Guerilla phase of the Second Chechen War

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Rebel fighters in Chechnya
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Rebel fighters in Chechnya
Main article: Second Chechen War

This article lists some of notable land warfare incidents in Chechnya since the end of the main Russian land offensive in April 2000. (For the list of notable attacks against aircraft, see Russian aircraft losses in North Caucasus since 1999).

Contents

[edit] 2000

  • May 4 - The Russian military command said special forces troops have ambushed a column of Chechen rebels near the southern village of Avtury, killing at least 18 of them; casualty figures were impossible to confirm independently. The command said the Russians opened fire with machine guns and then called-up artillery strikes in the ambush; Associated Press reports the ambush could signal a change in Russian tactics, in that Russian forces in Chechnya have recently suffered losses themselves in several similar rebel ambushes. Meanwhile, the rebels also claimed to have killed 12 federal soldiers in attacks in the areas of Urus-Martan, Shelkovskaya and Shatoy.
  • May 11 - 18 Russian army soldiers were killed in a convoy attack near the village of Galashki in Ingushetia, while returning from a tour of duty in Chechnya; only three soldiers were recovered alive. The deaths were the first in the republic linked to the fighting.
  • June 6 - Russian police and special forces units have begun an operation aimed at flushing an estimated 500 rebels in the capital Grozny, as reports said Chechen rebels slip out of ruins of the city to plant mines on streets and fire rocket-propelled grenades at checkpoints. Meanwhile, Ilyas Akhmadov, Chechnya's unrecognised foreign minister, told reporters in Washington that the separatists want to end what he called "this useless war" with Russia. The commander of VDV Georgy Shpak responded with a statement that the estimated 2,500 active rebel fighters, who every once in a while are presented an offer to capitulate with promises of an amnesty, should be "exterminated" at any cost. "Those rebels are not subject to an amnesty, they must be found and exterminated," the general said.
  • October 12 - A powerful car bomb went off outside Oktyabrsky city district police station in the capital Grozny, killing at least 15 and wounding 22 people. It appeared to have been timed to go off when a car carrying prosecutors drove up; the prosecutors were among the dead.

[edit] 2001

  • May 7 - Chechen fighters attacked a Russian military column which was going to carry out a mopping up operation in Argun, leaving at least 15 Russian soldiers dead. The heavy fighting in and around the town, during which Russian artillery and military helicopters were used, ended on the next day.
  • June 25 - Russian Special Forces killed Arbi Barayev, a Chechen rebel commander and a local organized crime leader, in a week-long zachistka ("cleansing operation") in Alkhan-Kala near Grozny, where Barayev was holed up with about 50 of his men. When they went on the attack the battle lasted for days and resulted in massive destruction; house-to-house fighting left two dozen houses levelled and about 17 Chechens were killed. Known as "The Terminator" for his personal count of 170 murders, including the executions of three Britons and a New Zealander in 1998, Barayev has been the most senior rebel leader to have been killed or captured by the Russians since the second Chechen war began. [3]
  • August 13 - Rebels seized the village of Benoi-Yurt in south-east Chechnya, attacked the local military commandant's office, and placed checkpoints on a strategic road that leads further south to the town of Vedeno. Pro-Moscow administrators were reported killed.
  • August 29 - Rebels in eastern Chechnya killed 12 people in and around a Russian military convoy, the Interfax news agency reported today. The attack, which happened in the village of Oktyabrskoye in Kurchaloyevsky District, began when a car bomb was detonated as an armoured personnel carrier and two military vehicles passed by an outdoor market; the convoy then came under fire from gunmen hiding nearby. Interfax quoted the Chechen military commandant's office as saying that six civilians were killed, along with four soldiers and two employees of the commandant's office.
  • September 17 - Chechen rebels carried out large coordinated attacks in towns of Gudermes and Argun, in Nozhay-Yurtovsky District, involving between 100 and 400 fighters. At the time of the attacks Gudermes had been functioning as a de facto capital of Chechnya.
  • December 30 - Russian troops mounted a large-scale zachistka in the village of Tsotsin-Yurt, south of Grozny, after six Russian soldiers were killed by a reported force of 100 rebels. Alexander Potapov, the deputy head of the FSB in Chechnya, said the offensive left more than 30 rebels dead and 20 taken prisoner. According to official sources, the losses among federal forces included two officers of the special forces of the Ministry of Defense killed and 11 wounded. A Russian Memorial group recorded 11 instances of the murders of detained residents or of detainees disappearing without a trace. [4]

[edit] 2002

  • April 18 - Rebels killed 21 and wounded seven Chechen OMON officers in the attack on a convoy in Grozny. The attack occurred just 300 feet from Chechnya's main police headquarters. The first bus hit a remote controlled mine, and rebels then opened fire on the line of vehicles from a nearby high-rise building. It appeared the explosion was deliberately timed to coincide with President Putin's mid-term state-of-the-nation address, which it preceded by two hours. The attack came a day after 11 Russian servicemen were killed and 13 wounded in two rebel attacks in the southern Shatoysky District.
  • August 6 - 11 local policemen were killed and seven badly wounded when a landmine exploded under a military truck that was transporting 33 servicemen back to their barracks in Shatoy. The explosion was so strong that it threw the truck 15 meters away and flipped it over. Russian troops and the Chechen military police force were on high alert throughout Chechnya for the sixth anniversary of the rebels' capture of the capital, Grozny, during the first Chechen war.
  • August 19 - The Russian military command said that federal forces have killed 39 Chechen fighters in the past 48 hours. The report could not be independently confirmed.
  • October 10 - A bomb attack on a Grozny police station killing 22 Chechen policemen, including many senior officers, and wounding nine. It is suspected that a pro-rebel policeman was responsible for planting the bomb, which went off during the conference of Grozny police commanders; 40 officers were reportedly attending the meeting.

[edit] 2003

  • January 9 - 15 Russian soldiers and police officers and two rebels were killed in the fighting, including nine Russian soldiers who died when their convoy came under rebel fire in Grozny.
  • August 22 - Nine Russian soldiers were killed and two wounded by a remote-controlled car bomb, which went off as a column of military vehicles drove by.
  • July 12 - Rebels in southern Chechnya blew up a Russian military vehicle and staged hit-and-run attacks against federal positions, killing 16 soldiers and wounding 13, as Moscow reported it had uncovered a large rebel training camp and killed "a prominent rebel leader" and his bodyguards.
  • July 21 - Six Russian soldiers were killed and eight wounded in an overnight clash with separatist fighters near the village of Dyshne-Vedeno; the Russian military said six Chechen militants were also killed in the gunfight. The official also said that security forces in the Chechen capital Grozny yesterday foiled a major bomb attack outside a Russian government compound in the city's northwest. [5]
  • November 23 - 17 militants were killed by a Russian special forces in a raid on a rebel base near the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt. The Kremlin later displayed passports belonging to an Algerian, three Turks and Thomas Fischer, a German, who were among the dead.

[edit] 2004

  • March 26 - A military truck drove out of a Russian military base in Shali after curfew and hit a minefield planted outside to deter a rebel attack, killing 10 soldiers; a military officer drove the truck out of the base without permission and hit a mine as soldiers approached. The incident came amid continuing fighting in Chechnya, which claimed the lives of 11 federal soldiers and police in the previous 24 hours.
  • April 16 - Saudi-born Abu al-Walid killed in the mountains by a Russian aerial bombing; he was the successor to Ibn al-Khattab. The day before, on April 15, 10 Russian soldiers died and five were wounded in rebel attacks throughout Chechnya, while over 200 people were detained in sweeps for suspected rebels and accomplices.
  • May 18 - Chechen separatist rebels killed 11 Russian soldiers and wounded five others in a double ambush. Military command said the rebels attacked the troops after their UAZ vehicle hit a mine and ran off the road near the town of Urus-Martan; a BTR armoured troop carrier that went to their aid then ran into another mine and came under fire as well.
  • June 8 -- Officials in Chechnya said today that at least 10 Russian servicemen and eight militants have died in several clashes; almost 200 people were detained on suspicion of rebel links in Russian raids over the past day.
  • July 13 - Guerillas entered Avtury, Shalinsky District of Chechnya. The fighters first blocked all entrances to the village and then attacked and seized the buildings of the security forces, inflicting heavy casualties and capturing 12 pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitaries; at least 18 pro-Moscow militiamen and one attacker died in the fighting.
  • August 22 - Overnight attacks in central Grozny killed at least 58 members of security forces and five federal soldiers. According to estimates of the investigation group, 250-400 fighters entered the city on August 21, placed their checkpoints at roads, and simultaneously attacked a number of police targets. [6]

[edit] 2005

  • January 29 - A Russian report says nine servicemen have been killed by land-mine explosions near the village of Alkhan-Yurt. ITAR-TASS quoted a police source as saying the Chechen Interior Ministry soldiers were traveling on the Caucasus federal highway when their two vehicles were hit by land mines detonated by remote control.
  • February 19 - A spokesman for the Russian Army said Yunadi Turchaev] the alleged amir of Grozny responsible for operations in and around the Chechen capital, and an unspecified number of his men were killed in a shootout in Grozny. On March 14 security forces announced Kantash Mansarov, imam of the militant Jamaat group in Grozny, who they said was the coordinator of undercover rebel operations in the capital since the death of Turchaev, was killed while resisting arrest.
  • February 21 - Nine Russian recon soldiers were killed in a blast in the village of Prigorodnoye on the outskirts of Grozny. While official sources attributed the incident to a battle with Chechen guerrillas, who at the time announced an unilateral ceasefire, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta wrote that some of the soldiers were drunk and one of them fired a grenade launcher inside the abandoned factory building.
  • March 23 - Chechen field commander Rizvan Chitigov was killed by Moscow-backed Chechen forces in Shalinsky District. On the same day, police Lieutenant-Colonel Movsredin Kantayev, the head of an operational-investigative bureau of the Russian Interior Ministry, was found dead with gunshot wounds near the village of Petropavlovskaya near Grozny. The FSB suspected that Chitigov had been maintaining ties with foreign intelligence services and was himself a CIA agent, former FSB spokesman Aleksandr Zdanovich said in April 2001.[8]
  • May 15 - During a raid in a suburb of Grozny, Russian forces killed four militants, including Vakha Arsanov, former vice president of the rebel Chechen government. Arsanov, a former Soviet traffic police officer, commanded a unit during the first 1994-96 Chechen war; in January 2001 rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov fired Arsanov as vice president for not fighting federal troops. Also on May 15, the Chechen guerilla commander Danilbek Eskiyev was killed in the village of Gerzel in Gudermessky District, Russian sources reported.
  • May 17 - Senior rebel leader Alash Daudov and three associates were killed by the OSNAZ FSB in Grozny. On the same day the Special Forces also announced the killing of Rasul Tambulatov, militant commander for Chechnya's Shelkovsky District, and the capture of five of his associates who they said were specialists in bomb making and bomb planting.
  • April 15 - A fierce skirmish took place between Chechen guerrillas and Russian elite forces in Grozny's Leninsky city district. According to official sources, six Chechen fighters from Doku Umarov's group and five OSNAZ soldiers were killed. There were some civilian casualties.[9] According to some sources, personal guards of Shakhab Mukuev, the head of Vedensky ROVD (Regional Department of Internal Affairs), were also killed.
  • July 19 - 11 policemen, a local FSB agent and three civilians were killed when a booby-trapped police vehicle was blown up in the northwestern Chechen village of Znamenskoye. Nearly 30 others were injured. The initial firefight was designed to draw more policemen to the scene and maximize casualties with an explosion.
  • August 14 - Colonel Aleksandr Kayak, the commander of the Urus-Martan area, and four other soldiers were killed in a land mine explosion, when Russian troops came to the aid of a local official whose home was under attack by rebels. The administrator's house burned to the ground, but he was not hurt, Interfax reported.
  • September 15 - A gun battle between police and Chechen separatists barricaded in a building in Argun led to the deaths of five Russian and Chechen police officers and five Chechen rebel fighters, while three other servicemen were killed in the rebels attacks.[10]
  • September 19 - Akhmed Avtorkhanov, former head of security for rebel President Aslan Maskhadov, was killed in Chechnya. The Russian government claims he was killed by Shamil Basaev in a dispute over money, while the Chechen rebels claim he was killed by the Russians. President Putin called Avtorkhanov's death "a turning point", since according to him Avtorkhanov was the last nationalist rebel leader, and the remaining leaders of the Chechen resistance are radical Islamists who will not receive as much support among the local people. On the same day, seven Russian soldiers died fighting militants near the village of Bugovroi; two other soldiers died during rebel attacks on federal positions. [11]

[edit] 2006

  • February 8 - At least 13 Army Spetsnaz troops were killed and 22 injured in explosion at Russian military barracks near Grozny; 43 servicemen were believed to have been inside the building at the time of the explosion. Officials say a gas leak was the most likely cause but do not rule out other theories; a news item on a Chechen rebel website reported on the gas explosion theory with scepticism but did not suggest outright that militants had targeted it.
  • May 17 - An army special forces convoy came under small arms fire on the outskirts of the village of Nikitikha in Kurchaloyevsky District of Chechnya; five servicemen were killed, and six others sustained injuries.
  • May 23 - Four intelligence officers were killed and three others including Major-General Yury Sabanin wounded when about 15 guerillas attacked an Internal Troops post in Vedensky District, Interfax reported.
  • June 17 - Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, a Chechen rebel President since the death of Maskhadov, was killed by the FSB and pro-Moscow paramilitaries and in Argun; his bodyguards escaped. Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian FSB, said in Moscow that one federal agent and one local militia officer also died in the gunfight, while five others were wounded. The killing of Saidullayev was trumpeted by leaders of the Moscow-backed official government of the province, claiming that rebel forces there had "been dealt a decisive blow from which they will never recover."
  • July 4 - Gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers fired on a motorized column of the GRU Spetsnaz Tambov Brigade from forest near the village of Avtury, killing seven servicemen and wounding as many as 25 others, the Interfax news agency reported. [12] Pro-rebel websites claimed more than 20 soldiers were killed; they said the attack was a "meticulously planned act of revenge" for Sadulayev's death. Later, they released a video of the attack. On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the term "combat operations" can no longer be used with regards to Chechnya. "The army in Chechnya is in its barracks, the troops are quartered on a permanent basis and are doing the same thing they do in other Russian territories," Putin said.
  • September 13 - Eight police were killed and about 20 wounded when Chechen and Ingush policer fired on each other, as a motorcade of Chechnya's pro-Moscow OMON special police buses was riddled with bullets as it was leaving neighbouring Ingushetia, heading home with a suspect caught there. The Chechnya OMON Chief of Staff, Buvadi Dukhiyev, died of his wounds. Isa Kostoyev, a former high-ranking prosecutor and Ingushetian senator in Federation Council of Russia, issued a call to the residents of Ingushetia to offer resistance the Chechen police raids.
  • November 8 - Chechen separatists killed at least seven Russian OMON special-purpose policemen in a road ambush in southern Chechnya, while two servicemen were killed by a landmine in a separate incident. Attack occured in the Shatoi region; the police convoy from Mordovia was returning to base when the Chechens attacked. "This was one of the most serious attacks on Russian police this year," Nikolai Varavin, a spokesman for Russian police in Chechnya, said. Another Mordovia OMON trooper was killed on November 5 in a grenade launcher attack on federal checkpoint, and on November 14 Russian media reports said that in reaction to the deaths, three members of the same unit had deserted. On November 3, a deputy commander of the Oryol Oblast OMON died in the vehicle explosion on a bridge in Grozny.
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