page_title: Russian war crimes
section_title: Chechnya
hierarchical_section_title: Russian war crimes / Chechnya
caption_attribution_description: Part of a damaged flat building in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia
context_page_description: Russian war crimes are the violations of the law of war, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions, consisting out of war crimes and crimes against humanity, of which the official armed and paramilitary forces of the Russian Federation are accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This also extends to include aiding and abetting crimes of proto-states or client states armed and financed by Russia, including Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic. These have included the summary execution of captured enemy combatants, the mistreatment of prisoners during interrogation, and the use of violence against civilian non-combatants, including rape. Russia is the only country still involved in all post-Soviet wars in the 21st century Europe.
  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recorded Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Médecins Sans Frontières also recorded serious human rights violations in Chechnya.
context_section_description: Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared independence from the Russian Federation. The Russian officials refused their independence declaration, sparking tensions. This ultimately escalated into a full war when 25,000 Russian soldiers crossed into Chechnya on 11 December 1994. The war ended with Chechen de facto independence and Russian troop withdrawal in 1996. The second conflict escalated again in 1999, and its counterinsurgency waged until 2009. It concluded by Russia taking full control of Chechnya and instaling a pro-Russian government. Numerous war crimes were recorded, mostly by the Russian armed forces.
  During the two wars, the Chechens were dehumanized and depicted by Russian propaganda as "blacks", "bandits", "terrorists", "cockroaches" and "bedbugs". The Russian armed forces perpetrated numerous war crimes.
  These included the following: the use of prohibited cluster bombs in the 1995 Shali cluster bomb attack, which targeted a market, a gas station and a hospital. The April 1995 Samashki massacre, where over a 100 Chechen civilians were killed by OMON forces. During the First Battle of Grozny, Russian air raids and artillery bombardments were described as the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden. In its report released on 26 March 1996, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) accused the Russian troops of firing on and killing civilians at checkpoints and summarily executing captured Chechen men, both civilians and fighters. Two cases involved Russian soldiers murdering humanitarian aid workers who tried to save a civilian from execution on a street in Grozny. Russian Ministry of Interior forces officers fired into a group of soldiers who refused to kill the civilian population. The war caused displacement of 450,000 people, 45 percent of Chechnya's population, while 2,000 children died.
  The Second Chechen War led to another round of war crimes and attacks against civilians. The 1999 Elistanzhi cluster bomb attack against civilians. The Grozny ballistic missile attack targeted a crowded market, leaving over a hundred civilians dead. The Russian Air Force perpetrated rocket attacks on a convoy of refugees trying to enter Ingushetia. This was repeated in December 1999 when Russian soldiers shot at refugees fleeing Grozny. The Alkhan-Yurt massacre and Novye Aldi massacre involved murder, looting and rape of Chechens by Russian soldiers. Staropromyslovsky massacre occurred in January 2000. The bombing of Katyr-Yurt occurred on 4–6 February 2000. The 1999–2000 siege and bombardments of Grozny caused thousands of civilians to perish.
  The Russian armed forces also used imprecise Fuel-Air Explosive bombs, also known as "vacuum bombs", which destroy shelters, buildings and bunkers, making it impossible to protect the civilians from their destructive nature in the populated areas. Their pressure wave kills through a subsequent rarefaction, a vacuum, which ruptures the lungs or causes people to suffocate. They were used in the southern mountains of Chechnya.
  On 17 December 1996, six delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were killed in an attack by masked gunmen at the ICRC hospital in Novye Atagi, near Grozny. In 2010, Russian special forces officer, Major Aleksi Potyomkin, claimed that the murders were perpetrated by FSB agents. A 2004 report identified Russian soldiers using rape as means of torture against the Chechens. Out of 428 villages in Chechnya, 380 were bombed in the conflicts, leaving a 70% destruction of households behind.
  Amnesty International estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians have been killed in the First Chechen War alone, mostly by indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces on densely populated areas. It also estimated a further 25,000 killed civilians in the Second Chechen War, as well as 52 recorded mass graves in Chechnya. Combined with the military forces, historians estimate that up to a tenth of the entire Chechen population died in the conflicts, a 100,000 people out of a millio
caption: A building damaged during the war in Grozny
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