In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. No one would have imagined that, after only five years of no contact with the war, the powerful military force that had made the whole of Europe tremble would overturn in the gutter.
It was in 1994, the Chechen Republic, the capital of Grozny. The warring sides, the Chechen rebels and the Russian military.
The chechen rebellion
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechen leader Dudayev led the rebels to declare their independence from the rule of the Russian Federation and to establish a free republic belonging to Chechnya. Dudayev demanded equal sovereignty with Russia.
Yeltsin, then President of Russia, after fruitless negotiations with Dudayev, was determined to give the illiterate little guy a little color (Yeltsin was 63 years old at the time, 13 years older than Dudayev).
Dudayev
On November 29, 1994, Russia launched a "special campaign" and began to attack the Chechen region.
In the eyes of all Russians at the time, the Russian forces, which had inherited the powerful military capabilities of the Red Army, had nothing to worry about against the rebels of only a few tens of thousands.
Moreover, the Russian government did not take the enemy lightly, and sent a total of more than 60,000 troops from the army, navy and air force into Chechnya in three ways. With such a configuration, it is more than enough to attack an opponent who has fewer heavy weapons.
In fact, there is a point that no one here expected. The chechen rebels are all Veterans of the Soviet Union who experienced the war in Afghanistan, while in Russia, due to ethnic and appearance problems, there are very few veterans of the War in Afghanistan, and most of them have retired under the intentional division of the new government.
That is, it was a group of Soviet veterans fighting a group of Russian recruits.
In 1992, even under the weak foreign policy of the Yeltsin government, the Caucasus Military District handed over 95 percent of its weapons to Chechen armed forces, even the most advanced T-80 tanks.
T-80 tank
At the beginning of the war, with the support of strong firepower, the Russian army advanced very fast, and even if Chechnya had heavy weapons, it was still inferior to the Russian army in the field. In less than a dozen days, the Russian army eliminated the Chechen armed air force and most of the ground forces, and advanced the front to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
But at this moment, Dudayev, who had lost his air power, suddenly sent a telegram to the commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, Jeyniegin: "Congratulations on your seizure of air supremacy, but we will meet on the ground." ”
Grachev
The telegram made Jeyniegin laugh, and then Defense Minister Grachev confidently said: "Just one airborne battalion can take Grozny in a few days." That confidence turned out to be ridiculous.
2. The First Campaign
Long before the attack on Grozny, the Russians were overwhelmed by the attacks of chechen armed forces along the way. On the way to Grozny, the Russian armored forces did the most not to rush the road, but to remove the remaining barricades and mines scattered along the way.
From time to time, Chechen guerrillas fired two shots at the Russians, and the guerrilla warfare knowledge they learned in Afghanistan finally had a chance to practice.
Ruins of Grozny
In the early morning of December 31, the Russian army officially launched the Grozny War.
As usual, the Russians first used artillery-covered tactics to bombard the entire city, and then sent the 131st MotorBus Brigade into the city to sweep the remaining enemy.
But artillery coverage hit the city very little, because the city of Grozny was built on the scale of a combat fortress.
Therefore, there are many fortresses in the city, and underground passages and air raid shelters weave the whole city into a huge spider web, waiting for the prey to come to the door. This was actually Dudayev's plan to lure the enemy deeper.
By the time the Russians understood everything, it was too late.
Soviet troops
According to the original plan, the 131st Motor Rifle Brigade would occupy the railway station in the early morning of the 31st, block the retreat of the Chechen rebels, and then march all the way to the city center to completely destroy the enemy.
When the 131st Motor rifle brigade arrived at the railway station, the expected fierce resistance did not occur, and the 131st Brigade almost bloodlessly took the railway station, and then attacked the city according to the original plan.
After the 131st Brigade entered the city, they had been disconnected from friendly forces due to the blocking effect of the buildings and the signal interference of the Chechen armed forces, and the 131st Brigade had become a lone army.
In other directions, the 131st Brigade could not see, but the 129th Brigade, which was responsible for receiving it, suffered a fatal blow. As soon as the 129th Brigade arrived at the designated location, before they could catch their breath, a large number of rockets were firing wildly at the area where they were located.
Street fighting
Faced with powerful firepower, the 129th Brigade had to choose to retreat temporarily, while the commander of the 131st Brigade, who was advancing towards the area, was unaware.
After driving out the obstructing enemy, the Chechen armed forces were finally able to free their hands and entertain the "guest" of the 131st Brigade.
3. Street fighting
The 131st Brigade was dealt with by the Chechen armed chief of staff and a Soviet veteran of the war in Afghanistan. During his service in Afghanistan, the commander learned the history of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and repeatedly took the initiative to eliminate many Afghan guerrilla groups.
Faced with the fully mechanized 131st Brigade, the commander decided to deal with him with his own unique skills. He divided his forces into smaller squads and attacked the enemy in every basement and roof.
On the roof, windows, and semi-basement windows of each building, there were countless AK series rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns strafing at infantry covering armored vehicles. RPG and Molotov cocktails are also harvesting the lives of Russian soldiers in armored vehicles.
Chechen armed
Under such a three-dimensional blow, the 131st Brigade suffered heavy losses. Although Russia had air superiority at this time, Chechen militants were all around the 131st Brigade. Under the rat trap, the Russian pilots did not dare to keep the bomb on the heads of their friendly troops.
Although the 131st Motorized Infantry Brigade, which was the main force, was equipped with a large number of T-72 tanks and BTR-90 armored vehicles, these powerful combat weapons were destroyed without playing their due abilities in the street battles, and became the steel coffin of the Russian armored soldiers.
The T-72 tank's main gun pitch angle is -6° to +13°, which is perfectly sufficient on the Great Plains of Eastern Europe, but in the narrow streets, this elevation angle means that the T-72 tank can not hit any target above three floors at all.
As a representative of the Soviet "Never Look Down" series of tanks, the pitch angle of the T-72 was also an important factor in destroying itself. Chechen soldiers only had to lie on the ground and use rockets to blow up the tracks of tanks. In this case, the opponent can only stand in place and wait for death.
Destroyed Soviet tanks
As for the BTR-90, which covers the infantry, it is even more wasteful on such a battlefield. The whole crew is easily sent to heaven by a single RPG.
Later, when veterans summed up the battle, they used a number of words to describe IQ to evaluate the Russian commanders at that time: today's army has completely forgotten the experience of the predecessors in the street battles in Leningrad and Moscow.
According to the veteran's vision, the entire city should be blockaded first, then destroyed with a large amount of artillery fire all the buildings above the height of two stories, and finally sent armored troops, under the cover of infantry, to clean the buildings one by one and close the entrances to all underground passages.
Unfortunately, there was no if, under the attack from all sides, the officers and men of the 131st Brigade soon lost their measure and became indifferent.
Fortunately, under the command of several grass-roots officers, the Russian army organized a wave of troops, swept up layer by layer, captured several high-rise buildings as strongholds, and began to prepare for a breakthrough based on this.
After 60 hours of fierce fighting, the soldiers of the 131st Brigade were finally able to evacuate from the city.
According to post-war statistics, only more than 100 people were evacuated from the combat troops of more than 1,100 people, the brigade commander himself was killed, and only 11 people remained in the 81st Motor Infantry Regiment. 20 T-72 tanks were destroyed and 102 infantry fighting and armored vehicles were destroyed.
Russian soldiers
Unbeknownst to soldiers fighting in Grozny, Yeltsin has announced to Russian officials the "good news": Grozny's city centre and large areas of the city have been occupied by Russia.
But what was obscured by the news of the victory was the tragic fate of more than a hundred captured Russian soldiers, who were nailed to wooden crosses and faced retaliatory beatings by Chechen militants.
Fourth, the price of blood
Fortunately, the Yeltsin government is really not so brainless. Realizing the failure of the first strategy, the Russian army quickly adjusted its strategy, and the troops surrounded Grozny in multiple ways, using heavy fire to bombard the city.
This time, no matter how much it costs, we must take Grozny.
After the 131st Brigade withdrew from the city, the Chechen forces in the city tried to counterattack, but just after leaving the city, they were beaten back in the face of Russian artillery fire.
Seeing that the situation was getting worse, the Chechen top brass ordered the troops to move closer to the south, ready to enter the Greater Caucasus Mountains at any time.
Sensing grozny's fortress-like urban planning, the Russian military leadership targeted the attack on the buildings in the city center.
But this time, the Russians suffered a lot of casualties, from machine gun bazookas to mines and snipers.
sniper
Most of the snipers in Chechnya are international mercenaries, and their actual combat experience is much stronger than that of these rookies in the Russian army. Often the Russian army has just found the enemy sniper, and a comrade-in-arms will fall down next to him, which undoubtedly caused great psychological pressure to the Russian soldiers.
The large number of mines planted in the city also delayed the pace of the Russian offensive. On 7 January, after inflicting heavy casualties, the Russians finally reached the vicinity of the Presidential Building in the center of the city and began to prepare for the offensive.
The presidential building was designed to be besieged, so all the walls were specially thickened, and there was a thick bunker outside the building.
Presidential Building
From the 7th to the 18th, the Russian military used the heaviest howitzers and rockets mobilized to bomb the building three times, but did not cause much damage to the building. Even the Russian military used its air force to drop two laser-guided bombs on the presidential palace building.
Fortunately, the two bombs fell into the building's underground explosion-proof fortifications by their own inertia alone; unfortunately, the two bombs did not detonate, and even one of the bombs was only more than twenty meters away from the building's supreme commander, Maskhadov. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the quality of Russia's military industry was also affected.
Of course, this is from the perspective of the Russian army, and for the Chechens, luck or not is completely reversed.
In a bombing on the 7th, a mortar shell fell from the sky and hit a Russian major general who was supervising the battle on the front line, causing him to die on the spot, which was also the first senior officer of the Russian army to die in this battle.
After paying the price of 1376 people, the Russians were unable to capture the building. But Maskhadov also knew that such a building alone could not withstand the Russian offensive, so he took the initiative to withdraw from the building and hide in the Great Caucasus Mountains to fight guerrillas.
On March 7, the Russians took complete control of Grozny. Yeltsin announced that the military phase of the Chechen operation was largely over. But is it really over?
The local people of Chechnya are unwilling to accept the governance of the pro-Russian government, and the government office is basically governed by the Russian military, and the decree cannot be implemented at all.
At the same time, chechen forces, on their way to the Greater Caucasus Mountains, shifted their tactics to kidnappings and terrorist attacks, repeatedly triggering extremely inhumane incidents and trying to provoke pressure from the population to withdraw Russian troops.
The Chechen region and the Greater Caucasus Mountains
In 1996, chechen forces, led by the new chief Basayev, organized a team of more than 2,000 people to counterattack Grozny.
On August 31, under domestic pressure and an approaching election, Yeltsin and Chechnya signed a ceasefire agreement, giving Chechnya unofficial independence and the first Chechen war officially ending.
In August 1999, Putin, who took over as Russian prime minister, launched the Second Chechen War, which basically quelled the Chechen rebellion. But the chaos has not subsided, and post-war terrorist attacks in Chechnya remain frequent.
Grozny's street battles really made people realize the dangers of lax armaments, and after only five years of slackness, they were beaten to pieces, and the final result could only be said to be a crushing victory.
So we must always be prepared and vigilant in order to defend our country.