in the campaign “First Russian-Chechen War (1994–1996)”
In the autumn of 1994, Russia attacked the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria under the name of a puppet opposition, and on 11 December 1994 the Russian army openly invaded the republic. The occupiers destroyed mosques, shelled cemeteries and razed ancient burial mounds south of Grozny to the ground.
Russian artillerymen, pilots and helicopter crews shelled mosques in the villages and towns of Ichkeria[1][2]. Approaching a village, the occupiers first of all fired at the top of the mosque, the tallest building, and snipers fired at mosques for no reason[3]. By the estimate of Isa Adayev, director of the National Museum of Ichkeria, by May 1996 Russian troops had destroyed or damaged 70 percent of the republic's mosques[3]. Russian helicopter crews bombed village cemeteries, and snipers fired at them[4][5].
In February-March 1995, a Russian regiment stood for two months and seven days beside three ancient burial mounds, earthen hills over graves, between the villages of Starye Atagi and Chechen-Aul south of Grozny. The Grozny city council had set aside 26 hectares around the mounds for a museum of archaeology, and a fence, signs warning that these were monuments, and building materials had been brought there. Soldiers dug up the middle of the mounds with a special vehicle that accompanies tank regiments, and then razed them to the ground. The occupiers knocked down the fence and the signs with tanks. Soldiers dug trenches between the mounds and used the museum's building materials for dugouts and checkpoints. In May 1996, Isa Adayev told the public tribunal of the Russian Glasnost Foundation in Prague: "These were deliberate actions. One or two random hits could not have done what was done"[3].
In early February 1995, Russian snipers fired from the hills above Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria, at the village cemetery and damaged graves. Because of the shooting, families postponed for a day the funerals of Chechens whom the occupiers had killed with mortar fire on 2 February[4]. In April 1995, Russian helicopter crews bombed Koshkeldy, a village in the east of Ichkeria, and the village cemetery[5]. From 14 to 20 December 1995, artillerymen of the occupation troops shelled the mosque in Gudermes, the second-largest town of Ichkeria, and killed more than 30 townspeople beside it (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks")[2].
By February 1996, Russian troops had destroyed the mosques and minarets, the towers beside mosques, in Bamut, a village in the west of Ichkeria[1].
From 3 to 9 March 1996, Russian troops stormed Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria. Russian soldiers burned the village mosque together with the bodies of Chechens whom the villagers had brought there for burial (see: "Desecration of the Dead")[6][3]. In May 1996, Sadyt Gisatova, a Chechen woman from Sernovodsk, told the Glasnost tribunal in Prague: "When we came to the mosque to bury the bodies lying there, we saw that the mosque had burned down. All the bodies had burned too. In what countries do they destroy churches and mosques? It is the holy of holies"[3].
By May 1996, the occupation troops, while bombing Grozny, had destroyed the memorial to the victims of the deportation of the Chechens to Central Asia in 1944, and had shot the inscription off the stone. Chechens had built the memorial in 1992 from gravestones that, after the deportation, the colonizers had used to build buildings, roads and pig farms[7][3].
In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table[8]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")[9]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic[2].