Lessons from Chechnya: Russia Chechnya invasion truths

August 7, 2017November 12, 2025

This continues the series of articles about the Russian-Chechen wars. See the previous publication here. The next wave of the Russia Chechnya invasion, already by regular RF forces, came on New Year’s night from December 31, 1994, to January 1, 1995. Russian military groups entered Chechnya then, aiming to suppress what Russian propaganda called separatism — although the RF constitution directly enshrined this right and RF President Yeltsin himself had promised it.

Fierce battles followed, which Moscow had not anticipated at all. All press and public attention focused on the destruction of the Maikop Motor Rifle Brigade. The brigade entered downtown Grozny on armored vehicles and stopped at the railway station, apparently to secure the unloading of equipment arriving by train. The brigade’s forces walked themselves into a trap and Chechens destroyed almost the entire brigade and burned all armored vehicles.

However, the Maikop Brigade wasn’t alone — other groups were moving from different directions. Four directions of strike group movements were planned, with the general direction toward Grozny. The Northern group included the destroyed Maikop Brigade. The Northeastern group had consolidated motor rifle detachments. In addition, the “East” and “West” groups had total personnel and equipment exceeding those in the first two groups.

First Blood: Russia’s “Elite” Gets Crushed

We’ve mentioned the Maikop Brigade’s destruction several times, because this defeat overshadowed other episodes of the Russia–Chechnya invasion that Russians prefer not to recall. In reality, all units engaged with Ichkeria’s armed forces and suffered losses. It’s just that in Grozny there was total annihilation — and for a long time, the evidence remained visible to the naked eye.

Journalists filmed wrecked equipment and Russian corpses already being eaten by stray dogs. The paratroopers fared no better, because the Chechens didn’t care whether they were wiping out motor riflemen or airborne troops. Eventually, everyone became identical, faceless corpses, and the sight of “elite airborne” didn’t faze the Chechens one bit.

“Elite” in Flames: Chechnya, Ukraine, Same Story

As we now know, the summer invasion by RF armed forces into the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine was carried out precisely by Russian paratroopers. One group moved toward Luhansk, and the second moved from Uspenka in the general direction of northwestern Donetsk. And both these groups suffered horrific instantaneous losses. The enemy’s Luhansk group was precisely covered by a missile strike. The arriving Tochka-U missiles covered the entire column, and the number of corpses ran into hundreds. Our aviation covered the second group, which suddenly discovered the concentration point of the enemy’s strike group. Moreover, they weren’t on the march but at a concentration point. Su-25 attack aircraft first covered the personnel formation, simultaneously sending Moscow’s tsar a package with more than four hundred “Cargo 200s”, and then with the remaining ammunition they burned the enemy’s equipment.

Both in Chechnya then and with us 20 years later, the invasion was secured by paratroopers’ forces, and both the Chechen rebels of the Republic of Ichkeria and the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas successfully crushed them. This is the Russian army’s elite, whose losses are most painful in terms of reputation.

Moscow Changes Tactics

So Chechnya refused to surrender and gave such a fight that the Russians not only grew sad but also shut their eyes. Then in Moscow the conviction began to strengthen that purely military methods couldn’t suppress Chechnya. So they needed to develop psychological warfare. Strange as it may seem, here too we see deja vu. In this variant of war in Ukraine, the Russians are showing the same techniques, just slightly refined in terms of technical means and technologies.

The Russians began to understand that the blitzkrieg had failed and they should prepare for a prolonged war. A long game has its own rules and requires somewhat different approaches than a blitzkrieg. Indeed, even logistics shifts to different tracks. They needed to feed a grouping that at the moment of invasion alone consisted of 15,000 people, almost 600 BMPs, 400 BTRs, and several hundred BMDs and other armored vehicles. But there were also about 200 tanks there. Each burns up to a ton of diesel per day of driving. And they also pulled various artillery there. All of this consumed not only diesel but also ammunition, repair kits, and more.

Moreover, prolonged positional war inevitably decomposes the invaders’ army, because soldiers want to go home, to mom or to their wife, while local residents have nowhere to go because it’s their land. Therefore, local fighters’ resilience is invariably higher. Plus, too many in the world have unclosed debts both to the USSR and to Russia, so prolonged war inevitably attracts new fighters and, most importantly, finances for waging it.

Foreign Fighters Join the Cause

So it happened this time too. Fighters from various countries around the world flocked to Chechnya, some from Arab countries, but not only from there. Ukrainians formed their own units (the most famous was the “Viking” unit) and went to fight at their own risk, remembering everything that communists perpetrated on our land. Too many unavenged deaths needed to be paid by the Russians. It’s worth noting that our units proved exceptionally combat-capable. They didn’t engage in local politics — they came to destroy the enemy who destroys Ukrainians.

The West begins to react to the prolonged slaughter with masses of dead people, especially civilians. But Yeltsin had already tasted blood, and he was hard to stop. And the Russians decided they needed to change war tactics and present all Chechens as terrorists.

Terror Begets Terror

During the early phase of the Russia Chechnya invasion, Chechen commanders did everything they could to dissuade the Russians from waging a war full of unnecessary victims. They released entire units of captured Russian soldiers and targeted only the contractors who came to kill for money. Chechens saw them as mercenaries and didn’t bother with formalities. But they spared the conscripts. Throughout that initial period, Chechens handed over captured conscripts directly to their parents, who came to take them home.

This was common practice precisely at the beginning of the Russian-Chechen war, but then everything changed, because Moscow itself changed the rules of war. It discarded all conventions of conducting combat operations and treating prisoners. Unable to achieve a breakthrough militarily, Russian troops and special services began unleashing good old terror, perfected by the USSR.

Russians began gutting prisoners. They dragged corpses tied to truck hitches. They raped and looted settlements where residents obviously and openly hated them. Tough “spetsnaz” already wandered around with severed ears. In the near rear of their troops they deployed an entire conveyor of torture and extrajudicial executions. Moreover, all of this happened with the leadership’s tacit consent. All Russian military personnel understood perfectly well that behind their backs a terrible hell was organized.

Chechen Response to Russian Terror

To the executions of their comrades, the desecration of their bodies, and the murders of civilians, the Chechens responded with Caucasian directness. They didn’t shoot but slit Russians’ throats — thereby showing complete contempt for the invaders. This is an open message: a bullet is too good for such scum. And the Chechens specifically filmed this on video and sent it to the Russians so they would understand that their bet was accepted and raised.

When the Putin regime collapses and investigators gain access to its inquisition archives, they will uncover interrogation footage: first Chechens, then Ukrainians. Russian executioners tortured their victims with electricity, severed limbs, flayed skin from the living, turned intestines inside out — and committed countless other acts we won’t even describe. All of this is now being documented by our Prosecutor General’s Office, which is already investigating Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Chechnya may be getting away with it for now, but Ukraine won’t let it slide. Sooner or later, the truth about Russian war crimes during the Russia Chechnya invasion will surface too.

Hostages and Scorched Earth

Later, hostage-taking began. The Russian punitive army took entire settlements hostage, issued ultimatums, and after refusal wiped them off the face of the earth with artillery and aviation. This is how Grozny was destroyed. We see this same signature today in Ukrainian Shyrokyne, Debaltseve and Avdiivka, Syrian Aleppo and Idlib, and other cities.
But the Chechens responded to hostage-taking with the same coin. And it must be said, they found an effective antidote. Russians always shit their pants when the same methods they apply to others without hesitation are applied to them.

The Chechens transferred the war to enemy territory and gave them battle there. After the corpses of war criminals and high-ranking officials started falling on RF territory, their houses started burning and their cars started exploding, the Russians developed a desire to conduct negotiations. And the brutal expulsion of the occupier from Grozny in 1996 prompted the Russians to agree to a truce and recognition of Ichkeria’s independence.

The famous Khasavyurt agreements stopped military actions, and the Russians got the opportunity to withdraw their surviving troops from Chechnya. In return, they agreed to recognize the independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

The mistake made by the Chechens was that you can’t trust Russians’ promises, and their signature on a document is no more valuable than writing on a fence. The Russia Chechnya invasion confirmed this axiom.