The first Russian-Chechen war: a comparison of the forces of the actual parties involved in the conflict. Based on the text:
Poor training and lack of experience caused Russia’s forces to be militarily less
effective than their size and technological strength indicated they should have been.74

This training and experience deficiency applied to both tactical skills in the field and
equipment proficiency. The Russian Army conducted virtually no training exercises
between 1992 and 1994, and the only training in urban combat provided to soldiers was a
brief introduction to the “basics.”75
The last experience the Russian ground forces had
with urban combat had been gained during World War II, and while its commanders
documented their experiences, such education had long since been left out of standard

homes,” V. Prokhvatilov, “Rusln Khasbulatov: You Are Looking For Dictators in the Wrong Place…”
Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 9, 1992.
74 Vyacheslav Mironov, “Assault on Grozny Downtown,” translation from the book by V.N. Mironova “I
was in this war” (Grozny, 1995), http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHECHNYA/chechen_war.txt.
75 P.P. Potapov, Irregular Warfare in the Caucasus, pp. 17-21; Michael Orr, “Second Time Lucky,” Jane’s
Defesnse Weekly, March 8, 2000.
41
training.76
Even the Russian army’s experiences in Afghanistan left them ill prepared for
what they would be faced with in Chechnya. In both the Chechen wars and in
Afghanistan most of the soldiers were drafted, and did not remain in the army. Only a
few officers still commanded when war in Chechnya broke out. Edwin Bacon, of the
Centre for Russian and East European Studies in Birmingham, makes the following
observation:
Of interest then is the extent to which lessons have been learnt by
the Russian military from the experience of Afghanistan…An interesting
paradox is that although in numerical terms Soviet Afghan veterans
(afgantsy) apparently showed little interest in high office, being not just
politically apathetic on a par with the population at large but ‘abnormally
passive,’ the minority who did rise to post-war prominence have loomed
large on the political and military stage in Russia. Generals Lebed and
Gromov and Yeltsin’s loyal Defense Minister Grachev stand out amongst
them…However, the fact that Grachev bears primary responsibility for the
clumsy and ineffective tactics used in Chechnya since 1994 raises
questions about how far Afghanistan’s lessons have been learnt on the
ground, as opposed to on paper.77
Further, many of the more senior and experienced officers with this experience and/or
knowledge left the military on account of the decision to invade Chechnya, creating a
significant drain of practical combat experience. The drain of experienced military
personnel left the attack in the hands of very young officers, and made it necessary to
send many fresh conscripts with very little training to the front. Nonsensically, soldiers
frequently carried with them advanced equipment that they had not been trained to use.
78


76 Olga Oliker, Russia’s Chechen Wars: 1994-2000.
77 Edwin Bacon, “Afghanistan,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1996, p.299.
78 Mukhin, “Every other youth had no training,” Nezabisimaya Gazeta, No. 61, April 5, 2000.
42
Also due to a lack of experience, Russian military leaders did not comprehend the
difficulties of the logistics of fighting in an urban setting and of transporting men and
equipment across the Caucasus Mountains. The planners assumed that that the initial and
most substantial fighting would take place at the outskirts of the city, on relatively open
(and dry) land, against a conventional force, and that the inner city fighting would
amount to cleaning up against stragglers. When the bulk of the fighting ended up
occurring deep within the city and it became necessary to transport supplies well within
“enemy” territory, unarmored trucks proved entirely insufficient to the task. In order to
get food and ammunition where it needed to go it was necessary to use armored vehicles,
which had to make several trips for each one that a truck could make, and kept those
armored vehicles out of combat where they were equally needed and intended to be used.
Russian forces also had difficulties getting men and supplies to Grozny. Heavy ground
vehicles became bogged down outside the city when the ground thawed. Due to the
Chechen forces’ possession of anti-aircraft guns, aircraft had to drop their resupply loads
outside of the city.
While the Chechen arsenal paled in comparison to what was materially available
to the Russian forces, it was still greater than Moscow had expected. The most
significant weakness in Dudaev’s arsenal was his lack of air support. Initially, Dudaev
had approximately 266 aircraft at his disposal, although 40 percent were inoperable and
the rest were grounded due to the fact that the Chechens lacked skilled pilots to fly
43
them.79 Even these quickly became irrelevant, as Russia’s initial air raids destroyed
virtually all of them. However, while the aircraft left behind by the Soviet army and air
force (at least 80 L-29 Delin combat trainers, 39 L-39 Albatros, 3 MiG-17 fighters, 2
Mig-15 UTIs, 6 An-2 helicopters, and 2 Mi-8 helicopters80) had little potential value to
Dudaev in the context of urban combat, it was politically significant in Russia, and
damaged Grachev’s image in the war overall by appearing as if the Russian military
inadvertently armed the enemy as they fled the region.81
Chechnya’s air defense was a different matter. General Dudaev (a former Soviet
air defense commander) knew exactly what he was doing when he trained his forces in
this regard, and was cognizant of the requirements and limitations of both his
environment and his enemy.82
Chechnya’s air defense arsenal consisted of ZU-23 mobile
antiaircraft launchers and DShK machine guns mounted on Cherokee Jeeps and Toyota
off-road vehicles. Russian reports also stated they used ZSU-23/4 Shilka antiaircraft
systems, Strela-3, Igla-1, and Stinger SAM systems, and RPG-7 portable antitank
grenade launchers against low-flying aircraft.83
Also, in addition to the arsenal left
behind by Grachev, several reports indicated that Dudaev received weapons from

79 O. Shapovalov, “General Dudaev: The Caucasus Underneath Me,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, January 23,
1992.
80 (FBIS-UMA-96-216-S; Vladimir Georgiyevich Mukhin, “Military Lessons of the Chechen Campaign: Part
One,” Nezavisimoe Voyennoye Obozreniye, no. 18 (22), September 26, 1996, from Timothy L. Thomas, “Air
Operations in Low Intensity Conflict: The Case of Chechnya,” Airpower Journal, Winter 1997).
81 “An order came from Moscow: Leave the Arms,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, Januare 21, 1995, p.2.
82 Olga Oliker, Russia’s Chechen Wars: 1994-2000; Timothy L. Thomas, “The Russian Armed Forces
Confront Chechnya: I. Military-Political Aspects, 11-31 December 1994,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies,
Vol. 8, No. 2, June 1995, pp. 233-256; Stasys Knezys and Romanas Sedlickas, The War in Chechnya.
83 Colonel Anatoly Surtskov and Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Prokopenko, “A Shooting Sky: How Many Years
Now Has It Tested the Mettle of Ground Forces’ Helicopter Pilots?,” Krasnaya Zvezda, July 18, 1995.
44
contacts in Georgia and possibly Turkey.84
While Chechnya did not have an air force,
the urban and mountainous nature of the theater severely hampered Russian airpower,
and Dudaev’s substantial air defense arsenal effectively rendered the Russian Air Force
almost entirely ineffective after the initial air strike.85
In the organization of his troops, Dudaev utilized well the advantage of defending
an urban area. While Dudaev did not state if either his experience in Afghanistan or his
knowledge of Chechen history had any significant impact on his military structure,
veterans of the war noticed correlations, and two things can be reasonably concluded, if
not proven: his organization closely resembled the historical organization of mountain
Caucasians (when social and military hierarchies overlapped), and it successfully
exploited the weaknesses of the Russian forces in the Caucasian theater.86
The
foundational combat unit under Dudaev was a very small cell of 3-4 fighters, with
specific duties assigned to each (anti-tank gunner, machine gunner, and a sniper). Similar
to the forces recruited by the imam Shamil, these cells organized themselves based on
preexisting associations. Unlike Shamil, Dudaev’s commanders organized these cells
into squads of 5-6 cells, giving the squads under Dudaev a more centralized hierarchy
than those under Shamil.87


84 Bespalov and Yakov, “Who is arming Dudaev?” Izvestya, July 7, 1995; Elmar Guseinov, Gennadii
Charodeev, “Turkish Chechens tell us, that Dudaev lives…” Izvestya, August 24, 1996; A. Kapkin, “A few
questions on the tactics of irregular warfare in the Chechen Republic,” Voyskovoy vestnik, vol. 4, 1995.
85 P.P. Potapov, Irregular Warfare in the Caucasus, стр. 72-75; Benjamin S. Lambeth, Russia’s Air Power at
the Crossroads (RAND, 1996).
86 “Chechen War, Excerpts from Federal Law ‘On Veterans,’" http://www.warchechnya.ru.
87 Pavel Milyukov and Konstantin Yauk, Storm of Grozny: January ‘95 (Publisher OAO, Yaroslavl, 2010);
Oleg Blotskii, “Chechen Captive http://www.warchechnya.ru; “Snipers of the Chechen War,”
http://www.warchechnya.ru; Theodore Karasik, “Chechen Clan Military Tactics and Russian Warfare,”
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, March 15, 2000.
45
Most coordination occurred within a squad, but in November and December
1994, multiple squads coordinated with each other. When a squad engaged an armored
Russian combat group, it dispersed itself around the convoy and communicated via
simple Motorola handheld radios.
88
The snipers, positioned both high in the buildings
and in the basements, pinned down the infantry while the anti-tank gunners attacked the
armored units. The machine gunners provided assistance wherever needed. Although the
teams were very small, their diversity and suitability to urban combat proved
exceptionally effective against the Russians’ reliance on awkward and slow armored
groups.
The greatest difference between the two forces in technology and materiel was
less the weaponry itself and more that the Chechen forces received better training in the
use of their equipment, specifically oriented toward that which better suited the theater of
combat. Dudaev personally oversaw this training and carried credit for its success.
Yeltsin, on the other hand, had no personal military experience and disregarded the
advice of those who did. General Lebed and Colonel General Shustko, the commander of
the North Caucasian Military District from 1987 to 1993, each warned Yeltsin that
invading Chechnya would not be a simple “restoration of constitutional order,” and that
military intervention would be a long, complicated, and expensive endeavor.89
Grachev,
for unknown reasons, contributed little of benefit; as Grachev was deploying forces to
Mozdok, Generals Beslan and Vladikavkaz publically berated his move as reckless,

88 It is interesting to note that, while each side had the capability to eavesdrop on the communications of
the other, the Chechens spoke Russian and could make use of what they heard, but the Russians could
not understand Chechen, making their own eavesdropping useless.
89 Yuri Dmitryev, “Interview with General Lebed: Two Questions to General Lebed,” Trud, December 16,
1994.
46
claiming he turned a deaf ear to military advice for political reasons.90
When Russian
forces invaded Chechnya in December 1994, with the same tactics and force composition
as in the failed November coup, Dudaev’s tactics again proved sufficient to repel the
stronger, yet inappropriate, Russian tactics and arsenal.