![]() The 81 st Motor Rifle Regiment penetrated deep into Grozny, only to find itself ambushed from all sides and forced to retreat on foot. When a column was engaged in a narrow avenue, we simply shot the leading APC and the last one of the column. Our tactics were simple but effective: we let the Russian columns enter the city, driving along streets where the APCs and tanks could not maneuver. What is more, infantry was also advancing in complete disorder among the APCs. They were unable to maneuver or turn around when necessary. They were marching as if on parade ground with only a distance of 5 to 6 meters between each APC. “What struck me at first was that Russian tanks and APCs were not even advancing in battle order. Ilyas Akhmadov, future foreign minister of the short-lived Chechen republic, described the collision of these forces in a 1999 interview with Small War Journals: ![]() These groups were subdivided in fire teams each with its own anti-tank special, light machine gunner and one or two sniper/assault riflemen. But they operated in effective small groups of twenty-forty fighters ensconced in high-rising buildings overlooking the avenues of advance. The roughly 2,000 Chechen defenders-only 200 of them soldiers-were also highly disorganized. Furthermore, Russian troops were not trained or equipped to minimize minimize civilian casualties and possessed only extremely limited quantities of precision-guided munitions. Army which then held the mantra “We don’t do cities,” the Red Army saw urban areas as costly quagmires best bypassed and avoided in a decisive war of maneuver. Thus, the four Russian columns entering Grozny on New Year’s anticipated only light resistance.īut the average Russian soldiers received almost no training in urban warfare. Then paratroopers from the 104 th Guards Airborne division seized the Khankala military airfield near Grozny, and beat back an armored attack by Dudayev’s forces, destroying six tanks. Su-24 and Su-25 jets wiped out Dudayev’s air force of 266 planes and helicopters on the ground early in December. Most units were at far below their theoretical strength, and many of its soldiers untrained and often demoralized conscripts who were reportedly often drunk on duty and had no idea why they were fighting in Chechnya in the first place.ĭespite the chaos and unpreparedness, Russian forces won several early victories. ![]() Russia’s army, like the country itself, was then an impoverished shadow of its former Soviet self. Several senior officials resigned and hundreds of soldiers and officers refused to mobilize. In September 1991, his National Congress of the Chechen People stormed the local soviet and fatally ejected the Communist party leader from a window.Įven as heavy aerial bombing began December 1, many Russians objected to openly fighting their fellow citizens. ![]() They were only allowed return in 1958.Īs the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, a former Soviet bomber pilot with combat experience from Afghanistan named Dzokhar Dudayev rose to prominence in Chechnya. During World War II, Soviet secret police deported a half-million Chechens and other local minorities from their homes, accusing them of collaboration with German forces. Tolstoy even wrote the short novel Haji Murad about a Chechen rebel commander caught between internecine local disputes and the self-destructive intrigues of Tsarist Russia. The Muslim Chechens had clashed with Russia for centuries. But the New Year’s Eve surprise that unfolded in Grozny a little over thirty years ago would set the course for post-Soviet Russia in ways that continue to haunt world politics today. Surely such firepower would brush away the estimated 100 or so Chechen fighters supporting an upstart pro-independence government based in Grozny. But the forces entering Grozny from four axes were far from minimal, counting elements from seven motorized rifle regiments and one independent brigade mounted in wheeled BTR-80 armored personnel carriers and tracked BMP-2 fighting vehicles, two tank battalions with T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks, and two parachute regiments. The First Chechen War explains a lot of what Russia and Putin are doing in Ukraine today: On New Year’s Eve, 1994 Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles poured into the streets of Grozny with an assault expected to snuff out the self-declared Chechcen Republic of Ichkeria, as black smoke poured into the sky from oil tanks set ablaze by a dawn artillery bombardment.ĭefense Minister Pavel Grachev had claimed the upstart Chechens would be swept away in “a bloodless blitzkrieg” with minimal forces. ![]()
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