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President, we are the soldiers of Allah, and summed up: the situation in Chechnya is beginning to get out of control, and this concerns me.
As though in reply to Dudaev, Russian Minister of Defense Grachyov held a public relations exercise which took the external form of a peacemaking gesture, but in reality, provoked a further escalation of the conflict. Grachyov proposed that the Chechen opposition headed by Avturkhanov, which was financed, armed, and staffed by the FSK, should disarm, on condition that Dudaev s supporters would agree to give up their weapons at the same time. In other words, he suggested to Dudaev that the Chechens should disarm unilaterally (since there was no suggestion of the Russian side disarming).
Naturally this proposal was not accepted by the government of the Chechen Republic. On December 7, Grachyov had a meeting with Dudaev, but the discussions proved fruitless.
On the same day in Moscow, the Security Council held a session devoted to events in Chechnya, and the State Duma held a closed session, to which the leaders of the government departments responsible for the armed forces and other agencies of law enforcement were invited. However, they failed to show up at the Duma, because they did not wish to answer the parliamentarians questions about who had given the orders to recruit members of the Russian armed forces and bomb Grozny. We now know that the Russian military personnel were recruited by the FSK on Stepashin s instructions, and that the directives to bombard Grozny were issued by the Ministry of Defense.
On December 8, the Chechen side announced it was in possession of information that Russia was preparing to advance its forces on to Chechen territory and launch an all-out land war against the republic. At a press conference, held at the State Duma in Moscow on December 9, the chairman of the Duma Federal Affairs and Regional Policy Committee and chairman of the Republican Party of Russia, Vladimir Lysenko, announced that in that case, he would table a motion in the Duma for the Russian government to be dismissed. On December 8, the Working Commission on Negotiations for the Settlement of the Conflict in the Chechen Republic managed to broker an agreement between the representatives of President Dudaev and the opposition, under which negotiations were due to start in Vladikavkaz at 15.00 hours on December 12. The Russian federal authorities delegation to the negotiations was to have consisted of twelve members led by the deputy minister for nationalities and regional policy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov. The delegation from Grozny was to have numbered nine members, headed by the Chechen minister of the economy and finance, Taimaz Abubakarov. From the opposition there was to have been a three-man delegation led by Bek Baskhanov, the public prosecutor general of Chechnya. It was provisionally agreed that the main problems to be discussed at the negotiations between Moscow and Grozny were halting the bloodshed and establishing normal relations. Negotiations with the supporters of the Chechen opposition were only supposed to deal with questions of disarmament.
All this increased the chances of peace being preserved, and left the party of war with very little time until December 12. In effect, the announcement by the Working Commission for the Settlement of the Chechen Conflict determined the date on which
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military land operations began. If the peace negotiations were due to start on December 12, the war had to be launched on December 11. The Russian leadership acted accordingly: on December 11, land forces crossed the demarcation line into the Chechen Republic, and for the first few days, Russian military reports spoke of the absence of any real resistance or any losses.
By December 13, Soskovets had already determined his main lines of action, and he informed journalists that the total cost of implementing measures to normalize the situation in Chechnya could amount to about a trillion rubles. (This was the sum that would first have to be allocated from the budget, so that it could be systematically embezzled.) He said that the government s first priority was to get the aid delivered to the population of Chechnya, and special attention would be paid to ensuring that it was not wasted or stolen (we now know for certain that no aid ever reached Chechnya, and all of it was wasted and stolen).
Soskovets emphasized that members of the Chechen diaspora, living in Moscow and other Russian cities, should not be considered potential terrorists. Note this phrase. So far, nobody had even dreamed of regarding the members of the Chechen diaspora as potential terrorists, and there had not actually been any terrorist attacks. The war with Chechnya was still not even regarded as a war, but something more in the nature of a police operation, and there had not yet been any serious casualties. Yet, for some reason the First Deputy Prime Minister seemed to think it possible that the Chechens might organize acts of terrorism on Russian soil. Soskovets remark that no discriminatory measures would be applied to the general mass of Chechen citizens, and that the federal authorities were not even considering the enforced deportation of Chechens, was clearly a suggestion from the party of war that war should be waged against the entire Chechen people throughout the whole of Russia, including by both discriminatory measures and enforced deportation.
Lieutenant-General Alexander Lebed, commander of the 14th Russian Army in Pridniestrovie (the region along the Dniestr River in Moldova), fiercely opposed the party of war, because he understood perfectly well what Soskovets was hinting at and the price Russia would have to pay. In a telephone interview from his headquarters in Tiraspol, he declared that the Chechen conflict can only be resolved by diplomatic negotiations. Chechnya is repeating the Afghanistan scenario point for point. We are risking unleashing war with the entire Islamic world. Solitary fighters can go on forever burning our tanks and picking off our soldiers with individual shots. In Chechnya, we have shot ourselves in the foot exactly as we did in Afghanistan, and that is very sad. A well-reinforced and well-stocked Grozny is capable of offering long and stubborn resistance. Lebed reminded everyone that in Soviet times Dudaev had commanded an airborne division of strategic bombers capable of waging war on a continental scale, and that fools were not appointed to such posts.
Beginning on December 14, Moscow was transferred to a state of semi-military alert, and Muscovites were deliberately frightened with the prospect of inevitable Chechen terrorism. The agencies of the Ministry of the Interior stepped up their protection of the
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city s vital installations, and FSK personnel worked to improve their security. A large number of state institutions were guarded by police patrols armed with automatic weapons. The Ministry of the Interior announced that this was all a response to the threat of terrorist groups being sent to Moscow from Grozny. The first suspected Chechen terrorists began to be sought out. On the evening of December 13, the Chechen Israil Getiev, a native and resident of Grozny, had been arrested for setting off New Year firecrackers outside the Prague restaurant on New Arbat Street and detained at the station of the Fifth Moscow Police Precinct. At this stage, announcements like this could still raise a smile, but on December 14, it was suddenly announced that after less than three full days of military operations, casualties on both sides are already in the hundreds. It was all getting beyond a laughing matter.
On December 15, the true scale of the operation being launched was revealed. Advancing on Grozny, alongside subunits of the Ministry of the Interior, were two general army divisions from the North Caucasus Military District and two assault brigades at full strength. Chechen territory was also entered by composite regiments from the Pskov, Vitebsk, and Tula divisions of the airborne assault forces (VDV), with 600 to 800 men in each. In the region of Mozdok, disembarkation had begun of composite regiments from the Ulyanovsk and Kostroma divisions of the VDV. Grozny was being approached along four main lines of advance: one from Ingushetia, two from Mozdok, and one from Dagestan. The Russian forces were preparing to storm the city. On the Chechen side, according to information from the Russian Ministry of the Interior and the FSK, more than 13,000 armed men had been assembled in and around Grozny.
Yeltsin was moving towards the edge of an abyss. A session of the Security Council, held under his chairmanship on December 17, reviewed a plan for the implementation of measures to restore constitutional legality, the rule of law and peace in the Chechen Republic. The Security Council made the Ministry of Defense (Grachyov), the Ministry of the Interior (Viktor Yerin), the FSK (Stepashin), and the Federal Border Service (Nikolaev) responsible for using every possible means to disarm and destroy illegal armed formations in Chechnya and to secure the state and administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. The work was to be coordinated by Grachyov. This was the day that marked the end of Russia s liberal-democratic period. President Yeltsin had committed political suicide.
On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that from 00.00 hours on December 18, units of Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry forces would be obliged to take decisive action, and make use of all means at their disposal to re-establish constitutional legality and the rule of law on the territory of Chechnya. Groups of bandits would be disarmed and, if they offered resistance, destroyed. The Ministry of the Interior statement claimed that the civilian population of Chechnya had been informed of the urgent need to leave Grozny and other centers of population in which rebel groups were located. The Interior Ministry strongly recommended foreign citizens and journalists in the zone of hostilities to leave Grozny and make their way to safe areas. (Despite the warnings from the Russian leadership, most of the foreign journalists remained in
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Grozny, and at The French Courtyard Hotel where they stayed, rooms were in as short supply as ever.) On the same day, Soskovets announced to the world that President Dudaev had been summoned to Mozdok to meet a Russian government delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Yegorov and FSK director Stepashin. Soskovets stated that if Dudaev did not come to Mozdok, the Russian forces would take action in accordance with the regulations for the elimination of illegal armed formations, and he also announced that expenditure on the operations over the preceding week amounted to sixty billion rubles by the Ministry of the Interior and 200 billion rubles by the Ministry of Defense.
Four hours before the deadline expired, at eight in the evening on December 17, Dudaev made his final attempt to avert war and wired the Russian leadership that he would agree to start negotiations at the appropriate level without any preconditions and to lead the governmental delegation of the Chechen Republic in person. In other words, Dudaev was again demanding a personal meeting with Yeltsin, but since Dudaev persisted in his refusal to pay any money for such a meeting to be arranged, his cable went unanswered.
At nine in the morning on December 18, the Russian forces blockading Grozny began storming the city. Front-line air units and army helicopters delivered precision blows against Dudaev s command post at Khankala near Grozny, the bridges over the Terek River to the north and also against maneuverable groups of armored vehicles. An announcement from the Temporary Information Center of the Russian High Command stated that following the destruction of the armored vehicles, the plan was for the forces blockading Grozny to advance and proceed with the disarmament of illegal armed groups on the territory of Chechnya. President Yeltsin s plenipotentiary representative in Chechnya announced that Dudaev now had no choice but to surrender.
On December 18, Soskovets, having been appointed to yet another post as head of the Russian government s operational headquarters for the coordination of action taken by agencies of the executive authorities, informed the press that in Grozny they are studying the possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks aimed at military and civilian targets in Central Russia and the Urals, and also of hijacking a civilian passenger plane.
The First Deputy Prime Minister s astonishingly detailed information was, in fact, an indication that terrorist acts could be expected within a few days.
On December 22, the press office of the Government of the Russian Federation announced that Chechens were blowing themselves up in order to throw the blame for the explosions on to the Russian army. The statement issued read as follows: Today at 10 in the morning a meeting was held under the chairmanship of first deputy chairman of the government Oleg Soskovets which was attended by members of the government, members of the Security Council, and representatives of the President s Office. The meeting discussed the situation which has arisen in the Chechen Republic and the measures being taken by the president and the government to restore constitutional legality and provide economic assistance to the population of areas which
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have been liberated from the armed formations of the Dudaev regime. Reports made by those present at the meeting indicate that last night operations to disarm the armed bandit formations continued, and bombing raids were carried out against their strongholds. The city of Grozny was not subjected to bombardment. However, the guerrillas made attempts to imitate the bombardment of housing districts. At about one in the morning, an office building and an apartment block were blown up. The residents, both Chechen and Russian, were not given any warning of the planned attack. The imitation of bombardment was undertaken in order to demonstrate the thesis of a war being waged by the Russian leadership against the Chechen people. This thesis was proclaimed yesterday in Dudaev s appeal to the international community.
In other words, the Russian government s press office attempted to blame the Chechens for the destruction by Russian forces of an office building and apartment block containing civilians.
Initiated by Soskovets, this announcement couched in Stalinist prose was made public one day before the explosion between the stations of Kozhukhovo and Kanatchikovo on the Moscow circular railroad (there were no casualties and no terrorists were found).
December 23 is the date which can be regarded as the beginning of the FSB s terrorist campaign against Russia. From then on, terrorist attacks became a commonplace occurrence.