Mass Killings of Civilians

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 killed unarmed Chechens on the roads, in houses and in cellars.

In the captured villages and towns Russian soldiers together with police officers went from house to house during "zachistkas" ("sweeps", as the Russians called the house searches and detentions of Chechens). The occupiers threw grenades into cellars where families were hiding from the shelling. Russian soldiers set houses on fire together with the people inside. Against the walls of houses the occupiers shot unarmed Chechens, among them women and old people^[1]. Russian snipers fired at those who came out of houses and cellars. Under sniper fire Chechen families could not collect the bodies of their relatives from the streets and bury them for several days^[2][3].

On 17 December 1994 the Russian military fired from armored personnel carriers at a column of refugees from Grozny at the border with Russian-controlled Ingushetia and killed ten people on the spot^[1]. On 22 December 1994 a Russian pilot bombed the cars that had gathered at a crossroads in Grozny, and then fired two more rockets at those who ran to help the wounded. In all, the occupiers killed up to twenty people at the crossroads^[1][4].

In early January 1995 special forces of the 67th Brigade of Russian military intelligence blocked a mountain road along which Chechen civilians were leaving Grozny to escape the shelling. The intelligence troops called in attack aircraft, and Russian pilots bombed the refugees' cars that had gathered at the roadblock^[1]. In Shali, a town to the southeast of Grozny, on 3 January 1995 Russian pilots dropped cluster bombs on the car market and bombed a second time those who ran to help the wounded (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks")^[1][4]. Russian servicemen who were searching yards in the settlement of Butenko on the outskirts of Grozny shot four people with assault rifles on 29 January and 3 February 1995, among them three members of the Gagayev family^[4][1]. OMON officers, SOBR fighters (police special forces) and soldiers of the Internal Troops of the Russian MVD (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) searched houses in Petropavlovskaya, a stanitsa to the northeast of Grozny, on 3 February and killed five Chechens^[5].

In early March 1995 the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, at the insistence of the villagers, were forced to leave Samashki, a village in the west of the Chechen Republic. On 7 April, after shelling, about 250 soldiers of the Sofrino Brigade of the Internal Troops of the Russian MVD, OMON officers and SOBR fighters from Moscow, the Moscow region and Orenburg stormed the village. The occupiers captured Samashki after a short fight with a small group of armed Chechens from the village^[6][1]. In the evening Russian soldiers drove four men who were hiding in a storeroom into a car-repair pit in a garage and shot them with assault rifles. The occupiers killed 71-year-old Musait Isayev and wounded Nasruddin Bazuyev and Salavdi Umakhanov, while Abdurakhman Chindigayev survived. Salavdi Umakhanov told Oleg Orlov of Memorial on 4 August 1995: "Musa [Musait Isayev] says: 'Guys, don't shoot. The cattle have to be fed... Don't shoot'… In an instant they gave him a burst of automatic fire from there." The next day the Russian military killed the wounded Nasruddin Bazuyev and his daughter Raisa Masayeva^[1].

On 8 April, when no one in the village was resisting any longer, soldiers, OMON officers and SOBR fighters searched the houses. Sadulla Yusupov, an elderly Chechen from Samashki, told Oleg Orlov of Memorial on 13 April: "At ten in the morning soldiers came running here… They were screaming in inhuman voices, swearing, cursing, shouting: 'Come out, you bitches!' and they went up to every house and fired." A Russian soldier fired an assault rifle into the earthen cellar where he had hidden, and a second occupier threw a grenade in and wounded him. When he climbed out, Sadulla Yusupov saw the bodies of six neighbors on the street, among them two old men and a woman^[1]. The Russian military shot Lechi Arsayev dead from twenty meters, without trying to detain him, as he was hanging a white flag on the fence of his house. On Sharipov Street Russian soldiers set fire to a house where Chechens were hiding. The occupiers immediately shot Abi Akhmetova, who came out of the fire with her hands raised. The report of the Observer Mission of Russian human rights organizations says that Yuki Gaitukayeva, Madu Rasuyev and Kesirt Rasuyeva could not get out of the burning house and apparently burned alive^[6]. The mission published a list by name of 103 people whom the occupiers killed in Samashki on 7 and 8 April^[6]. The human rights defenders of Memorial write that at least half of them the Russian military killed deliberately^[1].

On 23 April 1995 drunken Russian servicemen opened fire near a shop in the center of Gudermes, the second-largest town of Ichkeria, and soldiers of other Russian units took it for an attack and fired in the town for three and a half hours. By the count of the prosecutor's office that Russia had installed in Grozny, the occupiers killed ten unarmed people that day and wounded eight^[1]. On 7 July 1995, during the talks between Russia and Ichkeria, the Russian military killed seven Chechens of the Chapanov family, among them children and old people, in Prigorodnoye, a village near Grozny^[1]. From 15 December 1995 the crews of Russian helicopters fired at Chechens who were leaving Gudermes to escape the shelling. On the road to the east of the town the pilots killed or wounded about fifteen people^[1][2]. On 19-20 December 1995, having again captured Gudermes, which the Armed Forces of Ichkeria had liberated five days earlier, Russian soldiers went around the houses and threw grenades into cellars where old, sick and wounded people were hiding. Shkirko, the commander of the occupation troops, named 267 civilians killed in Gudermes (see: "Lies about Its Own Actions")^[1].

On 3 March 1996 Russian soldiers who broke into Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria, fired from an armored personnel carrier at three men in a car, killing them and wounding a fourth^[1]. On 17 March, during the second storming of Samashki, Russian soldiers led about 40 Chechens, among them 10-15 children, out of a cellar in a yard on Kalinin Street and stood them against a wall. After going out of the gate, the occupiers threw three grenades into the yard and wounded 17 people, two women among them dying of their wounds^[1][5]. On 19 March Russian soldiers led the Chechens hiding in the cellars of one of the yards of Samashki out and lined them up against a wall. With a burst of automatic fire the occupiers killed Zakhud Zhadiyeva, a Chechen woman who did not understand the order "stand against the wall" in Russian^[5]. On 25 April 1996 soldiers from a Russian checkpoint fired at buses in which women and children were being taken out of the surrounded Shali. The occupiers wounded nine people, one woman among them dying of her wounds^[1][7]. On the night of 15 July 1996 in the northwestern suburb of Grozny, soldiers of the Internal Troops of the Russian MVD fired from two armored personnel carriers at unarmed people in cars and killed 12 or 13 people. The occupiers set the cars on fire and cut off the ears of some of the bodies (see: "Desecration of the Dead")^[8][1]. On 1 August OMON officers of the Russian MVD attacked the settlement of Dolinsky to the northwest of Grozny and shot dead two young men who were sleeping in a car near the houses (see: "Abduction of People")^[9]. On 10 August Russian soldiers who were capturing the area of Abakanskaya Street in Grozny fired flamethrowers into the cellars of houses without checking whether there were people inside. In the cellar of house No. 40 the occupiers burned 12 Chechens from two families, among them two children aged three and four and an 85-year-old woman^[1]. On 19 August 1996 the command of the occupation troops demanded that everyone who remained in Grozny leave the city within 48 hours (see: "Collective Punishment"). The next day near the village of Goity to the south of Grozny the crew of a Russian helicopter fired at refugees who were leaving the capital in buses and cars, and killed from ten to twelve people^[1][10].

Memorial concluded that Russian troops deliberately attacked civilians throughout the war and killed the most of them by bombing and shelling^[1]. Tim Guldimann, the head of the mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Grozny, wrote that in March 1996 his staff, in a report to the organization's leadership, called Russia's actions a war against the civilian population without military necessity^[11].

The human rights defenders of Memorial write that Russia kept no count of the unarmed Chechens it killed^[1]. The Observer Mission questioned 265 refugee families from Grozny and, based on their accounts, estimated that from December 1994 to March 1995 the occupiers killed 25,000-29,000 people in the city^[1]. In March 1996 the UN Secretary-General, in a report to the UN Commission on Human Rights, cited the calculation of Russian human rights organizations: from 25 November 1994 to 15 April 1995, 26,550 civilians died in Ichkeria from Russia's war, among them 2,300 children under 15 and 5,050 women^[12]. In its annual report for 1996 Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in Ichkeria since December 1994 at 18,500 to 80,000^[10].

Over the whole war Russian military courts convicted seven servicemen for the killing of civilians (see: "Impunity of Perpetrators")^[1].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[13]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[14]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[1].