Samashki massacre

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Samashki massacre (1995)

Part of First Chechen War

Date	April 7-8, 1995
Location	Samashki, Chechnya
Result	Russian victory, a massacre of non-combatants

Belligerents

MVD forces (OMON, Internal Troops, SOBR)

Local separatist militia

Strength

More than 3,000

Some 40^{[citation needed]}

Casualties and losses

At least 2 killed

At least 4 killed

More than 100 to 300 civilians killed

v • d • e First Chechen War

1st Grozny – Dolinskoye – Khankala – 2nd Grozny – Samashki – Budyonnovsk – Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye – Black Sea – Shatoy – 3rd Grozny

The Samashki massacre was an incident which occurred on April 7-8, 1995, in the village of Samashki, at the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. Numerous villagers died at the hands of Russian paramilitary troops, many of them reportedly drunk or drugged, under the command of Gen. Anatoly Kulikov.^[1] The incident attracted wide attention in Russia and abroad.^[2]

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights report said:

It is reported that a massacre of over 100 people, mainly civilians, occurred between 7 and 8 April 1995 in the village of Samashki, in the west of Chechnya. According to the accounts of 128 eye-witnesses, Federal soldiers deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings in Samashki by shooting residents and burning houses with flame-throwers. The majority of the witnesses reported that many OMON troops were drunk or under the influence of drugs. They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding.^[3]

According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), this was the most notorious civilian massacre of the First Chechen War.^[4] International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that approx. 250 civilians were killed^[5] (more than 250 according to Amnesty International^[6] and the HRW). Elders of Samashki stated that up to 300 inhabitants were killed during the attack.^[7]

1 The operation
2 Crimes
3 Aftermath
4 Further attacks on Samashki
- 4.1 1996
- 4.2 1999 and beyond
5 Sources and further reading
6 References
7 External links

[edit] The operation

On April 7, in the area around the train station, and then on April 8, through the entire village, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) forces (identified as Sofrinskaya Brigade of the Internal Troops, Moscow Oblast OMON and Orenburg SOBR, some Moscow policemen and possibly members of the elite counter-terrorist unit Vityaz) began an operation to "mop-up" the village (zachistka - an intense search of the streets, house-by-house). According to Lt. Gen. Anatoly Antonov, deputy commander of MVD forces in Chechnya, it was "the first completely independent military operation by MVD troops," carried out by combined units of more than 3,000 MVD troops, including 350 in the storm detachments. Artillery, a BM-21 mine launching battery, and tanks been deployed around Samashki.

A lightly-armed village militia of some 40 self-defense fighters, all of them local residents, resisted the MVD and fighting occurred. A group of 12 fighters immediately broke out from the village, while the other groups put out of action a Russian tank and two armoured personnel carriers, before retreating as well. There were human losses on both sides, and two Russian troops and four self-defense fighters identified by name are believed to have been killed in combat. There were also reports of the Russian armoured vehicles lost on the minefields during their advance.

Despite claims by the Russian military sources, armed resistance in Samashki was not of an organized nature, as the main Chechen rebel forces left the village following the Russian ultimatum on April 6, 1995. Before the ultimatum, Samashki was a place of prolonged siege and several failed storming attempts by the Russian forces since the beginning of the war in December 1994. The main force fighters left Samashki under the pressure of the village elders who wanted the village spared. The same elders and the village mullah were fired on by the Russians on the morning of April 7 while returning from the negotiations before the federal attack (the military command announced the separatists shot the elders).

According to Stanislav Govorukhin from the Russian parliamentary commission, some 350 Russian troops were wounded and 16 killed out of the total of about 350 who took part in the combat operation (sic).^[8] Figures of losses among the MVD forces released by the Russian commanders and spokesmen varied considerably, ranging from none dead and 14 wounded to 16 dead and 44 wounded.^[9]

The ITAR-TASS quoted Vladimir Vorozhtsov, chief spokesman of the regional Russian command, as denying any large number of civilian casualties. In the same report, however, Gen. Anotonov was quoted as saying many Chechen civilians had been killed in Samashki but they were killed by Chechen fighters.^[10] The federal forces officials stated that 120 to 130 "pro-Dudayev fighters" were killed in the village and 150 were detained.

[edit] Crimes

[edit] Killings and illegal detention

In 1996 the Memorial compiled the incomplete list of 103 confirmed dead villagers, most of them male civilians. Their minimum estimate of the general number of deceased was 112-144 people (in 2008, Memorial leader Oleg Orlov, who went into Samashki soon after the events of April 7-8, said he saw nearly 150 bodies of those killed), including some ethnic Russian residents. Russian troops intentionally burned many bodies, either by throwing the bodies into burning houses or by setting them on fire. Many of the burned corpses could not be identified and are not on the list. The majority of those killed were summarily executed during the house-to-house searches. The victims, which included elderly Chechen World War II veterans and three ethnic Russians,^[11] were usually executed by shooting at close range or killed with grenades in the basements, but some were also beaten to death. Several of the other victims were apparently burned alive or shot while trying to escape the burning houses. Of the rest of people from the list of the deceased, 29 were established to having been killed by the possibly combat-related causes (such as the artillery and tank fire, conducted since the night of April 6, or the strafing from firearms and armoured vehicles).

The male population of the village was detained indiscriminately in their hundreds and taken to the "filtration camp" in the town of Mozdok, North Ossetia, or to the temporary holding center in the nearby Chechen village of Assinovsky (a number of them were executed during the march while tied to the armoured vehicles). There, the detainees were beaten and mistreated, and many of them were tortured. Most of these who survived were released after a few days.

[edit] Wanton destruction

The killings were accompanied by the widespread arbitrary and wanton destruction of property by the Russian troops, as well as the numerous reports of theft and pillage. Hundreds of buildings were either destroyed (375 according the to the May 1, 1995, U.S. Congressional hearing of Sergei Kovalev^[12]) or seriously damaged. The destruction of the majority of homes happened as a result of premeditated arson the troops. Even the local school where the troops quartered was blown-up as they left the village.^[13]

[edit] An eyewitness account

A Chechen surgeon, Khassan Baiev, treated wounded in Samashki immediately after the operation and described the scene in his book:^[14]

"Dozens of charred corpses of women and children lay in the courtyard of the mosque, which had been destroyed. The first thing my eye fell on was the burned body of a baby, lying in fetal position... A wild-eyed woman emerged from a burned-out house holding a dead baby. Trucks with bodies piled in the back rolled through the streets on the way to the cemetery.

While treating the wounded, I heard stories of young men - gagged and trussed up - drugged with chains behind personnel carriers. I heard of Russian aviators who threw Chechen prisoners, screaming, out their helicopters. There were rapes, but it was hard to know how many because women were too ashamed to report them. One girl was raped in front of her father. I heard of one case in which the mercenary grabbed a newborn baby, threw it among each other like a ball, then shot it dead in the air.

Leaving the village for the hospital in Grozny, I passed a Russian armored personnel carrier with the word SAMASHKI written on its side in bold, black letters. I looked in my rearview mirror and to my horror saw a human skull mounted on the front of the vehicle. The bones were white; someone must have boiled the skull to remove the flesh."

[edit] Aftermath

Up until April 10, villagers were not permitted to take out the wounded, and doctors and ICRC representatives were denied entry to Samashki. Consequently, at least 13 of the wounded villagers died from the lack of medical aid in the closed-off village. From April 10 to April 15 only Chechen women were allowed to go either way through the military cordon outside of Samashki. On April 14, Western reporters who were allowed into Samashki for the first time since the assault said the streets were littered with decomposing bodies.^[15]

At around the time of the incident Russian president Boris Yeltsin compared the Chechens to the Nazis during the 50th anniversary of the Moscow's victory in the World War II.^[16] The news of the massacre embarrassed Yeltsin's foreign guests, including Bill Clinton and John Major.^[17] European Union expressed concern on the incident, while the Washington had warned that the events of Chechnya could wreck the anniversary event.^[10]

The member of the State Duma Anatoly Shabad, who was smuggled to the village by the Chechen women,^[18] compared the Russian troops to Nazi extermination squads. "What happened there was a large-scale punitive operation aimed at destroying the population," Shabad said.^[13] "There was no organized resistance in Samashki. It was surely planned with the idea to kill as many as possible, in order to achieve a threatening effect."^[15]

[edit] Further attacks on Samashki

[edit] 1996

In March 1996 the attack on the town took the form of a full-scale assault with rockets and shells, with apparent disregard for the civilians trapped during the heavy fighting in Samashki. Civilians who managed to escape estimated that up to 600 people may had been killed as a result of an indiscriminate attack.^[6] According to the credible testimony, Russian forces used civilians as a human shields on armored personnel carriers.^[19] Later reports said some 500 civilians were killed in the result of the April 1995 and March 1996 attacks.^[20] Nadezhda Chaikova, the Russian journalist who filmed the destruction in Samashki, was killed execution-style in Chechnya in April 1996.

[edit] 1999 and beyond

v • d • e Attacks on civilians during the Second Chechen War

Samashki - Elistanzhi - Grozny - Shami-Yurt - Goity - Alkhan-Yurt - Staropromyslovski - Novye Aldi - Katyr-Yurt - Tsotsin-Yurt - Borozdinovskaya

Another heavy artillery and rocket attack on Samashki took place in October 1999 during the Second Chechen War, despite the demilitarization of the village.^[21] General Alexander Belousov announced that there were only "bandits and terrorists" in Samashki.^[20] Reports claimed civilians were massacred in Samashki in revenge for the heavy casualties suffered there by Russian forces during the first war.^[22] Another round of fighting in Samashki took place in May 2000, with dozens of killed enemy combatants reported by both sides.^[23]