Lessons from Chechnya: the Chechen War Beginning

August 6, 2017November 11, 2025

Understanding the Chechen War beginning helps us avoid mistakes today. The sooner we learn these lessons, the fewer losses we’ll suffer fighting the enemy. And the faster we’ll achieve victory.

Unlike other Soviet republics, russia had a federal structure. The federation collapse process gained momentum rapidly. Many republics declared independence. They started separating from russia. This should have ended naturally. The vast territory would disintegrate into ethnic and other formations. These new entities would build a new life. The community of countries willing to participate would propose the principles for their formation.

The West’s Third Greatest Geopolitical Mistake

The collapse of the USSR resulted from its game with the West of raising stakes. The USSR went all-in and fell. So in this situation, the West in general and the States in particular defeated the USSR without a single shot — the USSR that played too much with “liberation,” “international duty,” and other stupid games. By all logic of events, russia should have collapsed following the USSR, but the West made a wrong decision aimed at stopping the “parade of sovereignties” that continued at that time.

Thus, the third greatest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century was made. The first two led to two world wars, and the third laid the foundations for the third war. The West didn’t need to make any efforts for further destruction of russia. Russia was doing it under the pressure of internal contradictions and internal energy. Conversely, to stop the process of russia’s collapse, the West needed to make certain efforts and incur material costs.

The very fact of receiving food and support from a whole series of Western countries sent a signal to Yeltsin that keeping russia from collapse was finally sanctioned by the West. And if so, then maintaining it within administrative borders could be carried out by any means, including bloody ones.

Chechnya Takes Full Sovereignty

In fact, since 1991, the russian constitution ceased to operate in Chechnya, and its laws no longer had priority over Chechnya’s internal legislation. The republic independently formed its own government bodies and built its external relations according to its own understanding. If we abstract from russia’s construction and simply list the functions that Chechnya’s government took upon itself, we can safely say that within the Chechen Republic, russian authority ended.

But Chechnya only acted as President Yeltsin had declared. And at the beginning of his presidential career, he stated that any subject of the federation could take as much sovereignty as it wanted. Generally, Yeltsin said nothing seditious, because this is the essence of a federal state. So Chechnya took this sovereignty completely, honestly, and without hiding. For three years already, active internal political processes were underway there, which increasingly distanced the republic from the federal center.

This is important to understand in order to evaluate the shout from the Kremlin: “You’ve played with independence enough.” But from Grozny, they sent Yeltsin far away and advised him not to interfere in Chechnya’s internal affairs, because different principles were already working here that didn’t correlate with the Kremlin’s new paradigm.

Let’s end the introduction to the situation here and move on to what are important and necessary lessons that we still haven’t learned, because what happened next is what’s happening and may happen to us.

Chechen War beginning: First Invasion by “Lost Rebels”

Immediately after Yeltsin was told that Chechnya didn’t want to listen to ultimatum-style speeches, and to add more vivid narration they made up some wild stories, he decided to pressure Chechnya. True, at this time russia hadn’t yet stopped eating from the West’s hand, so they needed to scare Chechnya but not scare the West.

The Chechen War beginning happened at this moment. Russians sent their first “rebels” on tanks, BMPs, and BTRs. Twenty years before Donetsk and Luhansk, these forces “got lost in Chechnya” exactly as it happened in Ukraine. Moreover, the northern districts of the Ichkeria Republic had a critical percentage of genetic trash. These were known now as “russian Cossacks.” They declared a separate republic subordinate to moscow.

If we take just these two facts, the coincidence of moscow’s actions becomes almost one hundred percent. Let’s remind you that in 1994, nobody in the West knew about putin yet. So putin didn’t invent hybrid war or its basic principles. At least two decades before this, everything was worked out and implemented.

The Failed Attempt

At the end of November 1994, an attempt was made to disperse the defiant Chechen authorities using “Cossack” forces. Initially, russians planned to limit themselves to a show of force and several demonstrative killings of Chechen leaders to intimidate the local population. If Grozny had surrendered, the operation participants would have received medals and awards. But Grozny met them harshly, and the situation went according to a scenario unusual for russians. They didn’t expect that attempts to kill locals would receive armed resistance.

The saddest thing in this story is that the West didn’t see the sprouts of rebirth of that stinking and bloody Soviet system that Reagan, Thatcher, and others had so long and stubbornly driven to the grave. The pause between November 26 and December 31 was needed not only to transfer troops to Chechnya but also to understand the West’s reaction to overtly forceful actions.
And when it became clear that the West had turned a blind eye, Yeltsin decided to use the army not to intimidate Chechnya but to destroy those to whom he himself had proposed taking as much sovereignty as they could.

Two Axioms Russia Never Changed

In this part, we’ll once again remind you of two axioms that will be repeated many times later and are being repeated right now before our eyes.

The first testifies to the ease with which russian leaders renounce their words. General Ben Hodges said that in the last 400 years, russia has never fulfilled its commitments of its own will. Everything it fulfilled was exclusively by compulsion. But before him, Margaret Thatcher said, “Never trust Russia. It always looks for weakness.” And even earlier, Otto von Bismarck said, “An agreement with Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

So, nothing new here. Another confirmation of what all Ukrainians have known since 1654, when russians deceived Bohdan Khmelnytsky after the Pereyaslav Council and violated agreements recorded in the March Articles.

The second axiom is moscow’s easy abandonment of military personnel sent to do dirty work. The Chechen War beginning in 1994 demonstrated this brutal pattern for the first time in modern history. Moscow sent soldiers, then denied their existence when things went wrong. There’s nothing new in the russian-Ukrainian war. Everything already happened in Chechnya. Deja vu? Of course. But this isn’t the last one.