Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

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Siege of Grozny

Date	December 25, 1999 - February 6, 2000
Location	Grozny, Chechnya
Result	Capture of Grozny by Russia, Chechen withdrawal

Belligerents

Russian Federation

Chechen militia

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

Commanders

Anatoly Kvashnin

Viktor Kazantsev

Mikhail Malofayev†

Valentin Astaviyev

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 and losses

Russans claimed 368 killed and 1,469 wounded among the regular forces^[5] plus 700 Chechen militia losses

~470 (Chechen claim) to more than 1,500 (Russian claim)^[6] killed

Thousands of civilian casualties

v • d • e Second Chechen War (1999-2000 Russian offensive)

Grozny - Hill 776 - Komsomolskoye - OMON - Zhani-Vedeno

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

The siege and fighting left the capital devastated like no other European city since World War II, and in 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth.^[7]

1 Prelude
2 Tactics
3 December 5 ultimatum
4 Russian offensive
5 Chechen breakout
6 Aftermath
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Prelude

On October 15, 1999, 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 separatists. 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. Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the army's general staff, predicted the rebels would abandon the Chechen capital, urged to withdraw by the civilians fearing widespread destruction.^[4]

[edit] Tactics

[edit] Federal forces

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Supported by a powerful air force, the Russian army vastly outnumbered and out gunned the Chechen irregulars, comprising around 3,000 to 6,000 fighters, and was considerably larger than the Russian force that had 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 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] Chechen rebel forces

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Russian soldiers met fierce resistance from Chechen rebel fighters intimately familiar with the city, which was transformed into a fortress city under the leadership of 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.

The rebels spent an effort on digging trenches and antitank ditches for the city's defense. 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. The first-story windows and doors were boarded up or mined, making it impossible to simply walk into a building.

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".^[8] However, the Chechen militia went on to play a pivotal role in the siege of Grozny, suffering more than 700 casualties during the fighting.

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, 1999, 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.^[9]

[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:^{[citation needed]}

“

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, 1999.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[10] 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.^[11]

Russia officially withdrew the ultimatum in the face of international outrage by the United States, the European Union (the United Kingdom 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", he said^[12]) and human rights groups, but the heavy bombardment of the city continued as the Russian forces prepared for the assault.

[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, 1999, 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, 1999, more than one hundred soldiers were reported killed when an armored column of Russian troops was ambushed and trapped in Minutka Square.^[13] 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.^[14] On January 3, 2000, 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 Agence France-Presse that 50 men had been killed in the previous 48 hours.

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, 2000, Chechen fighters attacked and destroyed a Russian armoured column which entered the village of Duba-Yurt a day before. On January 4, 2000, 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.^[15] 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.

[edit] Rebel relief attacks

On Monday, January 10, 2000, Chechen forces outside Grozny launched a major counteroffensive,^[16] 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.^[17] An Interior Ministry spokesman said 26 Russian soldiers had died in the period of 24 hours, the heaviest one-day official death toll since fighting began in September.

[edit] Climax of the battle

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 15, 2000, 58 Chechen fighters were reported killed as they attempted break through Russian lines and flee Grozny towards the mountains.^[18]

On January 19, 2000, Chechen snipers killed the MVD Major-General Mikhail Malofayev, 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.^{[citation needed]}

On January 21, 2000, one Russian unit lost 20 men killed in north-west Grozny when rebels sneaked through sewage tunnels to attack them from the rear.^[19]

On January 26, 2000, the Russian government announced that 1,173 servicemen had been killed in Chechnya since October^[20] - a more than double rise from 544 killed reported 19 days earlier, on January 6, 2000,^[15] with just 300 killed reported on January 4.^[21]

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. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov evacuated earlier to the secret headquarters post somewhere in the south of Chechnya.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Chechen breakout

Wounded Shamil Basayev carried on stretchers during the retreat from Grozny.

About 1,000-1,500 fighters under Ruslan Gelayev withdrew first leaving the city without order, and leaving other rebel forces exposed.

The main Chechen forces began to escape on the last day of January and first day of February among a violent winter storm, after an attempt to bribe their way out. A reconnaissance party they sent ahead never returned, but the commanders decided to leave anyway.^[22] As some 4,000^[23] rebel fighters and some civilians^[24] broke out, moving in a southwesterly direction, they were met with heavy artillery fire.

The main column of some 2,000 fighters, several hundred non-combatants and 50 Russian prisoners of war, led by Shamil Basayev, hit a minefield between the city and the village of Alkhan-Kala. The Russian forces ambushed them with ground forces as they were crossing a bridge across the Sunzha River. As Russian artillery barrages homed in on their position, several of the Chechens' field commanders personally led their retreating fighters in a charge across the minefields. Volunteers were asked to run ahead of the main force to clear a path for their retreating comrades, shouting "Meet you in paradise".^[22] Scores of Chechen rebel fighters were killed this way, including several prominent Chechen commanders general Khunkarpasha Israpilov and Aslambek Ismailov, the mastermind behind the defense of Grozny, and the city's mayor Lecha Dudayev, all of whom decided to lead the column to encourage their men. The rebels say they lost about 400 fighters in the minefield at Alkhan-Kala,^[25] including 170 killed. Two hundred were maimed, including Basayev^[26] and Abdul-Malik Mezhidov. In all, at least 600 people were killed and wounded during the bloody escape.

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."^[3] Later, Russian General Viktor Kazantsev asserted that as many as 500 rebels were killed.^[27]

After fighting involving Russian armoured vehicles on the outskirts of the village, 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.^[28] 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 trying to leave the settlement during a lull in the bombardment. 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).^[29]

A rebel post-operative war council was held in the village of 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.

Several hundred (often said 500) rebel fighters remained in the heavily booby-trapped ruins of Grozny, lying low and harassing Russians with occasional sniper fire.

[edit] Aftermath

The next day after the breakout, the Russians began "mopping" of the ruined city.

Because of dangers of snipers, mines and unexploded ordnance it was not until February 6, 2000, 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.^[30]

The United Nations 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.^[31] The losses among the city's population were never counted. Most of the corpses were cleared in 2000 through 2001,^[32] but one mass grave dating from the time of battle (57 fighters and civilians) was discovered in 2006 in the former Kirov Park area of Grozny.^[33]

On February 21, 2000, Russian forces held a military parade to mark the Defender of the Fatherland's Day (formerly Soviet Army Day) and to symbolize the supposed final defeat of the Chechen rebel forces. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said during the ceremony that "the final phase" of the operation to "destroy band formations and terrorist groups that were trying to tear down Russia" had been completed.^[34]

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

Estimated 500 (1,000 according to the separatists^[35]) rebel fighters remained in the city and more returned later with the civilians, hiding in underground communication tunnels and basements of damaged buildings by day, and emerging by night to plant improvised explosive devices 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.

These, however, became more sporadic as the years passed. By 2007, the rebel attacks in the capital became a rare occurrence.^[36]