The Russian Army and Chechnya
International Viewpoint #264 MARCH 1995
Boris Kagarlitsky
On 11 December 1994 columns of tanks and forty thousand Russian troops burst onto the territory of the Chechen Republic, shooting up peaceful villages along the way and killing the health minister of neighboring Ingushetia. Aircraft and artillery dumped tons of bombs and shells on the Chechen capital, Grozny.
The weakest spot in the authorities' scenario was the lack of combat readiness of their own army — demoralized, poorly trained and without the slightest idea of why it was supposed to fight against citizens of its own country. The soldiers were sleeping in open fields during winter, and going into battle beneath the automatic rifle muzzles of special forces troops. They refused to carry out orders, deserted, and committed acts of banditry. Tanks became stuck in bogs. During the first days of combat several colonels surrendered. After the first skirmishes with Chechens, the group of forces that was advancing on Grozny from the east halted its advance and dug itself in. Soldiers and officers began fraternizing with the population. Warriors of the Russian army often began appearing in market-places in the suburbs of Grozny, where the besieged population fed them and gave them cigarettes. Supposedly super-accurate laser gun sights constantly failed to work. Bombs and rockets missed their targets sometimes by several kilometers, or even fell on the territory of neighboring Russian republics.
Failing to take Grozny with a quick assault, the commanders of the Russian forces took out their wrath on the peaceful population, mounting an incessant bombardment of the city. The number of victims grew by the day. One of the first of the entire war was unleashed. This was followed by a massed assault using tanks and infantry.
The new year attack on Grozny turned into one of the most shameful defeats in the history of the Russian army. The tanks that forced their way into the city were quickly cut off from the infantry and destroyed. The paratroopers who had taken up positions near the railway station were surrounded. The army lost half the equipment it had thrown into the battle, along with hundreds of dead and wounded. The Russian forces retreated in disorder, even as the official propaganda was telling the world that the city had been taken and the presidential palace seized.
Following this debacle, the federal forces began systematically destroying Grozny. Unable to capture the centre of reported that at night, troops used bayonets to slash the tyres of their own armored personnel carriers. According to Chechen sources, more than twenty Russian soldiers were shot by firing squad for trying to desert from the line of battle. The fact that government news sources constantly stressed that there were no "defeatist moods" in the army, and that the soldiers were "ready to carry out any order" , indirectly confirmed that discontent was ripening in the federal forces. It was not only enlisted troops and junior officers who were grumbling. After arriving in the Caucasus and familiarizing himself with the situation, Deputy Commander of the Russian Land Forces Colonel-General Eduard Vorobyov resigned his commission. Deputy Defence Minister General Boris Gromov came out
"The Chechen volunteers fought professionally and with selfless air raids on Grozny saw the devastation of courage, which is more than can be said of the Russian army...'
Moskovskaya Street, where there was not a single military installation. The casualties included journalists who were in the battle zone. Although the whole world, including inhabitants of Russia, saw on television how Russian aircraft were dropping bombs on Grozny, the official
Russian propagandists claimed to know nothing of any bombing, accusing the
Chechens of engineering it themselves.
Just before new year Yeltsin promised to halt the bombardment of the Chechen capital. Immediately after the end of his speech, when residents of Grozny whose hopes had been raised by the Russian president's promises emerged from their bomb shelters, the most ferocious air raid
24 the city, the attackers deliberately used artillery fire to demolish block after block, trying to make their way gradually toward the presidential palace. Meanwhile, almost the entire territory of the republic was engulfed in fighting. Skirmishes also began occurring in neighboring Dagestan. The drawn-out siege of Grozny allowed the Chechen fighters to develop a guerrilla war in the rear of the Russian forces.
The Chechen volunteers fought professionally and with selfless courage, which is more than can be said of the Russian army. Federal soldiers refused to go into battle, deserted, and in some cases crossed over to the Chechens. Journalists with a public criticism of the war in Chechnya. Then national television showed the commander in chief of the Russian paratroop forces, General Yevgeny Podkolzin, delivering an antiwar speech at the funeral of a colonel killed in Grozny.
Such actions by military officers in a country at war are virtually unknown in world practice, but perfectly natural in Yeltsin's Russia. After the country's ruling circles had spent five years destroying and humiliating their own army for the benefit of the West, they discovered to their surprise that this army was no longer willing or able to fight. *