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The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
OMON is a system of special police units within the National Guard of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the Soviet Militsiya in 1988, it has played major roles in several armed conflicts during and following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The 1999–2000 battle of Grozny 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 Chechnya, mass graves containing hundreds of corpses have been uncovered since the beginning of the Chechen wars in 1994. As of June 2008, there were 57 registered locations of mass graves in Chechnya. According to Amnesty International, thousands may be buried in unmarked graves including up to 5,000 civilians who disappeared since the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999. In 2008, the largest mass grave found to date was uncovered in Grozny, containing some 800 bodies from the First Chechen War in 1995. Russia's general policy to the Chechen mass graves is to not exhume them.
Human rights violations were committed by the warring sides during the second war in Chechnya. Both Russian officials and Chechen rebels have been regularly and repeatedly accused of committing war crimes including kidnapping, torture, murder, hostage taking, looting, rape, decapitation, and assorted other breaches of the law of war. International and humanitarian organizations, including the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, have criticized both sides of the conflict for blatant and sustained violations of international humanitarian law.
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 Battle of Grozny of August 1996, also known as Operation Jihad or Operation Zero Option, when Chechen fighters regained and then kept control of Chechnya's capital Grozny in a surprise raid. The Russian Federation had conquered the city in a previous battle for Grozny that ended in February 1995 and subsequently posted a large garrison of federal and republican Ministry of the Interior (MVD) troops in the city.
The Novye Aldi massacre was the mass murder of Chechen civilians in which Russian forces went on a cleansing operation (zachistka) summarily executing dozens of civilians. The village had been cluster-bombed a day prior to the massacre, and local residents urged to come out for inspection the next day. Upon entering the village, Russian forces shot their victims in cold blood, with automatic fire at close range. The killings were accompanied by looting, rape, arson and robbery. As a result of the deadly rampage by Russian forces, up to 82 civilians were killed in the spree. Houses of civilians were burnt in an attempt to destroy evidence of summary executions and other crimes. Looting took place on a large scale and organised manner.
The Nazran raid was a large-scale raid carried out in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia on the night of June 21–22, 2004, by a group of Chechen militants led by Chechen commanders Shamil Basayev and Dokku Umarov. Basayev's main goal, besides capturing a large cache of weapons, was a show of strength. The attack by Chechen fighters on the Ingush city of Nazran is associated with the bad attitude of the Ingush authorities towards Chechen refugees.
The Grozny OMON fratricide incident took place on March 2, 2000, when an OMON unit from Podolsk, supported by paramilitary police from the Sverdlovsk Oblast in armored vehicles, opened fire on a motorized column of OMON from Sergiyev Posad, which had just arrived in Chechnya to replace them.
The Baku–Rostov highway bombing was an incident which occurred near the village of Shaami-Yurt in Chechnya, on October 29, 1999. Two low-flying Russian aircraft carried out repeated rocket attacks on a large convoy of refugees trying to enter the Russian republic of Ingushetia through a supposed "safe exit" route. The attacks killed or injured scores of people.
The Grozny ballistic missile attack was a wave of Russian ballistic missile strikes on the Chechen capital Grozny on October 21, 1999, early in the Second Chechen War. The attack killed at least 118 people according to initial reports, mostly civilians, or at least 137 immediate dead according to the HALO Trust count. Hundreds of people were also injured, many of whom later died.
References
- ↑ Cockburn, Patrick (6 December 1999). "Rebels inflict heavy losses as Russian forces close on Grozny". The Independent . Retrieved 13 May 2022.
- 1 2 3 Wines, Michael (5 December 1999). "New Reports Back Claims of Attack on Chechen Refugee Convoy". The New York Times . Retrieved 13 May 2022.
- ↑ Wines, Michael (4 December 1999). "Chechen Refugee Convoy Machine-Gunned, Leaving 14 Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
- ↑ Wines, Michael (5 December 1999). "Russians 'mowed down fleeing civilian convoy'". The Guardian . Retrieved 13 May 2022.
- ↑ Specter, Michael (15 August 1996). "Truce That Never Was: Chechens Tricked". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
