The Russian military stated that 291 Russian soldiers were killed in Chechnya in 2003. [1]
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.
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev, also known by his kunya "Abu Idris", was a Chechen guerrilla leader who served as a senior military commander in the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He held the rank of brigadier general in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and was posthumously declared generalissimo. As a military commander in the separatist armed forces of Chechnya, one of his most notable battles was the separatist recapture of Grozny in 1996, which he personally planned and commanded together with Aslan Maskhadov. He also masterminded several of the worst terrorist attacks that occurred in Russia.
The 1999–2000 battle of Grozny or Operation Wolf Hunt was the siege and assault of the Chechen capital Grozny by Russian forces, lasting from late 1999 to early 2000. This siege and assault of the Chechen capital resulted in the widespread devastation of Grozny. In 2003, the United Nations designated Grozny as the most destroyed city on Earth due to the extensive damage it suffered. The battle had a devastating impact on the civilian population. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed during the siege, making it the bloodiest episode of the Second Chechen War.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
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 2007 Zhani-Vedeno ambush occurred on 7 October when a convoy of vehicles carrying local Russian interior ministry soldiers and policemen was ambushed in the volatile Vedeno region of Chechnya. The ambush resulted in the deaths of at least four soldiers and the hospitalisation of 10 to 16. It was carried out under the command of Amir Aslambek, and was one of the deadliest attacks in several months.
The insurgency in the North Caucasus was a low-level armed conflict between Russia and militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, from June 2015, the Islamic State, in the North Caucasus. It followed the (Russian-proclaimed) official end of the decade-long Second Chechen War on 16 April 2009. It attracted volunteers from the MENA region, Western Europe, and Central Asia. The Russian legislation considers the Second Chechen War and the insurgency described in this article as the same "counter-terrorist operations on the territory of the North Caucasus region".
The Islamic State – Caucasus Province(IS-CP) is a branch of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), that is active in the North Caucasus region of Russia. IS announced the group's formation on 23 June 2015 and appointed Rustam Asildarov as its leader. Although it was defeated militarily as an organized force by 2017, some lone wolves still act on behalf of the Islamic State.