January 1995 in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. What was it like?

Ruins, black soot, wrecked and burned military equipment and weapons, broken walls, mud, mangled bodies…

It’s when people, in a full mess, beat not the enemy but those who were on their side. They say that every second one was killed this way.

Information from Wikipedia: The First Battle of Grozny was the Russian Army’s invasion and subsequent conquest of the Chechen capital, Grozny, during the early months of the First Chechen War. The attack lasted from December 1994 to March 1995, resulted in the military occupation of the city by the Russian Army and rallied most of the Chechen nation around the separatist government of Dzhokhar Dudayev.

The initial assault resulted in very high Russian Army casualties and an almost complete breakdown of morale in the Russian forces. It took them another two months of heavy fighting, and a change in their tactics, before they were able to capture Grozny. The battle caused enormous destruction and casualties amongst the civilian population and saw the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the end of World War II. Chechen separatist forces recaptured the city in August 1996, ending the war.

For the two days of New Year’s battles Russians lost more than a thousand of people. For two weeks after the first attack the divisions were trying to correct the numerous errors and blunders of generals.

In these bloody battles Russian troops were losing about 40 people a day…



By the way, they say that the Chechen war was the first war in the history the course of which was fully documented by mass media.

via ingwar-lj and wiki