Total Destruction of Infrastructure

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 the towns and villages of Ichkeria together with their housing, hospitals and schools^[1].

Russian pilots and artillerymen destroyed residential neighborhoods with bombing and shelling (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks")^[1]. In captured villages and towns, Russian soldiers and police officers looted houses (see: "Pillage") and then set them on fire with gasoline, hay or flamethrowers^[2][3][4]. After the war of 1994-1996, 60,000 families of Grozny were left without housing^[5].

The occupiers destroyed substations, tore down power lines and blew up gas pipelines^[6][4].

In December 1994, Russian aviation bombed Grozny, the capital of Ichkeria. On 9 January 1995, Irina from the Third Microdistrict on the outskirts of Grozny told Human Rights Watch in Russian-controlled Ingushetia: "Our region was the first to suffer… either December 17th or 18th, three nine-story apartment buildings of the institute 'Promavtomatika' were bombed out. People all become homeless"^[7]. On the night of 20 December, Russian pilots dropped two bombs on a block of one-story houses at the intersection of Moskovskaya Street and Noya Buachidze Street and completely or partially destroyed 18 houses^[1]. Russian aviation bombed a substation, and Grozny was left without electricity^[6]. On 31 December 1994, the occupiers began the assault on the city. After 20 February 1995, Russian special forces set fire to and blew up houses in Grozny and destroyed pipes and power lines^[4]. More than two months after the start of the assault, by 6 March 1995, Russian troops had captured Grozny. On 1 May 1995, the Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats, who had been in the city in January, said at a hearing of a commission of the US Congress: "There is no such city any more. There isn't a single house in Grozny that hasn't been destroyed one way or another by the war"^[8].

On 3 February 1995, soldiers of the Russian OMON (police special forces) and of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) searched houses in Petropavlovskaya, a stanitsa northeast of Grozny, and burned 14 houses. In all, the occupiers destroyed 86 houses in the stanitsa^[4]. In February 1995, Russian pilots bombed two schools, a sports school, a hospital and a kindergarten in Argun, a town east of Grozny^[9]. At the end of March 1995, Russian troops captured Gudermes, the second-largest city of Ichkeria, without a fight, and on 29 and 30 March soldiers burned houses in it with flamethrowers; on Parkhomenko Street two houses were left intact^[1][3]. In April 1995, Russian troops shelled for a month Alleroy, a village in the east of Ichkeria with 4,500-5,000 inhabitants. The occupiers completely destroyed a fifth of the houses of Alleroy with rockets^[1].

On 7 April 1995, the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the OMON stormed Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria. Chechens in Samashki told observers of the Russian human rights organization "Memorial" that the soldiers and OMON men burned houses on 8 April, when they were searching the village. Russian servicemen spent the night in the school on Kooperativnaya Street, and in the morning set it on fire, and the school burned out from the inside^[2]. On 10 April, a Chechen woman named Karnukayeva from Rabochaya Street told the Observer Mission of Russian human rights organizations: "The houses are burned. I have nowhere to go now. I am left on the street hungry and cold with 4 children"^[2]. Viktor Lozinsky of "Memorial" examined the burned houses of Samashki from 18 April to 1 May 1995. In February 1996, he told the public tribunal of the Russian Glasnost Foundation: "The village was being burned out systematically. The houses were set on fire like this: a window was broken with a rifle butt, and wiping cloth [rags] soaked in some diesel fuel was simply put on the windowsill and set alight"^[6]. The Observer Mission published a list drawn up by the administration of Samashki of 198 yards where the occupiers had completely destroyed at least one house, and in 155 of them almost all the houses had burned down^[2]. The human rights defenders of "Memorial" write that the Russian military and officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs burned most of the houses in the village deliberately^[1].

From 30 September 1995 to March 1996, Russian Internal Troops and police kept Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria, encircled, tore down the power lines near the village and blew up the gas pipeline several times (see: "Transport Blockade")^[4]. In December 1995, after the Armed Forces of Ichkeria had liberated Gudermes, Russian troops shelled and bombed the city. According to refugees and journalists' estimates, the occupiers destroyed or damaged about 40 percent of the buildings of Gudermes^[10].

From 3 to 9 March 1996, Russian troops stormed Sernovodsk, burned or destroyed 30 percent of the houses of the village, and Russian soldiers set fire to the apartments of refugees on the northern outskirts of the village with hand-held flamethrowers^[4]. On 15 March 1996, 11 months after the first assault, Russian troops stormed Samashki again and razed to the ground the House of Culture and the school, which the Chechens had rebuilt. Journalists who came after the assault saw only three surviving houses in the whole village^[4]. On 3 and 4 April 1996, Russian pilots bombed Shalazhi, a village in the southwest of Ichkeria, and destroyed dozens of houses, the whole upper part of the village^[1][4]. On 6 April 1996, Russian troops captured Zhani-Vedeno, a mountain village of 38 yards in the southeast of Ichkeria, from which the Chechens had fled the shelling, and for a month let no one near it. When the Russian servicemen left, one intact house remained in the village, and in place of most of the houses an observer of "Memorial" found ashes with no traces of shells or bombs^[1]. From 9 to 11 July 1996, Russian artillery shelled and aviation bombed Gekhi, a village southwest of Grozny. A correspondent of the Moscow newspaper Izvestia wrote that the occupiers had destroyed more than a third of the village^[1][11]. On the night of 11 July, Russian artillerymen shelled Makhkety, a mountain village in the southeast of Ichkeria, with the Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers, which cannot fire with precision, and destroyed 150 houses^[1][11]. From 6 to 22 August 1996, Russian troops shelled Grozny with heavy artillery and bombed it, and on 21 August Russian pilots dropped incendiary bombs on the blocks of five-story buildings on Saikhanov and Ulyanov Streets, from which the buildings burned out from the inside^[1]. The bulletin of the International Committee of the Red Cross of 2 September 1996 says that after the August strikes all 80,000 people in Grozny were left without electricity and medical care: all the hospitals of the city were destroyed or badly damaged^[12].

On 26 July 1995, the UN Human Rights Committee, in its comments on Russia, expressed regret that the Russian armed forces had destroyed schools, hospitals and other civilian buildings^[13].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[14]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[15]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[1].