Chechen conflict: A Visual History

The Chechen conflict (1994-2009) began when Dzhokhar Dudayev's Chechnya declared independence in 1991 and Yeltsin sent the army in December 1994; the storming of Grozny at New Year cost thousands of Russian lives, the city was destroyed, and Chechen fighters under Basayev and Maskhadov retook it in August 1996, forcing the Khasavyurt accord and Russian withdrawal. Lawless de facto independence, kidnappings and an incursion into Dagestan by Basayev in 1999, followed by apartment bombings in Russia, gave Putin his cause: the Second War flattened Grozny again in 1999-2000 and became a brutal counter-insurgency with mass 'filtration', disappearances and Chechen terrorism (the Dubrovka theatre 2002, Beslan school 2004). Russia handed power to Akhmad and then Ramzan Kadyrov and declared the operation over in April 2009; up to 160,000 died.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Chechen conflict. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated deaths in the Chechen wars

Timeline of the Chechen conflict

1. 1991
   Chechnya declares independence
2. 1994
   Russian invasion; New Year assault on GroznyDecember.
3. 1995
   Grozny falls; Budyonnovsk
4. 1996
   Dudayev killed; Grozny retaken; Khasavyurt
5. 1999
   Dagestan incursion; apartment bombings; second war
6. 2000
   Grozny destroyed again
7. 2002
   Moscow theatre siege
8. 2004
   Akhmad Kadyrov killed; Beslan
9. 2009
   Counterterrorism operation ended

The First War

Chechnya, deported wholesale by Stalin in 1944, declared independence under the ex-Soviet general Dudayev as the USSR fell; Yeltsin, after failed covert coups, invaded on 11 December 1994 promising a 'small victorious war'. Conscript columns were massacred in Grozny on New Year's Eve; the city fell in March after devastating bombardment; Basayev's raid on Budyonnovsk hospital in June 1995, taking 1,500 hostages, forced talks. Dudayev was killed by a missile homing on his satellite phone in April 1996; Maskhadov's fighters retook Grozny in August, and General Lebed signed the Khasavyurt accord deferring status for five years. Russia lost perhaps 6,000 troops.

Interwar and the Second War

Independent Chechnya descended into warlordism, kidnapping (over 1,000 hostages, including foreign engineers beheaded in 1998) and Salafi jihadism under Basayev and the Saudi Khattab; Maskhadov, elected in 1997, could not control it. Their invasion of Dagestan in August 1999 and the bombing of apartment blocks in Moscow and elsewhere that September, killing 300 (Russian security involvement remains alleged), let new prime minister Putin launch a second war. Grozny was reduced to rubble by February 2000 and the UN called it the most destroyed city on earth; filtration camps, 'zachistki' sweeps and disappearances (thousands) followed, and Chechen suicide attacks and hostage-takings hit Russia.

Chechenisation and after

Putin installed the former mufti Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004; his son Ramzan, with his kadyrovtsy militia, crushed and co-opted the insurgency with terror and Moscow's money. Basayev died in 2006, Maskhadov was killed in 2005 and Doku Umarov's Caucasus Emirate moved the fight to Dagestan and Ingushetia and later to Syria. Russia declared the counterterrorism operation over on 16 April 2009. Grozny was rebuilt with skyscrapers; Kadyrov's Chechnya has become a state within a state, its forces fighting for Russia in Ukraine, and Chechen exiles have been assassinated across Europe.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Soviet Union (USSR) (1922 to 1991)
• Russian Empire (1721 to 1917)

Wars of the same era and region

• Russo-Circassian War and Caucasian War (1763 to 1864)
• Russo-Ukrainian War (2014 to present)
• Syrian Civil War (2011 to 2024)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• World War II (1939 to 1945)

8 surprising things about the Chechen conflict

1. Grozny in 2000 was described by the UN as the most destroyed city on earth; it has since been rebuilt with a mosque that is Europe's largest.
2. The Beslan school siege of September 2004 killed 334 hostages, 186 of them children.
3. Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile that locked onto his satellite phone signal during a call.
4. The Moscow theatre siege ended when Russian forces pumped in an aerosol anaesthetic that killed 130 hostages along with the terrorists.
5. Ramzan Kadyrov became president at 30 (the minimum age) and has ruled Chechnya since 2007 with private armies and public floggings.
6. Anna Politkovskaya, who reported the second war's atrocities, was shot in her Moscow apartment building on Putin's birthday in 2006.
7. Chechen fighters have appeared on both sides in Ukraine: Kadyrov's forces for Russia and exile battalions for Kyiv.
8. The whole Chechen nation was deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin in 1944; a third died.

Sources

• First Chechen War Wikipedia
• Second Chechen War Wikipedia
• Chechnya: History Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (1998) Yale University Press

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