"I Can Fight, Army against Army": the 1994-1996

Russo-Chechen War, Strategies and Misconceptions

Originally published in Moshe Gammer (ed.) Ethno-Nationalism,

Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder,
Routledge, 2008

Dr. Yagil Henkin

IDF Command and General Staff College
[email protected],
[email protected]

1
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In the spring of 1995 the journalist Sebastian Smith visited Aslan Maskhadov, the Chief
of Staff of the (separatist) Chechen Republic, who was then at the midst of war with
Russia. Maskhadov explained his plans for the future to Smith: he said that he intended
to fight a pitched defensive battle, to use all his force to fight for every town and
village, in order to prevent the Russians from “governing over the territory” and thus
declaring "that we are only bandits who hide in the hills”. Maskhadov was aware that a
pitched battle could be highly costly for him, but he said that he wanted to show "that I
can fight a real war, army against army, position against position”.1 At that time the
Chechen militia had already been driven out of the capital Groznyi after two months of
strenuous fighting and the Chechen commander’s forces and means of defence were
clearly inferior to those of the Russians. Hearing these words Smith came to his own
conclusion: Maskhadov "was crazy"2.

Also many Chechens questioned the judgment of Maskhadov, indeed his sanity. Even
Dudayev, the President of Chechnya and a former general in the Soviet Air Force,
suggested to use against the Russians “hit and run ’afghan style’ tactics”, which
Maskhadov flatly refused. Indeed, Maskhadov admitted that after the Chechen retreat
from Groznyi, in 1995, “I was often criticized and advised that we should switch to
partisan warfare”3.

About a year later the Chechens re-occupied the capital, Groznyi, from a larger by far
Russian force. Maskhadov was the brains behind the attack. Umar Khambiyev, a
senior Chechen commander, said that when he had received the order to join the
Chechen attack on Groznyi in August 1996,

I personally was weary, and I was hoping to be sent anywhere but Grozny.
I knew that when we went to Grozny it would mean victory or death.
There would be no way back.

1
Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus, London: I.B. Tauris,
1998, p. 167.
2
Ibid, loc cit.
3
Marie Bennigsen-Brouxp, “Interview with Aslan Maskhadov”, June 1999. Unless otherwise stated, all
interviews with Chechen figures were made by Prof. Bennigsen-Brouxp and provided courtesy of David
Dilegge of the Urban Operations Journal.
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Russian troops were everywhere, and I knew that I would not be able to
escape from Pervomaiskoe if things went wrong […] I wanted to stay in
Benoy and fight and die there rather than in Grozny. […] I was worried
that on the way to Grozny, we could be caught in an ambush and die
unnecessarily. But orders were orders.

Two or three days after the start of the operation, I began to change my
mind and realize that maybe we would manage.4

If one examines the activity of the Chechen command according to accepted military
criteria, it is rather natural to jump to Sebastian Smith’s conclusion, that Maskhadov
was “mad”. He seemed to ignore accepted conventions, and preferred impossible
tactics. Chairman Mao Tse Tung, whose formula for guerrilla warfare -- “when the
enemy attacks, we retreat, when the enemy retreats, we advance, when the enemy is
weak we attack” -- has become classical, would probably severely accuse the Chechen
command for stubbornly defending the cities and towns when the superiority of the
adversary was clear, as well as for attacking Groznyi, the city which concentrated an
unusually large number of Russian troops and was the core of their deployment,
especially with what looked as a very inferior force.

Of course such a conclusion would be a bit hasty, and would ignore the fact that, in the
end, Maskahadov clearly succeeded to carry out his plans. He succeeded to cause the
Russians in Groznyi heavy loses during its two months long defence in 1995. He
succeeded to delay the progress of the Russians in several places for a surprisingly long
time -- the most outstanding example is the town of Bamut, which effectively withstood
the Russians for almost a year and a half. And in 1996, against all logic, he succeeded
to conquer a city that was protected by between ten and twelve thousand soldiers with
heavy artillery at their disposal, with a force of fifteen hundred men. Unless Maskhadov
was extremely lucky, one has to assume that his success stemmed from, among other
things, the fact that he knew not only why he was fighting, but also how to do it.

4
“Interview with Umar Khambiev”, June 1999.
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According to the separatist Chechen concept, as articulated by Maskhadov, they fought

for independence, and wanted the world to know that they were, and deserved to be
regarded as, a state. Maskhadov’s main concern was that his forces were, and be
viewed as “an army”. Thus his decision to fight as an army. Therefore, rather then
follow “logic” and retreat to fight a “small war” of attacks and provocations,
Maskhadov did his best to organize pitched battle, with posts and defence bases. Of
course, this cost the Chechen losses, but in their view, the actual stubborn hold to the
territories served their separatism better than attacks- provocation- etc., which would
allow the Russians to characterize them as gangs and not as an organized military force.
Maskhadov objected to the idea of guerrilla warfare, because “in a small territory such
as ours, had we used such tactics we would have been pushed to the depth of the
mountains in less than a week.” This would mean the loss of any base to retreat to, the
rapid Russian takeover of most of Chechnya, and the substantiation of their claim to
control the entire republic. “During the entire war” Said Maskhadov, “we kept a line of
defence, whether in the city or in the mountains. We always had a territory to retreat
to"5.

Also Hussein Iskhanov, Maskhadov’s ADC, stated that “in the first year, we waged war
according to classic military rules – we held positions, we dug trenches, etc. In the
second phase of the war, after our retreat from Vedeno [the last great stronghold of the
separatists], we decided to wage a more economical partisan war"6. This too, however,
was waged without abandoning certain posts; Maskhdov himself defined the tactics at
that stage as “semi- guerrilla”.

Maskhadov repeated his principles in his first interview to the Western press after the
beginning of the battle for Groznyi in 1996. While other Chechen spokesmen provoked
the Russians -- Movladi Udugov, the Chechen Information Minister, even ridiculed
Yeltsin’s speeches announcing that the Chechens were “restoring the constitutional
order”7 -- to Maskhadov it was more important to emphasise to the world once again

5
Interview with Maskhadov.
6
Interview with Husein Iskhanov, June 1999.
7
Smith, p. 241.
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that he stood at the head of an organized army. The Chechen forces, he said, proved
that they were not "bandits" but a powerful force unified under a central command.8

This ambition, this wish to be recognized as a state dictated to a considerable extant

Chechen activity during the war because they felt the need to behave like a state. These
attempts were by no means limited to Maskhadov and military affairs. They were made
also in the diplomatic and political spheres. For example, in January 1995 President
Dudayev’s representative in Brussels was asked whether the Chechens planned
retaliatory actions in Moscow's underground or electricity plants. His reply was:
“certainly not”, to which he added that since the Chechens wanted to become part of
the international community, they adhered to international law and norms. Otherwise,
he asked, how could they expect to look for international support?9

Of course, these words must be taken with a grain of salt. After all during the war of
1994 - 1996 two major acts of terror were perpetrated by the Chechens (and another --
by their Turkish supporters), which demonstrates that at least some of them were not
committed to international norms. Still, this number of terrorist activities outside
Chechnya -- three during a year and a half long war -- is surprisingly negligible. It is
certainly so in comparison to other parts of the world (like the Middle- East). Besides,
the two significant acts of terror by Chechens (the takeover of the hospital in
Budyonnovsk, and the hostage affair in Kizliar/ Pervomaiskaia) had originally military
objectives and deteriorated into hostage taking only after they had got into trouble.

Furthermore, the perpetrators of these acts did their best to distance themselves from
the Chechen government, as did the official Chechen leadership. Both sides clang to the
version that the separatist government was not responsible for these attacks. Thus,
Shamil Basayev, the commander of the action in Budyonnovsk and one of the
important field commanders of the separatists, stubbornly claimed that the action was
his own initiative, with no one’s permission due to the fact that his force had become
isolated from the central Command. He was probably lying. Communications between

8
Carlotta Gall and Thomas De Wall, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus, New York: New York
University Press, 1998, p. 335.
9
Robert Chenciner, Daghestan – Tradition and Survival, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 293.
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the Chechens were fairly satisfactory so that if one of the most important field
commanders had gone missing it could not have passed unnoticed. Clearly some
Chechen leaders must have had a clue of the planned action in advance.

This was probably not so in the Pervomaiskaia affair in January 1996, when a raid
headed by Salman Raduyev -- a notorious maverick who was married to the president’s
niece – ended in capturing hostages, and a siege and prolonged battle. Although
Maskhadov sent a force to extricate Raduyev’s men, he immediately set strict
guidelines to prevent hostage taking in the future. According to Maskhadov, “I was
never keen on raids such as Budyonnovsk and Pervomaiskaia. We had to fight with
honour, to show not only courage but also the quality of our people. The rules of war
should apply despite our small numbers"10, (and, one may add, despite that the fact that
these rules often placed the Chechens in an inferior position).

With a clear central aim -- to be recognized as a state -- the separatist leaders were
willing to take – or to be perceived as taking -- steps, such as relatively organized
warfare and diplomatic behaviour. They realised that these steps would serve their
long-term interests rather then bring them immediate dividends and were ready for such
and other sacrifices. The Russians, on the other hand, seem to have never correctly
understood what the separatists were doing and why they were doing it. Most of the
Russian political and military leaders were trapped in their own notions as to the nature
of the conflict and the actions of the Chechens.

When the Russians entered Chechnya, in December 1994, they claimed – and more
importantly, believed -- that it would be a policing operation, and that the mere
wielding of power would subdue the rebellious Chechens with almost no effort. They
closed their eyes to the fact that the Chechen civil war of the previous two months
attested to substantial Chechen separatist capabilities and that the skirmishes which
developed from the moment of Russian entry into Chechnya pointed at the separatists’
resolve to resist. Since they believed so they prepared the army for a minor operation, a
child’s play. Many soldiers were surprised when they encountered considerable
fighting, and the first Russian force to enter Groznyi, at the end of December 1994, is a

10
Interview with Maskhadov.
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strong contender for the title “the most unprepared military force in modern history”
with the result that two motor brigades were practically wiped out. Nikolai Sergeyev,
one of the Russian soldiers who participated in the attack,

was told by his commanders that "we would not fight in Grozny. Then, on
Dec. 31, they ordered us into our light tanks, and we set off. We did not
know where we were going, but the next morning we found ourselves by
the railway station in Grozny". Soon, however, "all hell broke loose", and
the completely unprepared soldiers found themselves in an inferno11.

After this initial setback, the Russians recovered and began to fight seriously. Groznyi
was conquered in a two months long Stalingrad-style battle. Its conqueror, the late
General Lev Rokhlin, quickly understood that he was dealing with something more
complicated than mere “gangs”; already on 11 January he concurred on Russian TV
that Dudayev’s people were an army -- in his words: “a mercenary army” – and a well
trained one.12

However, Rokhlin’s conclusions did not have an impact. He conquered Groznyi and
left Chechnya and the Russian command continued to claim that they were fighting
“bandits” and “terrorists”, even when it was crystal clear that they were facing an
organized force. The Russians suffered from a tendency to categorize the Chechens
according to preconceived moulds and were, therefore, conducting the war according to
what they believed the Chechens were doing, not according to what they actually did.
Naturally, combat soldiers were the first to learn this fact. Dimitri Markhasyov, for
example, a commander in a Ministry of the Interior unit, told that he had been advised
that every Chechen “is an Imam Shamil at least”, a fanatic Muslim warrior. But when
he arrived in Chechnya he discovered that the Chechens fought “like a soviet army”.13
Combat soldiers were also the ones who took the initiative and changed tactics and

11
Yuri Zarakovich, "Just Look What They Have Done to Us", Time Magazine, 16 January 1995.
12
Ostankino TV, 11 January 1995, as quoted in Timothy L. Thomas, "The Caucasus Conflict and
Russian Security: The Russian Armed Forces Confront Chechnya III. The Battle for Grozny, 1-26
January 1995", The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (March 1997), Available Online at
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/chechpt3.htm.
13
Yagil Henkin, Interview with Dimitry Marhasyov, former MVD officer, Jerusalem, 27 December
2002.
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reactions. Indeed, some of the Russian units in Chechnya fought extremely well. But as
a rule, lessons were quickly lost, because almost all of them were limited to the unit
that learnt them. Short tours of duty, lack of coordination and insufficient overlap
between the units, and most important, the absence of a system to absorb and distribute
lessons did not allow to share them. Thus, tactical lessons by the Ministry of the
Interior forces did not reach the army and vice versa.

Most important, the Russian leadership stubbornly refused to acknowledge the fact that
in Chechnya Russia was up against something different than guerrilla warfare and
gangs of bandits, and that the Russian forces in Chechnya were not prepared to deal
with the Chechen system. Thus, in January 1995 -- a month before the end of the battle
for Groznyi -- the Russians started to pass control of the area to the Ministry of the
Interior forces. This was done for political reasons -- to enable Moscow to announce
that the war had ended, and from now any operation would be no more then a police
action. That “police” force -- supported by tanks and artillery – continued to fight for
months against those “gangs” of the Chechens without moving any closer to a
conclusion of the war.

By the end of 1995, when the Russians dominated a substantial part of the territory of
Chechnya, the Chechens shifted their emphasis to raids and harassment. This served to
reinforce the initial Russian way of thinking. Thus, the Russian positions and
fortifications were now built to resist raids and local hit-and-run attacks by guerrillas,
but not to withstand organized attacks or large-scale military actions. For example, the
Russian army posts in Groznyi were police posts, devised to control roads and
junctions. They were not interconnected, enjoyed no coordination, and could not even
see each other. They were, therefore, unable to assist each other. The scenario of an all-
out large-scale attack on Groznyi never crossed the Russians’ minds, in spite of
repeated Chechen decollations that they intended to do so. These were written off as
propaganda.

Of course, the Russians were right in their view that they were fighting guerrillas, and
even gangs. Their error was to be blind, at least most of the time, to the fact that
guerrillas and gangs were not the only factors opposing them. In actual fact the
Russians faced a variety of forces: some were militia- like, some were trying to protect
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their settlements, and some were organized and mobile units under the direct command
of the Chechen Chief of Staff. To a certain extant this Russian blindness was a result of
internal constraints: the political leadership constantly tried to present the war as an
effort against terrorists, not a “true” war, and to write off the power of Dudayev, of his
supporters -- and after his death in April 1996 – of his successors. Admitting that they
are fighting against organized forces too may give Dudayev more credibility14.
Furthermore, the Russians failed to assess the Chechen capacity, and drew their
conclusions -- naturally it must be said -- from local events and outward appearances.
By the end of 1996, Yeltsin was sufficiently confident to tell Russian soldiers in
Groznyi, that “the war has ended and you have won… you have defeated Dudayev’s
Rebellious regime”15.

In March 1996 the separatists carried out an attack on Groznyi which, it is clear now,
was only a preliminary round. The Russian seeming success in repulsing it convinced
them that the Chechens were unable of causing serious damage to their position in
Groznyi. Massive Russian attacks, which gathered momentum after the re-election of
Yeltsin in July 1996, further convinced the Russians that the campaign in Chechnya
had actually come to its end because of the weak Chechen response. In fact, the Russian
assessment was far off from reality. The Chechens, irritated by the actions of Yeltsin in
June-July, were preparing an attack on Groznyi, in order “to show that the war with
Chechnya was not yet over.”16 Thus, the relative weakening of the daily fighting in
Chechnya was partly because of the build-up of forces and the preparations for the
attack; not because of any weakness of the Chechens. An intelligence network was set
up in Groznyi. "I had studied the maps,” told Maskhadov in an interview, “the Russian
positions, the approaches, the routes of advance; I had everything ready. We held

14
Some outside observers noticed this aspect of Chechen warfare. Scott Anderson, who was to Chechnya
in summer 1995, noticed both trench warfare and the fact that in many places the Chechens were more
organized and better equipped than the Russian army. Anatol Lieven, while accepting the Russian
version that the Chechens were "guerilla", noticed too that many times they resorted to conventional
warfare and tried to get the Russians into battle of decision, while the Russians many times tried to avoid
fighting and used indirect approach. See Scott Anderson, The Man Who Tried to Save the World: the
Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny, New York: Doubleday, 1999, and Anatol
Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven: Yale University press, 1998.
15
Interfax, 28 May 1996. It is interesting to notice that this was one of only several times that Yeltsin
recognized Dudayev as a political leader – perhaps to bolster the achievement of the Russian forces.
16
Interfax, 7 August 1996.
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meetings with our commanders who gave us their intelligence reports. We had
reconnoitred every inch, we knew the disposition of every Russian position, the
numbers, the roadblocks, everything."17

The objectives of the attack were completely political, and it was a response to the
Russian activity. According to Maskhadov, only after several Russian attempts to
assassinate senior Chechens figures, “it was clear that there was no hope for a
negotiated peace. It was then that we decided to [finally execute the operation to]
recapture Grozny”18 – which had been planned several months earlier. The Chechens
intended to attack Groznyi because, “we always believed that the war would end with
the recapture of Grozny." Maskhadov was looking for an absolute military resolution,
not a slow Russian recognition of failure, as in Afghanistan.

Excellent security and classification in Maskhadov’s headquarters prevented almost

completely the leak of information to the Russians, but even the small amount that
leaked was not taken seriously by the Russians who believed it was disinformation.
They continued to do so when the Chechens distributed leaflets in Groznyi telling the
population that “they were coming in on the 6th [of August]. They told us to get food
and water and go into the basements. They said they were taking the city back''.19 The
Russians ignored also a report leaked to the Russian press on the day before the attack
detailing its exact hour.

Only ten days before the attack Sergei Stepashin, the head of Russia’s Security Service,
insisted on calling the separatists “armed men”, or “armed gangs”, because
Yandarbiyev, Dudayev’s successor, did not control the territory. He predicted that “the
war on crime will take years”, because “if there are jobs, the armed men will have
difficulty attracting new men.” Stepashin also indicated that Shamil Basayev, at that
time the senior commander of Maskhadov, “is a terrorist. We do not need to
exaggerate his position in the Chechen battle. It must be acknowledged […] that

17
Ibid.
18
Interview with Aslan Maskhadov.
19
Michael Specter, "How the Chechen Guerrillas Shocked their Russian Foes", New York Times,
18August 1996, http://www.michaelspecter.com/times/1996/1996_08_18_nyt_grozny.html.
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towards the end he did not actively participate in the fighting and, in addition, his
declarations were more conservative."20

The facts detailed by Stepashin were correct; it was their interpretation that was
erroneous. Rather then be concerned about who Yandarbiyev could control, the
Russians looked only at whom he did not dominate. Similarly, they minimized
Basayev’s influence, and interpreted his disappearance as an attempt to escape or ask
for pardon. (“Maybe thirty years from now”, Stepashin said, the Russians would agree
to grant it to him.) In any case, this was seen as yet another sign of the separatists’
weakness. Ten days later, it became crystal clear that Basayev had been occupied with
something completely different: an organized force about fifteen hundred combatants
strong infiltrated Groznyi, blocked the main roads, isolated the Russian posts, and shut
in a force several times its size.

Initially the Russian leadership considered the events a success. After all, almost no
post in Groznyi fell to the Chechens. It seemed to be just another guerrilla attack, a
provocation to be followed by retreat. Russia’s political response, therefore,
was appropriate: Moscow threatened not to restart peace negotiations unless the
Chechens condemned the attack and retreated. Soon, however, the Russian government
was to understand the situation into which it had landed, but this was too late to prevent
the “success” from turning into a disaster. The Chechens, it turned out, had had no
intention at all to conquer Russian posts. All they intended was to deny the Russians
control of Groznyi. The fact that about seven thousand Russian soldiers were now
trapped in the city in small isolated posts, helpless and with almost no supplies,
provided the Chechens with a trump card that would within three weeks from the
beginning of the attack force Russia into accepting their conditions.

This seems to be a substantial -- perhaps even the decisive -- factor, if one wants to
understand the outcome of the First War. The Chechens knew what they wanted to
achieve, worked towards that goal and, at least some of them, were consistent enough
and endowed with logic and long range strategy. The Russians, on the other hand, were

20
Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 25 July 1996.
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not coordinated, had no clear strategy and, what’s worse -- they did not understand their
adversary. They thus ignored the Chechen intentions and abilities and concentrated on
their own preconceptions. Therefore, while the Chechens fought the war according to
the situation and their objectives, the Russians fought it according to an idée-fixe even
when it greatly diverged from what was actually happening on the battlefield. They
thus handed over the initiative to the Chechens and turned them into reactants -- and
often too late.