Russia

Russia had suffered almost as serious a decline in international standing as it had economically. Its strategic position had been weakened by the loss of empire, and its rival was exploiting its advantage. Disregarding undertakings it had given to Gorbachev, who had represented a state which no longer existed, the United States decided that NATO should after all expand eastward and, having effectively excluded Russia’s navy from the Black Sea, it declared the Caspian to be a region affecting vital US interests — an indication that it was prepared to intervene there militarily The Caspian was strategically important. It was a hinge between Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and it contained considerable oil and natural gas deposits. But Russia’s interests there were no less vital than America’s, and Yeltsin was determined to preserve them. These circumstances help to explain the war in Chechnya which began in December 1994 and continued into 1996.

This war has often been explained in terms of a classic struggle between an imperial power (Russia) and a new nation striving to be free (the Chechens). This view derives in large measure from the propaganda issued by Chechnya’s president of the time, Djokar Dudaev. Dudaev beat the nationalist drum. Yet his own legitimacy as president was questioned and his declaration of independence, like his commitment to the Koran as the basis of his regime, breached the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation of which Chechnya was a part. However, they brought him financial aid and volunteers from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia who saw him now as a potential leader of jihad. Dudaev’s regime was corrupt, associated with organized crime in both Chechnya and Russia, and less than popular among the Chechens themselves. A leading Western historian of post-Soviet Russia has gone so far as to call Dudaev’s rule ‘a disgrace to minimal standards of political decency’. ¹⁴ But there were other dimensions to the coming struggle in Chechnya.

Chechnya was a transit centre for oil from western Siberia as well as the Caspian, and Dudaev and his associates were reselling a great deal of it abroad for foreign currency to their own considerable profit and that of their Russian friends. Chechnya was formally a semi-autonomous province of Russia, so the trade was illegal. The losses to the exchequer were serious, yet they did not precipitate Yeltsin’s decision to intervene militarily in Chechnya. Rather it was another, more traditional, form of Chechen piracy: kidnapping. In May 1994 a Chechen war band descended on the quiet resort town of Mineralnye Vody not far to the north. They proceeded to kidnap busloads of Russians and hold them to ransom for several million dollars. Security forces eventually succeeded in thwarting the attempt, but meanwhile a storm of outrage had been raised in Russia. In any case the Kremlin was becoming concerned that Chechnya might become a base for militant Muslim fundamentalism, and so in August the Kremlin decided to move troops in and take Dudaev out.

It was easier said than done. Despite their tanks and helicopter gunships, the Russian forces were unprepared for such a conflict. Too many raw recruits were used, and they suffered heavy casualties. The war was dirty, and the government deserved the bad press it got both at home and abroad for the cruelties inflicted on the Chechens. However, the atrocities were by no means one-sided. ¹⁵ The insurgents fought viciously, slitting the throats of Russian prisoners they had taken in view of cameras, and the army responded as viciously. The army eventually secured the ruins of Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, but the war had become unpopular in Russia. Then in June 1995 a Chechen commander, Shamil Basaev, hitherto a political rival of Dudaev and reputed to have fought alongside the mujahidin in Afghanistan, penetrated the town of Budennovsk in southern Russia with a band of guerrillas. After a shoot-out resulting in over a hundred deaths, he and his men occupied the local hospital, taking patients, staff and visitors hostage. This crisis brought Prime Minister Chernomyrdin to the scene and the negotiations were televised. Most of the 1,600 hostages were released, but the guerrillas were allowed to withdraw to Chechnya taking the rest with them, and Russia’s premier was exposed to public humiliation.