First Chechen War

In December 1994 Russian troops entered Chechnya, a small mountain republic in the North Caucasus that had declared independence three years earlier. The government of Boris Yeltsin expected a quick operation. Instead the war lasted until August 1996, when Russian forces withdrew under the Khasavyurt agreement. Grozny, the capital, was shattered by bombardment and street fighting, with tens of thousands of civilians among the dead, and Moscow failed to win.¹³⁴

Chechnya, home to the Muslim Chechen people, had resisted Russian rule since the 19th century, and Stalin deported the entire population to Central Asia in 1944. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Chechnya's president, the former Soviet air force general Dzhokhar Dudayev, declared independence. Other Russian republics stayed in the federation, and Moscow refused to let the Chechens go, fearing the breakup of Russia itself and worried about oil pipelines through the region. Yeltsin's advisers also reportedly hoped a short, victorious war would help him politically.¹⁴

The Russian army was poorly trained and led, and Chechen fighters used the cities and mountains well. Two years of war ended in a Chechen recapture of Grozny in August 1996 and a peace that postponed the question of status. It did not last. In 1999 Chechen fighters raided neighboring Dagestan and apartment buildings blew up in Russian cities, and Moscow began a second war. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who led it, rose to the presidency in 2000. Russia took control of Chechnya by installing local loyalists, but the conflict spread violence across the North Caucasus.¹³⁴