Twice in the span of a decade, Russia launched brutal wars to crush Chechnya’s bid for independence. From the scorched ruins of Grozny in early 1995 to the infernal razing over the winter of 1999-2000, followed by the unrelenting national purge, Moscow’s invasions left hundreds of thousands killed and a republic ruled by fear.
Written by
Kyrylo Cyril Kutcher
These wars not only devastated the nation — they also set the template for Russia’s future authoritarianism and military aggression.
A Chechen fighter stands near the government palace building during a short lull in fighting in Grozny, Photo: Mikhail Evstafiev
Years later, Mariupol suffered a similar fate. Both cities, with populations of around 450,000 before the assaults, became testing grounds for the ruthless “Grozny playbook”: encircle, terrorise, erase. The path from Grozny to Mariupol is not just a line of military escalation — it is a pattern of imperial retribution against those who dare to resist Moscow’s rule.
First Russian invasion of Chechnya
Dealmaking with Moscow only postpones the final terror. As researcher Johannes Socher notes in his Russia and the Right to Self-Determination in the Post-Soviet Space, the First Russian invasion of Chechnya and bombing of its capital, Grozny, started in 1994 because an independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was incompatible with the Kremlin’s imperial interpretation of Russian sovereignty while the Chechen people did not wish to trade its own for the colonial assimilation in the “Russian World”.
Despite devastating desolation of Grozny, described as“the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden” from December 1994 to February 1995 and killing of nearly 27,000 civilians over just the first few weeks, the Russian army was eventually expelled from the ruins of the capital by August 1996.
Part of a damaged flat building in Grozny Photo: Michal Vogt
Forced by the military setback into the Khasavyurt peace agreement, which was brokered by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Russia took time to reconstitute its forces. Once ready, the new Prime Minister and soon-to-be President, Vladimir Putin, resumed air bombardments and subsequent reinvasion of Chechnya in 1999.
Second Russian invasion of Chechnya
Obliterated Grozny has become a grim preview of Putin’s “peacemaking” model. From late September 1999 to early February 2000, the Russian state unleashed virtually unlimited firepower on the Chechen capital — carpet bombing and missile strikes combined with relentless artillery barrages levelled the city into a wasteland.
Russian bombers maintained near-daily terror, averaging around 1,500 missions a month versus just over 400 a month, as estimated during the First Russo-Chechen War. Air strikes peaked at 250 missions on 24 January 2000, with a total of 2,160 over the last two weeks of January. While it took ten more bloody years to “pacify” Chechen guerrillas across the rest of the re-colonised mountainous country, Grozny ultimately fell in early February and the Russian flag was planted atop the uninhabitable ruins of once a vibrant city, which was a home for close to 450,000 people in 1994, before the first Russian invasion.
Russian troops burying corpses in a mass grave in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War Photo: Natalia Medvedeva
“Grozny playbook” in Mariupol
Tragically, the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in 2022 became a modern Grozny. Before the first Russian attempt to seize the city in May 2014 its population was slightly above 450,000 people. After Ukrainian forces promptly retook control over the city in June 2014, until 2022, the Russians stroke the city just once but deadly (29 killed and more than 90 wounded) on 24 January 2015. However, besieging the city for almost 90 days from February to May 2022, the Russian air, ground and naval forces destroyed over 90% of its residential buildings and medical facilities.
According to the city’s mayor, only over the first two months, “the ruscists killed more than 20,000 Mariupol residents,” contrasting it with 10,000 killed under the Nazi military occupation over two years of 1941–43. The Russians followed the “Grozny playbook” — encircled the city, cut off supplies and bombarded relentlessly.
The intensity and indiscriminateness of the firepower discharged on Mariupol were too incriminating even for the Russian state to boast about publicly. By 2 March “near-constant shelling and bombing” made movement around the city impossible for civilians.
“The sky belonged to them, and they did whatever they wanted” — as Mariupol resident described the situation on 9 March 2022, Russian bomber dropped a 500kg fragmentation incendiary bomb on the hospital #3, destroying its maternity and pediatric units full of patients.
On 16 March, the other two same-sized bombs struck the main city drama theatre, killing close to 600 of approximately 1,000 civilians sheltering inside — despite the word “CHILDREN” being clearly written in Russian in front of the building, large enough to be seen more than 500 meters from above.
Mariupol Drama Theatre Destroyed by Russian airstrike Photo: Donetsk Regional Military Administration
The Russians carpet-bombed the city with explosive weapons, which would affect the widest area possible, including airstrikes, cluster munition, multi-barrel rocket systems, missiles, heavy artillery, tank and even naval shelling. Internationally, the Russian leadership denied the reality, deflecting blame on Ukraine, and claimed non-involvement and innocence: “The Russian army does not strike at civilian facilities” — Putin stated in June 2022 at the summit in Turkmenistan, responding to a question from international journalists about Russian terrorist attacks in Ukraine.
The authorities of the child’s medicine and canopy budin in Mariupol, March 9, 2022 Photo: Armyinform
The pattern of Putin’s “liberation” has been unmistakable — encircle, bombard without mercy, then move into the ruins and claim innocence and valour. Other Ukrainian towns, albeit smaller, have been similarly wiped off by the Russians — Volnovakha, Sievierodonetsk, Mariinka, Soledar, Bakhmut — and the grim list continues to grow.Grozny and Mariupol are symbolic representations of the kind of “peace” that awaits those who defy the invader and are left abandoned, without sufficient military power to effectively and punitively resist.
Despite remarkable success in halting the First Russian invasion and a peace deal brokered by the West, Grozny was effectively left to face Moscow alone, with barely a symbolic expression of sympathy from the international community during the Second invasion. Land-locked between the Russian state and the Caucasus mountains and limited to their own unproportionally smaller resources, the Chechen people were overwhelmed by the brutality of the Russians, and their land was scorched by the Moscow model of peace — the peace of a graveyard. Appallingly, Mariupol, besieged from land and the Azov sea, has met a similar fate.
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