Casualties of the Second Chechen War
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[edit] Official figures
The following figures are not confirmed by serious academic sources or researches. Military casualty figures from both sides are impossible to verify and are generally believed to be higher.
On May 25, 2000, Chechen rebels reported on their website that they have lost 1,380 men since fighting started with Russia in the breakaway republic. On the Russian side, military officials said they had lost 2,004 soldiers.[1] On September 13, 2000 the Prague Watchdog compiled the list casualties officially announced in the first year of the conflict. Although incomplete and with little factual value, the numbers there provide a minimum insight in the information war.
On May 29, 2001 Russian presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembski announced that 3,096 federal servicemen have been killed in Chechnya since October 1999. This number was in contrast with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's announcement on the previous day, according to which the Center for Registration of Servicemen listed 2,682 killed soldiers since August 1999, including 2,026 Defense Ministry servicemen. [2]
By December 17, 2002, the official death toll for federal troops was about 4,705. On October 24, 2003, Colonel-General Nikolai Rogozhkin, chief of the Interior Troops staff, told that a total of 2,898 Russian Army soldiers and 4,720 soldiers of other law enforcement agencies died since October 1, 1999. [3] Russia also claimed her forces had killed more than 15,000 rebels since August 1999.
The Chechen separatist sources cited figures of some 250,000 civilians, and up to 50,000 Russian servicemen, killed during the 1994-2003 period. The rebel side acknowledged about 5,000 Chechen combatants killed as of 1999-2004, mostly in the initial phases of the war.
On November 19, 2004, the chairman of Chechnya's State Council, Taus Djabrailov, said over 200,000 people have been killed in the Chechen Republic since 1994, including over 20,000 children. [4] On June 26, 2005, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, a deputy prime minister in the Kremlin-controlled Chechen administration, said about 300,000 people have been killed during two wars in Chechnya over the past decade; he also said that more than 200,000 people have gone missing. "Every resident of Chechnya has scores of relatives who have been killed or gone missing," Abdurakhmanov said. [5]
According to the latest figures released by the Russian Defense Ministry on August 10, 2005, 3,450 Russian Ground Forces soldiers have been killed in action since 1999. This death toll does not include losses of the Internal Troops, Federal Security Service, Militsiya and a local paramilitaries, and according to the figure by Ramzan Kadyrov cited by Interfax in March 2006 more than 1,000 "Chechen policemen" have been killed since 1999. On November 7, 2006 acting Chechen Interior Minister Sultan Satuev said that the 624 employees of the republic's Interior Ministry had been killed and 941 wounded since the start of the "anti-terrorist operation" in 1999. [6]
On September 28, 2006, Anatoly Kulikov, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma committee on security said: "In the 12 years of our Russian antiterrorist war in the Chechen Republic, aggregate losses among the federal forces, illegal armed groups and civilians are estimated at about 45,000 people."
[edit] Independent estimates
Civilian casualty estimates vary widely.
In 2000 the Russian weekly Nezavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye (Independent Military Review) compiled an incomplete list of 1,176 military servicemen fallen in Chechnya during the first year of conflict. If available the list included name, year and place of birth, rank and military unit, place, date and cause of death. [7]
For the period from 1994 to 2003 estimates ranged from 50,000 to 250,000 civilians and 10,000 to 50,000 Russian servicemen killed. Given that almost certainly both sides have tended to exaggerate enemy military casualties while minimizing their own and grossly underestimating its responsibility for civilian losses, The Society for the Russian-Chechen Friendship set the conservative estimate of death toll in this time period at about 150,000 - 200,000 civilians, 20,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers, and possibly the same amount of Chechen rebels. [8]
In February 2003, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, estimated that some 11,000 servicemen have been killed, with another 25,000 wounded, since 1999. It also estimated the civilian death toll at about 20,000 people. [9] Their estimate for the earlier Chechen war was 14,000 dead troops as compared with the official figure of 5,500.
According to 2003 Military Balance, the annual report International Institute for Strategic Studies, the British-based think-tank, Russian forces suffered 4,749 dead in Chechnya between August 2002 and August 2003. [10]
In 2004, the British strategic-research centre Jane's Information Group estimated that the federal forces in Chechnya suffered some 9,000 to 11,000 combat deaths during the second war's most intense phase, from its beginning in late summer 1999 to early 2002. In 2003, they lost roughly 3,000 dead. [11]
In 2006 Alexander Cherkasov of the human rights group Memorial pointed out that the Russian government did not make any attempt to count civilian casualties in the war of 1994-96, nor after 1999. Many figures have been quoted, some greatly exaggerated; a figure of 250,000 dead in the two wars is sometimes repeated, but without there being adequate substantiation of such a number; he said. Cherkasov's concluded: The total number of peaceful residents of the Chechen Republic who perished during the two wars may have reached 70,000. (...) [In the second war] the total number of civilians killed, including those who disappeared, adds up to between 14,800 to 24,100. However, he admitted that the accuracy of his estimates was not high.
