The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
On 19 August 2002, a group of Chechen fighters armed with a man-portable air-defense system brought down a Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter in a minefield, which resulted in the death of 127 Russian soldiers in the greatest loss of life in the history of helicopter aviation. It is also the deadliest aviation disaster ever suffered by the Russian Armed Forces, as well as its worst loss of life in a single day since the 1999 start of the Second Chechen War.
Ruslan Germanovich Gelayev was Chechen military commander and prominent military figure of the Chechen resistance against Russia. Albeit being a controversial figure, Gelayev was commonly viewed as an abrek and a well-respected, ruthless fighter. His operations spread well beyond the borders of Chechnya and even outside the Russia and into Georgia. He was killed while leading a raid into the Russian Republic of Dagestan in 2004.l
The Kizlyar–Pervomayskoye hostage crisis, also known in Russia as the terrorist act in Kizlyar, occurred in January 1996 during the First Chechen War. What began as a raid by Chechen separatist forces led by Salman Raduyev against a federal military airbase near Kizlyar, Dagestan, became a hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians, most of whom were quickly released. It culminated in a battle between the Chechens and Russian special forces in the village of Pervomayskoye, which was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Although the Chechens escaped from the siege with some of their hostages, at least 26 hostages and more than 200 combatants on both sides died. One third of the homes in Pervomayskoye were destroyed.
The Shatoy ambush was a significant event during the First Chechen War. It occurred near the town of Shatoy, located in the southern mountains of Chechnya. Chechen insurgents under the leadership of their Arab-born commander, Ibn al-Khattab, would launch an attack on a large Russian Armed Forces army convoy resulting in a three hour long battle.
The 2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush took place on March 29, 2000, when a mechanized column of special Russian Military Police troops was ambushed in the southern Vedensky District of Chechnya. As the result of the attack on the convoy and on Russian relief forces, scores of Russian special police and paramilitary troops were killed or captured. 40 OMON officers in the column and six in a relief column were killed and 11 more were taken hostage, 9 of whom were executed soon after Russian command refused to swap them for the arrested Russian commander Yuri Budanov.
The Battle of Vedeno was fought between Russian federal forces and Chechen rebels for control of the mountainous Vedensky District in southeastern Chechnya and its capital Vedeno.
The Battle for Height 776, part of the larger Battle of Ulus-Kert, was an engagement in the Second Chechen War that took place during fighting for control of the Argun River gorge in the highland Shatoysky District of central Chechnya, between the villages of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen.
The Battle of Komsomolskoye took place in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War. Beginning on 6 March 2000 and lasting until 24 March 2000, it resulted in the deaths of more than 50 Russian soldiers and hundreds of Chechen militants over the course of two weeks of siege warfare. An unknown number of civilians were killed in the fighting as well. The fighting resulted in the destruction of most of the Chechen separatist units commanded by Ruslan Gelayev. Scores of Chechens were taken prisoner by the Russian military, and only a few survived the ensuing Komsomolskoye massacre. Marked by fierce urban combat, the Battle of Komsomolskoye was the bloodiest of the entire conflict.
