Pillage

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 looted Chechen homes and carried the belongings away in military vehicles^[1].

Officers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and soldiers of the Russian Internal Troops (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia), during "zachistkas" ("sweeps", as the Russians called house searches and detentions of Chechens) in Grozny, went from house to house with weapons. The occupiers took money, gold and valuables from the owners. Chechen families filed the most complaints of looting against them^[1].

From December 1994, Russian police officers and fighters of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs looted Chechen families in the stanitsa of Assinovskaya in the west of Ichkeria^[2]. In mid-January 1995, the elders let Russian troops into the stanitsa after they promised to do no harm (see: "False Guarantees of Safety"), and the occupiers looted the homes of Chechens^[3]. On 28 and 29 January, the Russian military surrounded a block in the settlement of Butenko on the outskirts of Grozny with armored personnel carriers, went from yard to yard with weapons, took a thousand dollars from Leila Bapayeva, and from her neighbor, a mother of eleven children, her "Mother Heroine" medal^[4][1]. In late January, the occupiers loaded appliances from abandoned houses of Grozny into armored personnel carriers, and a Russian captain drove a covered truck full of furniture through the city^[1][2]. In February, because of the looting in Assinovskaya, the head of the Achkhoy-Martan district in the west of Ichkeria and a representative of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria refused to let the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs into the villages of the district^[2].

In the winter of 1995, after the seizure of Grozny, the Russian military carried the belongings of Chechens on army vehicles through Ingushetia to North Ossetia, Russian-controlled republics to the west of Ichkeria. Russian traffic police recorded many such cases at their posts in Ingushetia^[1].

In February 1995, Russian Justice Minister Kovalyov and General Babichev, who commanded one of the occupiers' groupings, declared on air that soldiers who take food from abandoned houses, or whatever is lying around unguarded, commit no crime^[1].

On 1 March 1995, Sobolev, deputy director of the FSK (predecessor of today's FSB), admitted on the Vremya program of the ORT television channel that the Russian military in Ichkeria had looted. Russian soldiers who on 30 March 1995 seized Gudermes, the second-largest town of Ichkeria, took whatever they wanted at the market and did not pay^[1][5]. Until December 1995, Russian servicemen who served in Gudermes on contract in 45-day shifts got drunk before going home, entered the homes of Chechens and took chickens, geese, carpets and dishes^[5].

On 7-8 April 1995, the Internal Troops and police special forces of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stormed Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria, and killed 103 peaceful Chechens (see: "Mass Killings of Civilians"). Along with armored vehicles, the occupiers brought military trucks into the village. The soldiers loaded video equipment, tape recorders, televisions, carpets and furniture into them and into armored personnel carriers, and searched women's necks for gold^[2][6]. On 13 April, Sadulla Yusupov from Samashki told Oleg Orlov, a staff member of Memorial, how he climbed out of the cellar where a Russian serviceman had wounded him with a grenade and saw three occupiers in the yard: "They dragged out this little safe, this one here. We kept money and papers in it. Two of them are opening it with something, trying to open it, and the third is guarding them and shooting chickens, into the house". The soldiers opened the safe and left. Human rights defenders of the Observer Mission found Sadulla Yusupov's house burned down, but there were no traces of fighting on its walls^[2][1].

In April 1995, Albast Madayev from Samashki wrote to Govorukhin, chairman of the Russian parliament's commission investigating the causes of the war in Ichkeria: "They burned my house with a shot from a flamethrower, killed 3 cows and 12 sheep. Of the household belongings, they took away what they could and set fire to the rest"^[6]. The commission received 221 statements from Chechens of this village. In 60 of them it is said that the Russian military took valuables, food and shot livestock from the houses, and often burned the rest (see: "Total Destruction of Infrastructure"). On 6 June, Govorukhin, chairman of the commission, told Krasnaya Zvezda, the newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense, that he did not believe in the looting in Samashki. Not one of the complainants received an answer^[2].

In April 1995, an officer of the Russian FSB confirmed in Ichkeria to Viktor Kurochkin and Viktor Sheinis, deputies of the Russian parliament, that soldiers of the occupation troops were looting the seized villages on a mass scale. The officer had filed a report about this to his superiors and received no answer^[1]. On the night of 7 July 1995, the Russian soldiers Korovin, Shulin and Petrov came from their unit to the settlement of Rodina to demand money and gold from Chechens, killed two of them and wounded three. A year later, a military court gave Korovin 14 years, and Shulin and Petrov six and three years^[7][1]. From 30 September 1995 to March 1996, police officers and soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs who kept Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria, encircled looted Chechen families and drove away their livestock (see: "Transport Blockade")^[8]. On 14 December 1995, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Gudermes, and on 19-20 December Russian troops seized the town again. Russian soldiers lived in dachas outside the town, came every day into the homes of Chechens and took carpets, dishes, food and Red Cross medicines^[5].

In February 1996, the Russian military looted the houses that had survived the stormings in the settlement of Novogroznensky in the east of Ichkeria^[1][8]. On 9 and 10 March, the Russian military carried mattresses, refrigerators and other belongings of Chechen families out of Sernovodsk on some thirty trucks, which doctors of the international organization Doctors Without Borders counted. At the resort north of the village, Russian soldiers looted and set fire to the apartments where refugees were living^[8]. In March 1996, Russian soldiers looted the surviving houses in Samashki^[8][1]. Russian guards in the prison of Pyatigorsk, a town in the south of Russia, took fur hats, leather jackets, shoes, money and gold from 91 Chechens whom the occupiers had unlawfully detained near Samashki on 15 March 1996 (see: "Filtration Camp System"). On 19 April, the Ministry of Internal Affairs released them without charges^[9][1]. In August 1996, when the Armed Forces of Ichkeria were liberating Grozny, the reconnaissance battalion of the Russian army's 205th Brigade drove townspeople out of the 16-story buildings on Altaiskaya Street near the old airport, where there was no fighting, and loaded their belongings into vehicles. When the fighting ended and the soldiers left, the townspeople found almost all the apartments looted^[1]. On 17 August 1996, soldiers of the 101st Brigade of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs searched the houses around the "15th Gorodok", their base in Grozny, took whatever they wanted and shot up the rest with assault rifles^[10].

On 20-22 August 1996, Aleksei Karmayev, a 67-year-old disabled man from Grozny, went to the headquarters of the 276th Regiment of the Russian army to demand that Russian soldiers stop looting and return his belongings. On 24 August, eight soldiers of the regiment led him away from the yard of his house on Kommunisticheskaya Street, after which the disabled man went missing (see: "Abduction of People")^[9][11].

Human rights defenders of Memorial write that soon after the start of the war the occupiers began to loot and destroy the property of Chechens on a mass scale, and that Russian commanders and military prosecutors did not seriously combat the looting. By Memorial's conclusion, soldiers went on looting even after the leadership of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, in an address to the troops in February 1995, acknowledged looting, extortion and violence against peaceful Chechens^[1].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[12]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[13]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[1].