First Chechen War

The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later, sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009. During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Chechnya came under the control of a secessionist regime led by Dzhokhar Dudayev. Russian president Boris Yeltsin supported anti-Dudayev militias until 1994, when he launched a military operation to "establish constitutional order in Chechnya". Thousands of Chechen civilians were killed in aerial bombings and urban warfare before Grozny was captured in March 1995, but a Russian victory was denied as efforts to establish control over the remaining lowlands and mountainous regions of Chechnya were met with fierce resistance and frequent surprise raids by Chechen guerrillas. Despite the killing of Dudayev in a Russian airstrike in April 1996, the recapture of Grozny by separatists in August brought about the Khasavyurt Accord which ceased hostilities, and then the Russia–Chechnya Peace Treaty in 1997. The official Russian estimate of Russian military deaths was 5,500, though independent estimates range from 5,000 to as high as 14,000. According to Aslan Maskhadov, approximately 2,800 Chechen fighters were killed, while independent sources estimate the number to be between 3,000 and 10,000. On the other hand, according to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, by the end of 1995 alone, the losses of the Chechen militants amounted to some 10,000 to 15,000 killed. The number of Chechen civilian deaths was between 30,000 and 100,000. Over 200,000 Chechen civilians may have been injured, more than 500,000 people were displaced, and cities and towns were reduced to rubble across...