Putin and the Chechen wars

Submitted by AWL on 21 April, 2022 - 10:20 Author: Dan Katz
First Chechen war

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the Russian state conducted two bloody wars against the small nation of Chechnya.

The first, from 1994-6, ended with a peace treaty following the defeat of Russia’s attempt to smash the Chechen national movement. The second, which began with a Russian invasion after October 1999 and ended with Russia declaring the victory of its “counter terrorism operation” in 2009, facilitated Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and was important to consolidating his rule.

The two wars were staggeringly violent. From a population of around 800,000 in 1990 there were at least 50,000 Chechen casualties, mainly civilians, as well as, perhaps, 14,000 Russian troops killed.

Putin’s Second Chechen war became a model for similar invasions of Georgia, in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Unlike the First Chechen war, when Russian media was still relatively free, the Second war was shrouded by a purged and cowed state-dominated media.

TheEconomist magazine notes that, “In February 2000, barely a month after Mr Putin assumed Russia’s presidency, his riot police and soldiers entered Novye Aldi, a suburb of Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, and went from house to house murdering civilians… sweeps like this became known as zachistka or ‘mopping up’ operations. Between 56 and 82 civilians were killed and at least six women were raped.

“The European Court of Human Rights found the Russian state guilty in that case, as well as others. But in Russia the crimes were never prosecuted, giving a sense of immunity to the armed forces.”

The similarities with the crimes committed by Putin’s army in the villages north of Kyiv, in Ukraine, a few weeks ago, are obvious. Putin and his military have had a consistent pattern of behaviour, two decades long.

Writing in the Guardian (13 April), Lana Estemirova, daughter of the extraordinarily brave, murdered, Chechnya-based human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, commented, “Chechnya today serves as a grotesque miniature of what Vladimir Putin wants to achieve in Ukraine… a subdued place with its population broken and terrorised into submission by the brutality of its regime friendly leadership… Before the bombing of Mariupol’s maternity hospital there was the bombing of Grozny maternity hospital and a crowded market which killed 100-120 people in 1999. Before Bucha and Irpin, there was Samashki, where on 7 April 1995… soldiers shot civilians, raped women, set homes on fire. At least 103 were murdered that day… Too many massacres, too many broken lives to count.”

Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, and, like Natalya Estemirova, the victim of a political assassination, in 2006, was one of the few independent Russian journalists to cover the Second Chechen war. Politkovskaya witnessed a crowd of Chechens fighting for food aid and wrote, “How could this have happened, in front of the whole world? … As soon as you enter the dormitory of the old cement factory in Chiri-Yurt, which has been turned into a refugee settlement, you hear wailing. A protracted half-animal monotone evoking the farthest reaches of despair.” This war was characterised by arbitrary arrest, torture, murder, mutilation, rape and terror as Russian forces battered Chechnya into submission. And, “who is to blame for this national disgrace?” asks Politkovskaya. “Of course the greatest blame falls on Putin.” (Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell).

Western governments tended to turn a blind eye to Putin’s crimes in Chechnya, preferring to do business with Russia, and not wanting quibbles about civil liberties and national rights to obstruct trade. France and Germany behaved in exactly this way after Putin carved out parts of Eastern Ukraine in 2014, forcing Ukraine to sign the Minsk Agreements because Western Europe would rather have stable relations with Putin’s Russia than stick up for Ukraine’s rights.

After the Al Qaeda attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 Putin re-packaged his Chechen war as a fight against Islamist militancy and he was accepted by the Bush-led US as a participant in the War on Terror.

The bourgeois governments were not the only Westerners who failed to act against Putin. The socialist left was shameful too.

Protest

On Saturday 5 February 2000, during the second siege of Grozny, Workers’ Liberty was central to organising a protest march against Russian atrocities and for Russian troop withdrawal. Only 200 marchers joined us to protest in central London. Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn spoke to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The general attitude of the left was that imperialism was something America and its allies did; Russia was somehow different, even on our side.

Chechnya is now a republic in the Russian Federation with a population of around 1.2mn. It is run by the gangster-thug Ramzan Kadyrov, “Putin’s little dragon”, as Politkovskaya called him. Kadyrov may well have been behind Politkovskaya’s murder.

Kadyrov has sent Chechen fighters, loyal to him, to fight for Putin in Ukraine. He claims to be fighting now in Mariupol, and to have 1,000 Chechen Kadyrovtsy with him. This notorious militia also fought for Putin in Syria.

The ethnic Russian population, which was once significant in Chechnya, is now negligible. There are significant Chechen diaspora communities in Turkey and Western Europe, as well as Russia itself.

Chechnya was claimed by the Russian Tsars in the sixteenth century, and the Russian state has been in direct conflict with the Chechens on and off since 1784. It is a territory — with mountains and forests, its people organised by clans which fiercely value their independence — that has always proved difficult to conquer and hold.

The Caucasian war of Tsarist subjugation took place in phases after 1817-8 and ended for the Chechens with the formal annexation of Chechnya into the Russian empire in 1859.

The Chechen people continued to rebel. Under Stalin’s rule the entire Chechen people was forcibly seized and dispersed in a single night. On 23 February 1944, 480,000 Chechens were deported in Operation Lentil. Up to 200,000 died in what Chechens call the Ardakh, or Exodus. The Chechens were scattered and resettled across Siberia and Kazakhstan and were only allowed to return in 1956, following Stalin’s death.

During Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule Chechens began to campaign for national freedom. The Chechen All-National Congress, led by a former Soviet general Dzhokhar Dudayev, shaped the movement. When the attempt at a Stalinist coup took place in the Soviet Union, in August 1991, Dudayev overthrew the Soviet administration in Grozny, declared independence and called elections in October, which he won.

Gorbachev abolished the USSR at the end of 1991 but Chechnya remained formally part of the newly created Russian Federation.

Dudayev advocated secession from the new Russia. Russian leader Boris Yeltsin declared the election void, and sent MVD VV (Ministry of Internal Affairs Interior) troops who tried to arrest Dudayev. When the Russian troops landed at Khankala airbase they were surrounded by a much bigger Chechen force. Yeltsin backed down and his soldiers were allowed to leave by bus.

In 1992 Ingushetia separated itself out from Chechnya and accepted incorporation into the Russian Federation. Chechnya refused, adopted a flag and a national anthem, although with no international recognition.

Dudayev ran the Chechen administration badly. Mafia gangs thrived and the state bank was run as a major criminal enterprise. The economy tanked. And Yeltsin could not accept the Chechens’ refusal to submit; Chechnya was a possible bad example that others might follow.

At the end of 1994 Russian-organised Chechen forces supplemented by Russian troops began incursions into Chechnya. They were defeated easily and Russia escalated. On 28 November 1994 Russian planes destroyed the small Chechen air force and Russian troops invaded, heading for Grozny. Grozny was defended by 9,000 fighters, organised by Aslan Maskhadov. The Russian first wave contained only 6,000 troops and their attack began on 31 December.

The Russian forces were badly organised and morale was poor. When the 1st Battalion of the 131st Independent Motor Rifle Brigade reached the central railway station they were trapped, ambushed and wiped out. It took the Russians three more weeks to overrun most of Grozny, although fighting continued in the south of the city for many weeks. Grozny was partly destroyed and many thousands of civilians were killed.

Soon 55,000 Russian troops were in Chechnya, including new elite units. The Russians demanded immediate capitulation in negotiations with Maskhadov, although they were unable to end Chechen resistance. The Chechen fighting units fragmented and some turned to forms of terror which led to some spectacular actions.

In June 1995, Shamil Basayev, who would later become famous as an Islamic radical, led 194 men into the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk where they took 1,800 people, including 150 children, hostage at the local hospital. Basayev demanded an end to Russian operations in Chechnya. Russian forces tried to storm the hospital and failed. Eventually the Russians — effectively — accepted the Chechen demands. Basayev was allowed to return to Chechnya with his remaining fighters (he had lost only 12 men), leaving Budyonnovsk partially destroyed. Scores of others were also killed, mainly civilians caught up in fighting by two sides which gave little thought to civilian lives.

600 fighters under Salman Raduyev attacked the Russian stronghold of Gudermes and fought for two weeks. In January 1996 Raduyev then led 200 Chechens into Dagestan where he took 1,000 hostages at a hospital. Again, the Russians let the Chechen fighters leave. But just short of the border the Russians attacked the Chechen militants who then dug in at a local village, taking more hostages. For three days Russian special forces attempted to take the village, suffering heavy losses. Having failed to destroy Raduyev’s militia the Russians bombed the village, killing many civilians and justifying themselves by claiming all the hostages were already dead. After eight days the remaining Chechen fighters broke out through Russian lines.

Maskhadov

In April 1996 Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile, apparently homing in on his telephone signal.

By mid-1996 the Russians had begun to believe they had won. However, in August 1996 Aslan Maskhadov organised a strike against Grozny. 1,500 fighters infiltrated the capital and on 6 August they took over much of Grozny. More Chechen fighters joined the insurgents and a week later they still held much of Grozny as most non-combatants fled. The attack shifted the balance of power inside the Russian state. Many among the army leadership, especially Afghanistan war veterans, wanted to settle and end the war. That’s what happened.

That settlement uneasily froze Chechnya’s status within the Russian Federation, but with de facto independence. Maskhadov, a secular nationalist, was elected President and attempted to make the peace work. Militias were incorporated into the state structures, but warlords maintained their hold and built local fiefdoms. Jihadist influence grew, and some militant leaders clearly declared their aim to be an Islamic state across the North Caucuses, rather than Chechen independence. Maskhadov introduced sharia law with the intention of undercutting the Islamists; but the Islamists were merely encouraged.

Basayev attempted to spread the war into neighbouring Dagastan in the summer of 1999. Aslan Maskhadov condemned the action, but could not prevent it.

Putin became head of the spy agency, FSB, in 1998, prime minister in August 1999, and, as Boris Yeltsin stepped down, acting President at the end of 1999. Putin, always an authoritarian nationalist, intended to make Russia a major power again.

In the run-up to Putin’s Chechen war a series of mysterious bomb explosions took place in blocks of Russian flats. The bombs were blamed on the Chechens and provided part of the excuse Russia used to invade again. However, the FSB were caught planting a similar bomb in Ryazan, subsequently explaining that they had been involved in a training exercise.

Putin’s forces were much better prepared for the subjugation of Chechnya. Putin declared Maskhadov’s government illegitimate. The Russian state then carefully moved, in stages, through Chechnya towards Grozny. 40,000 civilians and 2,500 fighters were left in the ruins of Grozny to face the third Russian attack on the capital. The main assault began on 15 January 2000. The Chechens began to fragment, nationalists from Islamists, as their forces left the city in small groups at the end of January, suffering hundreds of casualties.

Russia declared Grozny liberated on 6 February. Only 21,000 of the original 400,000 population remained in the devastated town. South of Grozny, in the large village of Komsomolskoye, the Russians cornered 500 fighters. The village was completely obliterated as the attackers used aircraft and thermobaric missiles to destroy it at the cost of 550 Chechen lives, including very many civilians. Later, Anna Politkovskaya visited Komsomolskoye, and declared it to be “a village that no longer exists… looking like the set of a horror film.”

What remained of the opposition took an increasingly Islamist character, acting against Maskhadov, and making attacks on Russian civilians. In October 2002 forty Islamists took 850 hostages at the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow. The Russians pumped in gas and sent special forces into the theatre. All the Islamists were killed along with 179 hostages. In September 2004 32 Islamists took 1100 hostages at School Number One, in Beslan, North Ossetia. As bombs exploded inside the school the building was stormed and 334 hostages died, including 186 children.

The Russian responses to these terrorist actions was characterised by utter disregard for the lives of civilians caught up in the events.

In March 2003 a new constitution was ratified stating that Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation. During the Second Chechen war Putin had been careful to create Chechen proxies: militias and a local leadership which would act for him. Akhmad Kadyrov, a former nationalist fighter who had changed sides, became President. His son, Ramzan, ran his militia, the Kadyrovtsy, and now controls Chechnya. Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated by Chechen Islamists in 2004.

Aslan Maskhadov spent the Second Chechen war as a guerrilla leader with a $10mn bounty on his head. He fought the Russian occupation, but condemned attacks on Russian civilians, describing those who occupied the school in Beslan as “madmen”. He advocated a negotiated settlement, but in 2005 he was found and killed by Russian forces.

Budanov

On 26 March 2000 Vladimir Putin won the Presidential election in the first round, with 53% of the vote. Later that night one of the most notorious crimes of the Chechen war was committed by Colonel Yuri Budanov. Budanov kidnapped, raped and murdered a 17-year old Chechen, Elsa Kungayeva from the village of Tangi-Chu, south west of Grozny.

Budanov was later killed by Islamists for his crime.

Before Budanov attacked Elsa Kungayeva, abducted in front of her family from her home, he had beaten up Senior Lieutenant Roman Bagreev for refusing to fire heavy cannons at Tangi-Chu, for fun. Bagreev was tied up, thrown in a pit intended for Chechens, covered with lime, then pissed on.

Budanov was the product of Putin’s Chechen war and a symbol of Putin’s attitude to the Chechens. And Budanov was also a warning for us about the future Putin intended.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Wed, 04/05/2022 - 23:44

I remember the demo in London in 2000. One thing I'd forgotten that came back to me just now is that a few SWPers attended with a banner that said "Russia out of Chechnya, NATO out of the Balkans". That I'm pretty sure. I think, though I don't remember quite so clearly, that it featured a cartoon of Russia attacking Chechnya and NATO/the US attacking... Kosovo/a. It's good the SWP showed up to the demo, if only in very small numbers, but it was a dramatic illustration of their terrible politics - a total whitewashing or indeed erasure of Serbian imperialism. The connection with their stance on Ukraine today is obvious. I discuss the Balkans / Ukraine comparison here.

Sacha Ismail

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