen forces withdrew from the devastated city; they moved their headquarters to the town of Novogroznensk, the first of several temporary capitals to follow.

By Sergey Kovalev's estimates, about 27,000 civilians died in five weeks of fighting. Dmitri Volkogonov, the late Russian historian and general, said that Russian military's bombardment of Grozny killed around 35,000 civilians, including 5,000 children and that the vast majority of those killed were ethnic Russians. Military casualties are not known exactly, though the Russian side admitted to having lost nearly 2,000 killed or missing.[5] International monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe described the scenes as nothing short of an "unimaginable catastrophe," while German Chancellor Helmut Kohl described the events as "sheer madness."[6]

The dominant Russian strategy was to use heavy artillery and air strikes throughout the campaign. The air strikes implemented by the Russian Military amounted to terror bombing across Chechnya with a very high cost of civilian casualties most acutely apparent in the capital city of Grozny. Interestingly, due to the fact that that the ethnic Chechens in Grozny were able to seek refuge among their respective Teips in the surrounding villages of the countryside, the highest proportion of initial civilian casualties were inflicted against ethnic Russians who were unable to procure viable escape routes.

Using these tactics, Russian forces engaged in indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force whenever encountering resistance, resulting in numerous civilian deaths. For example, in the December 1995 Battle for Gudermes, Russian forces pounded parts of the town with heavy artillery and surface- and helicopter-launched rockets, killing at least 267 civilians.[7] They also prevented civilians from evacuating from areas of imminent danger, and prevented humanitarian organizations from assisting civilians in need.

It was alleged that Russian troops committed numerous, and in part systematic, acts of torture and summary executions on rebel sympathizers; they were often linked to zachistka (cleansing) raids, affecting entire town districts and villages that harbored boyeviki, the rebel fighters. In the village of Samashki, from April 7 to April 8, 1995, Russian forces killed 103 civilians;[8] several hundred more were beaten or otherwise tortured. Humanitarian and aid groups chronicled persistent patterns of Russian soldiers killing civilians, raping, and looting. Chechen criminals also robbed and killed ethnic Russians.

Between January and May 1995, when the Russian forces conquered most of the republic in the conventional campaign, their losses in Chechnya were approximately 2,800 killed, 10,000 wounded, and over 500 missing or captured, according to the estimate cited in the U.S. Army report. [9]

Chechen separatists then resorted to vicious guerrilla tactics, such as setting booby traps and mining roads. The success of Chechen mining and use of improvised explosive devices was particularly noteworthy. By the summer of 1995, Russian military sources said the Chechen mining of transportation routes, buildings and other targets were "acquiring a massive character." Chechen separatists effectively exploited a combination of mines and ambushes, as well as mines and explosives, to target Russian leaders and facilities.

As the war went on, separatists resorted to large hostage takings, attempting to influence the Russian public and Russian leadership. More than 1,500 hostages were seized and about 120 civilians died in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in southern Russia. On March 6, 1996, a Cypriot passenger jet flying toward Germany was hijacked by Chechen sympathisers to publicize the Chechen cause; as was a Turkish passenger ship carrying 200 Russian passengers on January 9, 1996. These incidents, perpetrated by Turkish gunmen, were resolved without fatalities.

Separatist fighters killed Chechens that they considered collaborators and mistreated civilian captives and federal prisoners of war, especially pilots. Both rebel and federal sides of the conflict kidnapped hostages for ransom and used human shields for cover during the fighting and movement of troops (in one incident, a group of 60-90 surroundered Russian troops took approximately 500 civilian hostages at the Grozny Municipal Hospital No. 9 [10]). Russian forces committed violations of international humanitarian law and human rights on a much larger scale than Chechen separatists. [11] Television and newspaper accounts widely reported these to the Russian public. As a result, the Russian media coverage partially precipitated a loss of public confidence in the government and a steep decline in president Yeltsin's popularity. Chechnya was one of the heaviest burdens on Yeltsin's 1996 presidential election campaign.

The protracted war in Chechnya, as well as many reports of extreme violence against civilians, ignited fear and contempt of Russia among other ethnic groups in the federation. The inability of Russian forces to subdue the Chechen fighters also encouraged other ethnic groups to defy the central government by proclaiming and defending their independence.^{[citation needed]} In Chechnya, the full-scale Russian attack also led many of Dudayev's opponents to unite with Dudayev, and to thousands of volunteers swelling the ranks of mobile guerilla units. Many others formed local self-defence militia to defend their settlements against federal attack.

In the fall of 1995, the Russian commander in Chechnya, Lieutenant General Anatoliy Romanov, was critically injured in a bomb blast in Grozny. Suspicion of responsibility for the attack fell on rogue elements of the Russian military. The attack destroyed hopes for a permanent ceasefire based on the developing trust between Romanov and General Aslan Maskhadov, Chief of Staff of the Chechen forces and former Soviet Colonel.[12] In August, the two personally went to southern Chechnya in an effort to convince the local commanders to release Russian prisoners, while the Russian command spread word through the media that some Chechen field commanders had announced that they would no longer obey Maskhadov.[13]

Akhmad Kadyrov's declaration that Chechnya was waging a Jihad (holy war) against Russia raised the spectre that terrorists from other regions and even outside Russia would enter the war. By some estimates, up to 5,000 non-Chechens served in volunteer formations. These volunteers were mostly Caucasian and included 1,500 Dagestanis, 1,000 Georgians and Abkhazians, 500 Ingushes and 200 Azeris - as well as 300 Turks, 400 Slavs from Baltic states and Ukraine, and more than 100 Arabs and Iranians. The volunteers included a number of ethnic Russians, which included citizens of Moscow.

Meanwhile, the war in Chechnya spawned a new form of separatist activity in the Russian Federation. Resistance to the conscription of men from minority ethnic groups to fight in Chechnya was widespread among other republics, many of which passed laws and decrees on the subject. For example, the government of Chuvashia passed a decree providing legal protection to soldiers from the republic who refused to participate in the Chechnya war and imposed limits on the use of the Russian army in ethnic or regional conflicts within Russia. Some regional and local legislative bodies called for a prohibition on the use of draftees in quelling internal uprisings; others demanded a total ban on the use of the armed forces in quelling domestic conflicts.

Limited fighting occurred in Republic of Ingushetia in 1995, mostly when Russian commanders sent troops over the border in pursuit of Chechen fighters. Although all sides generally observed the distinction between the two peoples that formerly shared the autonomous republic, as many as 200,000 refugees from Chechnya and neighboring North Ossetia strained Ingushetia's already weak economy. On several occasions, Ingush president Ruslan Aushev protested incursions by Russian soldiers, and even threatened to sue the Russian Ministry of Defence for damages inflicted; he said that his people could not forget how the same Russian armored columns "and the same Defense Minister" assisted in the destruction of Ingush settlements and the expulsion of Ingush population from North Ossetia in 1992. [14]

Undisciplined Russian soldiers were also reported as murdering, raping, and looting in Ingushetia. In a widely reported incident partially witnessed by visiting Russian Duma deputies, at least nine Ingush civilians were murdered by Russian soldiers; an ethnic Bashkir soldier was also killed by apparently drunk Russian fellow servicemen. In earlier incidents, another Russian soldier and the Ingush Health Minister were killed by drunken Russian soldiers, as were five Ingush villagers. [15]

The Russian government officials feared that a move to end the war short of victory would create a cascade of secession attempts by other ethnic minorities, and present a new target for extreme nationalist Russian factions. The Don Cossacks, who were originally sympathetic to the Chechen cause, turned hostile in result of the Chechen terror attacks, and the Kuban Cossacks started organising themselves against the Chechens, including manning paramilitary roadblocks against infiltration of their territories by militants.

In January 1996, Russian forces, in reaction to the large-scale Chechen hostage taking in Kizlyar, destroyed Pervomayskoye, a border village in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, killing dozens of civilians including hostages. This action brought strong criticism from the hitherto loyal Republic of Dagestan and escalated domestic dissatisfaction.

The poorly trained, ill-supplied, and badly led conscripts of the Russian army proved incapable of suppressing determined Chechen opposition, both in the Chechen capital and in the countryside. It took Russian forces over 15 months to capture Bamut, a small village southwest of the capital Grozny, which fell on May 22, 1996.

On March 6, 1996, between 1,500 and 2,000 Chechen fighters infiltrated Grozny and launched a three-day surprise raid on the city, overrunning much of the city and capturing caches of weapons and ammunition. A month later, forces of an Arab commander Ibn al-Khattab destroyed the reconnaissance company and 2nd Motor Rifle Battalion column of the 245th Motorized Rifle Regiment in an ambush near Shatoy.

As humiliating defeats and growing casualties made the war more and more unpopular in Russia, and as the 1996 presidential elections neared, Yeltsin's government sought a way out of the conflict. Although a Russian guided missile attack killed Dudayev on April 21, 1996, the rebels persisted. On August 6, 1996, three days before Yeltsin was to be inaugurated for his second term as president, when most of the Russian Army troops were moved south due to what was planned as their final offensive, the Chechens launched a new attack on Grozny.

More than 1,500 Chechen fighters, led by Shamil Basayev, again moved in by trucks and cars in a carefully orchestrated assault. Within hours, they had overrun the key districts, and laid siege to the Russian posts and bases and the government compound in the centre, in spite of the fact that the Russians had about 12,000 troops in and around Grozny. Russian troops in Argun and Gudermes were also surrounded in their garrisons. A number of Chechens deemed to be collaborators were rounded up, detained, and executed; reliable sources have stated that the execution list for one region of Grozny comprised more than 200 names. [16]

Several attempts by the Army armored columns to rescue the mainly MVD units, which were trapped by the Chechens, were repelled with heavy Russian casualties; the 276th Motorized Regiment of 900 men lost 450 dead or wounded in a two-day attempt to reach the city centre. Russian military officials said that more than 200 soldiers had been killed and nearly 800 wounded in five days of fighting, and that an unknown number were missing; Chechens put the number of Russian dead at close to 1,000. Thousands of demoralized, hungry, and thirsty troops were either taken prisoner or surrounded and largely disarmed, their heavy weapons and ammunition commandeered by the rebels. On August 12 and again on August 17 a truce was announced in Grozny, but fighting resumed after a while.

On August 19, despite the presence of 50,000 to 200,000 both Chechen and Russian civilians, as well as thousands of federal servicemen in Grozny, the Russian commander Konstantin Pulikovsky gave an ultimatum for Chechen fighters to leave the city in 48 hours, or it would be leveled in a massive aerial and ground bombardment. Confusion reigned in Grozny, where terrified refugees stumbled out of their cellars and ruined homes on foot through an afternoon of Russian shelling and airstrikes, trying to save themselves from the threat of even more deadly bombing in the morning. [17] There were dramatic accounts of scenes of panic as civilians tried to flee before the army carried out its threat, with parts of the city ablaze and falling shells scattering refugee columns. [18]

The bombardment was halted by a ceasefire brokered by Yeltsin's national security adviser Alexander Lebed on August 22. The ultimatum, issued by Gen Pulikovsky, now replaced, had been a "bad joke", Gen Lebed said. [19]

During eight hours of subsequent talks, Lebed and Maskhadov drafted and signed the Khasav-Yurt Accord on August 31, 1996. It included: technical aspects of demilitarization, the withdrawal of both sides' forces from Grozny, the creation of joint headquarters to preclude looting in the city, the withdrawal of all federal forces from Chechnya by December 31, 1996, and a stipulation that any agreement on the relations between the Chechen Republic Ichkeria and the Russian federal government need not be signed until late 2001.

The Khasav-Yurt Accord paved the way for the signing of two further agreements between Russia and Chechnya. In mid-November 1996, Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed an agreement on economic relations and reparations to Chechens who had been "affected" by the 1994-96 war.

Six months later, on May 12, 1997, Chechen-elected president Aslan Maskhadov traveled to Moscow where he and Yeltsin signed a formal treaty "on peace and the principles of Russian-Chechen relations" that Maskhadov predicted would demolish "any basis to create ill-feelings between Moscow and Grozny." [20] Maskhadov's optimism, however, proved misplaced. Over the next two years many of Maskhadov's former comrades-in-arms, led by field commander Shamil Basayev, launched an incursion into Dagestan in the summer of 1999.

According to the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, 3,826 troops were killed, 17,892 were wounded, and 1,906 are missing in action. [21] According to NVO, the country’s most authoritative independent military weekly, 5,362 Russian soldiers died during the war, up to 52,000 were wounded and some 3,000 more remained missing by 2005. [22] The estimate of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, however, puts the number of dead at 14,000. [23]

Chechen casualties are estimated at up to 100,000 dead or more, of which most were civilians.[24] Various estimates put the number of Chechens dead or missing between 50,000 and 100,000. [25] Russian Interior Minister Kulikov claimed that fewer than 20,000 civilians were killed. State Duma deputy Sergey Kovalyov's team could offer their conservative, documented estimate of more than 50,000 civilian deaths. Aleksander Lebed asserted that 80,000 to 100,000 had been killed and 240,000 had been injured. The number given by the Ichkerian authorities was about 100,000 killed. [26]

Chechen separatists estimated their combat deaths at about 3,000, although this number is almost certainly too low. It is impossible to know how many Chechen rebels were killed, since many fought independently and were not under the control of Dudayev. As such, their deaths were not counted among official Chechen losses. The Russian estimate is much higher; Russia's Federal Forces Command estimated that 15,000 Chechen fighters had been killed by the end of the war. ^[3]

In the Khasavyurt agreements, both sides specifically agreed to an "all for all" exchange of prisoners to be carried out at the end of the war. Despite this commitment, many persons remained forcibly detained.

As of mid-January 1997, the Chechens still held between 700 and 1,000 Russian soldiers and officers as prisoners of war, according to Human Rights Watch. [27] According to Amnesty International same month, 1,058 Russian soldiers and officers were still detained by Chechen fighters who were willing to release them in exchange for members of Chechen armed groups. [28]

A partial analysis of 264 of the list of 1,432 reported missing Chechens found that, as of October 30, 1996, at least 139 were still being forcibly detained by the Russian side. It was entirely unclear, however, how many of these men were in fact alive. [29] In February 1997 Russia approved an amnesty for Russian soldiers and Chechen rebels who committed illegal acts in connection with the war in Chechnya between December 9, 1994, and September 1, 1996. [30]

1. ^ 120 in Budyonnovsk, and 41 in Pervomayskoe hostage crisis
2. ^ New Left Review - Tony Wood: The Case for Chechnya
3. ^ Knezys, Stasys, and Romaras Sedlickas. The War in Chechnya. 1st ed. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. 303-304

• Chechnya
• History of post-Soviet Russia
• History of Chechnya
• Second Chechen War

• Chechen War 1994-96 The World Regional Conflicts Project
• Chechnya Crimes of War Project
• First Chechnya War - 1994-1996 Foreign Military Studies Office
• Post-war interview with a Chechen field commander
• Red Dawn in Chechnya: A Campaign Chronicle ARMOR (Early 1995)
• The Chechen Campaign Pavel Felgenhauer (Fall 1995)
• War and Human Rights (links) Memorial human rights group
• Wounded Bear: The Ongoing Russian Military Operation FMSO (August 1996)
• Chechen 9x18mm BORZ ("Wolf") machine-pistol Security Arms