Battle of Grozny (1999-2000)

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Siege of Grozny
Part of Second Chechen War
Russian forces fire rocket artillery
Date December 4, 1999 - February 6, 2000 Location Grozny, Chechnya Result Chechen withdrawal
Combatants
Russian Federation	Ichkeria
Commanders
Viktor Kazantsev Mikhail Malofayev† Valentin Astaviyev Chechen loyalist militia: Beslan Gantamirov	Aslan Maskhadov Aslambek Ismailov† Shamil Basayev Ruslan Gelayev Khunkarpasha Israpilov†
Strength
About 50,000 [1]	Russian estimates [2] of 3,000[3] to 6,000[4]
Casualties
Official losses in Grozny: 368 killed (157 MVD) 1,469 wounded 700+ militia casualties	N/A (At least 2,000 rebels escaped the siege on Grozny alive[5] and further 500 were left behind as guerillas)

Second Chechen War
Bamut – 1st Argun – Urus-Martan – 1st Shali – 1st Grozny – Shali-Argun-Gudermes – Dzhalka – 2nd Shali – Ulus-Kert – Serzhen-Yurt – Galashki – Vedeno – Komsomolskoye – 2nd Argun – 3rd Argun – Zhani-Vedeno – Gudermes – Khankala – Galashki – Nazran – Avtury – 2nd Grozny – Nalchik

The 1999-2000 battle of Grozny was the siege and assault of the Chechen capital Grozny by the Russian forces, lasting from through the late 1999 to early 2000.

The siege and fighting left the capital devastated like no other European city since World War II; in 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth.[6]

Contents 1 Siege 1.1 Federal tactics 1.2 Rebel tactics 1.3 Pro-Russian militia and civilians 1.4 December 5 ultimatum 2 Russian offensive 2.1 Storming of Grozny 2.2 Rebel relief attacks 2.3 Heavy fighting 2.4 Chechen breakout 3 Aftermath 4 See also 5 References

[edit] Siege

On October 15 Russian forces took control of a strategic ridge within artillery range of the Chechen capital Grozny after mounting an intense tank and artillery barrage against Chechen fighters. Russian forces reportedly made several attempts to seize positions on the outskirts of the capital, but were rebuffed two kilometers from Grozny.

On December 4, 1999 the commander of Russian forces in the North Caucasus, General Viktor Kazantsev, claimed that Grozny was fully blockaded by Russian troops.

[edit] Federal tactics

Supported by a powerful air force, the Russian army vastly outnumbered and outgunned the Chechen irregulars, comprising rdtimated 3,000 to 6,000 fighters, and was considerably larger than the Russian force that had a problems in Chechnya during the First Chechen War. In addition, Russia's tactics in this second campaign were drastically different.

The strategy in 1999 was to hold back tanks, armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and subject the entrenched Chechens to an intensive barrage of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment before engaging them with a relatively small groups of infantry, many with some urban combat training. Even while Chechen capital of Grozny was surrounded by late November 1999, more than two additional weeks of shelling and bombing were required before Russian troops were able to claim a foothold within any part of the heavily fortified city.

In a surprising and threatening move, the federal forces relied heavily on fuel air explosives and tactical missiles (SCUD and SS-21 Scarab). These systems suppressed the Chechens both physically and psychologically and these assets were used to attack fighters hiding in basements. Such fire strikes were designed for maximum psychological pressure-to demonstrate the hopelessness of further resistance against a foe that could strike with impunity and that was invulnerable to countermeasures. The TOS-1 (a multiple rocket launcher with thermobaric warheads mounted on a T-72 tank chassis) played a particularly prominent role in the assault.

[edit] Rebel tactics

Russian soldiers met fierce resistance from Chechen rebel fighters intimately familiar with the city, itself was transformed into a fortress city under the leadership of Chechen field commander Aslambek Ismailov. Grozny's Chechen defenders built a system of bunkers behind apartment buildings, laid land mines throughout the city, placed snipers on rooftops, and withstood the heavy Russian bombardment for the chance to come to grips with the enemy in an environment of their choosing.

They spent an effort on digging trenches and antitank ditches for the city's defense. Journalists reported that many men and women were taken from basements to dig.^{[citation needed]} Chechen fighters used the trenches to move between houses and as sniper positions, attacking the Russians as they focused on the tops of buildings or on windows. Many first-story windows and doors were boarded up, making it impossible to simply walk into a building; while trying to climb ladders or knock in doorways, Russian soldiers became targets for Chechen snipers.

Chechen fighters used the weather conditions to step up attacks on federal troops. Well-organized bands of no more than 15 rebel fighters moved freely about the city, often sneaking behind Russian lines and attacking unsuspecting soldiers from the rear. The impressive mobility of the Chechen force included escape routes from interconnected firing positions and use of the sewer network to move about the city. They stated that they did not use body armor because it slowed them down.

[edit] Pro-Russian militia and civilians

In November, the Kremlin appointed Beslan Gantamirov, former mayor of Grozny, as head of the pro-Moscow Chechen State Council. Gantamirov was just pardoned by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and released from a 6-year sentence for embezzling federal funds to rebuild Chechnya in 1995-1996; he was chosen to lead a pro-Russian Chechen militia force in the upcoming battle. Then interior minister Vladimir Rushailo refused to supply Chechen troops with APCs, mortars or sniper rifles, limiting their combat arsenal to "obsolete AK-47s which jammed after a few shots". In the wake of the Grozny siege, Rushailo publicly accused Gantamirov of accepting "any volunteers into the ranks of the Chechen militia including rebel fighters".^[1] However, the Chechen militia went on to play a pivotal role in the siege of Grozny, suffering more than 700 casualties during the fighting. On 30 May 2000, Russia's main official in Chechnya, Nikolai Koshman, said his deputy, Gantemirov was dismissed for "non-fulfilment of his duties." Koshman also said that the pro-Moscow Chechen militia has lost 295 out of its remaining 353 members for absenteeism.^[2]

The majority of the city's civilian population fled, leaving the streets mostly deserted. However, as many as 40,000 civilians, many of them ethnic Russians, often the elderly, poor, and infirm, remained trapped in Grozny basements during the Russian siege of the city, suffering from the bombing, cold and hunger. On December 3 about 40 people died when civilian convoy attempting to leave besieged areas via Russian-guarded safe corridors was fired on by a group of masked troops at a roadblock, wounded survivors reported.^[3]

[edit] December 5 ultimatum

On December 5, 1999, Russian planes, which had been dropping bombs on Grozny, switched to leaflets with an ominous warning from the general staff:

“

Persons who stay in the city will be considered terrorists and bandits and will be destroyed by artillery and aviation. There will be no further negotiations.

”

The Russian forces outside of the Grozny apparently planned to attack the city with a heavy air and artillery bombardment, intending to level the city to the extent where it is impossible for the rebels to defend it. The Russians set a deadline, urging residents of Grozny to leave by December 11.

Russian commanders prepared a corridor to allow safe passage for those wishing to escape Grozny, but reports from the war zone suggested few people were using it when it opened on December 11, while desperate refugees who got away were telling stories of bombing and shelling and brutality.^[4] Russia put the number of people remaining in Grozny at 15,000, while a group of Chechen exiles in Geneva confirmed other reports estimating the civilian population at 50,000. The Russian troops repeatedly fired on the refugees fleeing through a designated corridor. [7]

In the face of international outrage by the United States, the European Union (the UK foreign secretary Robin Cook "wholeheartedly condemned" the Russian move: "We condemn vigorously what Milosevic did in Kosovo and we condemn vigorously what Russia is doing in Chechnya"^[5]) and human rights groups, Russia withdrew the ultimatum.

[edit] Russian offensive

[edit] Storming of Grozny

Russian ground troops advanced slowly toward the center from three directions. Russian ground forces met stiff resistance from rebel fighters as they advanced, beginning a slow, neighborhood-by-neighborhood ground invasion with fighting focused on a strategic hill overlooking the city. By December 13 Russian troops regained control of Chechnya's main airport in a Grozny Khankala suburb, which was a main Russian military base during the first war and was one of the first targets hit by warplanes at the start of the current conflict.

On December 14 more than one hundred soldiers were reported killed when an armored column of Russian troops was ambushed and trapped in Minutka Square.^[6] The reports by the Reuters and Associated Press correspondents were vehemently denied by the Russian government.

Fighting was concentrated in the eastern outskirts of Grozny, with reconnaissance teams entering the capital to identify rebel positions. The strategy appears to be to draw fire from rebels, then pull back and pound the Chechen positions with artillery and rocket fire, while the command of federal forces hoped to take the city by New Year's Day.

Public support for the war, which was previously overwhelming, appeared to fade as casualties mounted. The government came in for increasing criticism in the tightly controlled Russian media for understating casualty figures.^[7] On January 3, Russian General Valentin Astaviyev said on state television that Russian forces had suffered only three dead in the past 24 hours; but the commander of an Interior Ministry unit in Grozny told AFP news agency that 50 men had been killed in the previous 48 hours. An undercover investigation by NTV has reported that up to 50 Russian soldiers are being killed in Chechnya daily; the figure was compiled from reports from witnesses, morgue officials, railway workers and coroner's assistants.^[8]

By January 2000, Russia's heavy bombardments had finally begun to take their toll. Using multiple rocket launchers and massed tank and artillery fire, the Russians flattened large parts of Grozny in preparation for a mass assault.

On January 2 Chechen fighters attacked and destroyed a Russian armoured column which entered the village of Duba-Yurt a day before. On January 4, Chechen fighters in Grozny had launched counter attacks and broken through Russian lines in at least two places, temporarily seizing the village of Alkhan-Kala.^[9] Both sides accused each other of launching chemical attacks. Claim of chemical attacks may have originated from observation of unburnt remnants of gaseous explosive from TOS-1 thermobaric missiles.

Between late December 1999 and mid-January 2000 Russian soldiers summarily executed at least 38 civilians, mostly women and elderly men as they advanced in Staropromyslovsky city district of Grozny. Chechen sources claimed that up to three hundred Russian soldiers were killed in Staropromyslovski district alone.

[edit] Rebel relief attacks

On Monday, January 10, 2000, Chechen forces outside Grozny launched a major counteroffensive, briefly recapturing major towns of Shali, Argun and Gudermes, and opening a new supply corridor to the besieged capital. They also ambushed and destroyed a supply convoy near Dzhalka, on the Argun-Gudermes road, as well a number of other convoys and relief forces, inflicting heavy losses on the surprised Russian rear troops.

The commander for the North Caucasus, General Kazantsev, said mistakes by "soft-hearted" Russian Interior Ministry officials had allowed the rebels to counter-attack; he said from now on only boys under the age of 10, old men over the age of 60, and girls and women would be considered as refugees.^[10] An Interior Ministry spokesman said 26 Russian soldiers had died in the past 24 hours, the heaviest one-day official death toll since fighting began in September.

[edit] Heavy fighting

By mid-January tens of thousands of Russian soldiers began an advance on central Grozny from three directions. During this fighting, possession of several suburbs and key buildings adjoining the city center changed hands several times while the small bands of rebel fighters were cutting off Russian units from the main forces.

On January 19, Chechen snipers killed the MVD Major-General Mikhail Malofeyev, one of the commanders of the invasion of Grozny, in a major setback for the Russian forces. Russian troops were unable to recover his body until five days later.

On January 21, twenty members of a single Russian unit were killed in north-west Grozny when rebels snuck through sewage tunnels to attack them from the rear.^[11]

On January 26, 2000, the Russian government announced that 1,173 servicemen had been killed in Chechnya since October^[12] - a more than double rise from 544 killed reported 19 days earlier, on January 6,^[13] with just 300 killed reported on January 4.^[14]

However, with their supply routes interdicted by an increasingly effective Russian blockade, ammunition running low and their losses mounting, the Chechen leadership decided that taking on the Russians in frontal combat was becoming too costly. In a meeting in a bunker in central Grozny the rebel commanders decided on a desperate gamble to break through three layers of Russian forces and into the mountains.

[edit] Chechen breakout

The Chechens began to escape on the last day of January and first day of February under intense Russian bombardment. As the rebel fighters and some civilians [8] broke out, moving in a southwesterly direction, they were met with a heavy artillery fire.

The main column, led by Shamil Basayev, hit a minefield between the city and the village of Alkhan-Kala. As Russian artillery fire homed in on their position, several of the Chechens' field commanders personally led their retreating soldiers in a charge across the minefields. Volunteers were asked to run ahead of the main force to clear a path for their retreating comrades. Scores of Chechen shaheed as well as several prominent Chechen commanders were killed this way, including general Khunkarpasha Israpilov and Aslambek Ismailov, the mastermind behind the defense of Grozny, and the city mayor Lecha Dudayev. In addition to these commanders, many rank-and-file Chechen fighters were apparently killed in the bloody escape. The rebels say they lost about 400 fighters in the minefield at Alkhan-Kala. [9] Two hundred were maimed, including Basayev,^[15] who wanted to use the Russian prisoners of war to clear the mines, but ultimatley went forward himself.

The Alkhan-Kala itself was hit with the OTR-21 Tochka ballistic missiles with a cluster munitions warheads, the weapons previously used against Grozny, which reportedly killed and wounded many inhabitants. [10] A number of wounded fighters, including Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev were left in the village and captured by the Russians later.

On February 4, 2000, in an attempt to stop the Chechen retreat, Russian forces bombed the village of Katyr-Yurt, and then a civilian convoy under white flags. Up to 20,000 refugees desperately fled an intense bombardment there that commenced following the arrival of large numbers of fighters in the village. The bombing lasted for two days and at least 170 civilians died while many more were injured; according to the later reports 343 people were killed. [11]

A rebel post-operative war council was held in Alkhan-Yurt, where it was decided that the Chechen forces would retreat into the inaccessible Vedeno and Argun gorges in the southern mountains to carry on a guerrilla warfare against the Russians. The rebels then scattered into the southern mountains to continue the war.

In Grozny itself, the Russian generals initially refused to admit that the Chechens had escaped from the blockaded city, saying that fierce fighting continued within the city. Russian Chechnya spokesman and Putin's aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said, "If they left Grozny, we would have informed you."^[16]

[edit] Aftermath

The next day after the breakout, the Russians begun "mopping" of the ruined city, not only rounding up suspected fighters but also looting and abusing civilians, including murders. A particularly brutal massacre was carried out on February 5 in the suburb of Novye Aldi, where suspected members of OMON group from St Petersburg summarily executed at least 60 residents, including children and elderly people. The killings were accompanied by acts of robbery, arson and rape.^[17]

Because of dangers of snipers, mines and unexploded ordnance it was not until February 6 that the Russians were able to raise the Russian flag above the city centre. Many heavily damaged or mined buildings were blown up, including all high-rise buildings around Minutka Square. [12] UN workers who entered the city with the first convoy of international aid discovered "a devastated and still insecure wasteland littered with grenades and bodies". There were some 21,000 civilians still in Grozny. [13]

In March, the Russian army began to allow refugees to return to the city.

Estimated 500 rebel fighters remained in the city or returned later with the civilians, hiding in underground communication tunnels and basements of damaged buildings by day, and emerging by night to plant IEDs on the streets or to fire at a Russian positions. On June 6, 2000 Russian police and special forces units were reported to have began a major counter insurgency operation aimed against the rebel forces in the city, but the bombings and clashes in the city continued althrough becoming more sporadic as the years passed.

[edit] See also

• Battle of Grozny