Negotiations as Cover for an Attack

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. Russian president Yeltsin, Russian ministers and generals scheduled negotiations, meetings and peace signings with Ichkeria having already decided to attack, and Russian troops attacked during the negotiations or immediately after them.

Russian ministers and commanders of the occupation forces scheduled meetings with Ichkeria in Russian-controlled Ingushetia and North Ossetia. Later the negotiations took place in Grozny through the mediation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)^[1][2]. Russian delegations demanded that the Armed Forces of Ichkeria hand over their weapons and that the republic recognize itself as part of Russia (see: "Deprivation of Agency")^[1].

On 29 November 1994, Russia's Security Council decided to start a war against Ichkeria. In the secret report "Military Aspects of the Operation in Chechnya. Aims, Means and Results", the Russian defense ministry ordered army units and the Internal Troops of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) to assemble by 6 December, surround Grozny on 7-9 December and capture the city on 10-13 December^[1]. On 6 December, two members of the Security Council, Russian defense minister Grachev and Russian interior minister Yerin, met Dzhokhar Dudayev, president of Ichkeria, in the stanitsa of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Russian-controlled Ingushetia^[3][1]. After the meeting, asked by journalists whether there would be a war, Dzhokhar Dudayev replied: "Of course there won't be a war. Why war? For now we have agreed on a peaceful solution…"^[4].

Russia scheduled the next negotiations for 12 December in Vladikavkaz, the capital of Russian-controlled North Ossetia, and the day before them the Russian army openly invaded Ichkeria^[1]. On the day of the invasion, Russian president Yeltsin said in an address to the citizens of Russia: "Negotiations between representatives of Russia and Chechnya are scheduled for 12 December 1994. We must prevent their disruption"^[5]. Human rights defenders of Memorial write about the invasion on the eve of the negotiations: "Actions that were bound to disrupt the negotiations were declared to be aimed at preventing their disruption"^[1]. On 12 December, the Russian military detained the delegation of Ichkeria headed by Taymaz Abubakarov, minister of economy and finance, on the border of North Ossetia and Ingushetia in order to let a column of their own troops through into Ichkeria^[1][6]. On all three days of the negotiations, 12-14 December, Russian troops advanced on Grozny^[7][1], and on the first day the occupiers shelled with artillery and bombed the stanitsa of Assinovskaya in the west of Ichkeria^[6]. On 14 December, the delegation of Ichkeria broke off the negotiations over the demand to recognize the republic as part of Russia and left. The delegations never met in Vladikavkaz again^[8][1][6].

From December 1994 to April 1996, Russian president Yeltsin and Russian prime minister Chernomyrdin announced negotiations to Ichkeria, and in 1995-1996 Kulikov, Tikhomirov, Kvashnin and Pulikovsky, commanders of the occupation forces, scheduled meetings with the army of Ichkeria, while Russian troops advanced on the days of the meetings.

On 27 December 1994, Yeltsin entrusted the negotiations to Yegorov, minister for nationalities, Stepashin, director of the FSK (the predecessor of today's FSB), and Kvashnin, commander of the occupation forces^[9]. The next day, FSK director Stepashin told the leaders of Krasnodar krai that what should be discussed was not negotiations but an ultimatum to Ichkeria, and on 31 December the Russian army began storming Grozny^[10][1].

On 18 January 1995, Taymaz Abubakarov and Usman Imayev, ministers of Ichkeria, waited in Nazran, a town in Russian-controlled Ingushetia, for two Russian generals whom Chernomyrdin had entrusted with ceasefire negotiations. The generals did not come, and on the night of 19 January Russian pilots dropped concrete-piercing bombs on the presidential palace in Grozny^[1]. On 21 February 1995, the Russian military near Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria, did not let the delegation of Ichkeria through to a meeting with General Kulikov in Sleptsovskaya, a stanitsa in Russian-controlled Ingushetia. The crews of Russian helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at the road in front of the delegation's cars, and Kulikov refused Ichkeria a meeting^[1]. On 22 May 1995, Semyonov, the Russian government's representative in Ichkeria, announced to journalists that negotiations mediated by the OSCE would begin in three days^[2], and on 24 May the occupation forces launched an offensive in the mountains in the south of Ichkeria. On 25 May, the delegations of Russia and Ichkeria sat down at the negotiating table in Grozny, and by 12 June the occupiers had captured the mountain district centers of Vedeno, Shatoy and Nozhay-Yurt (see: "Military Intervention")^[1].

From 30 September 1995, the Internal Troops of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian police kept Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria on the border with Russian-controlled Ingushetia, encircled (see: "Transport Blockade")^[1]. Viktor Kurochkin, a deputy of the Russian parliament, told the public tribunal of the Russian Glasnost Foundation in Moscow in April 1996: "The order to begin large-scale actions of the federal [Russian] troops came in February, precisely when we were agreeing that the checkpoints near Sernovodsk would be removed... But when we arrived to resolve this problem concretely, we were told that an order had come to begin combat operations and to destroy all the bandit formations by 1 April" (this is what Russians called the Armed Forces of Ichkeria)^[11]. On the evening of 2 March 1996, the leaders of Sernovodsk agreed on peace for the village with the puppet government in Grozny and with the command of the occupation forces in the south-west of Ichkeria and scheduled the signing for the morning of 3 March. After the agreement, most of the defenders left the village^[1]. Sadyt Gisatova, a Chechen woman from Sernovodsk, told the Glasnost tribunal in Prague in May 1996 about the night of 3 March: "That night, for the first time in a long while, my children went to bed undressed. We believed the Russian government and our newly created [puppet government in Grozny] — they promised us peace"^[11].

At 5:45 in the morning of 3 March 1996, more than four hours before the signing, the occupiers began storming Sernovodsk in three columns^[1]. The defenders of the village killed a Russian colonel in the fighting and captured from him a detailed map of the attack^[11]. At 7:30, the defenders repelled the attack. After this, the occupiers shelled the village with artillery, and Russian pilots fired rockets at it from helicopters (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks"). On 9 March, six days after the start of the assault, Russian troops captured Sernovodsk. From 3 to 9 March, the occupiers killed at least 45 Chechen civilians in the village and wounded 68 (see: "Mass Killings of Civilians")^[1].

On 21 April 1996, while Dzhokhar Dudayev, president of Ichkeria, was talking by satellite telephone with Konstantin Borovoy, a mediator in the peace negotiations between Russia and Ichkeria, the Russian military struck a clearing near the village of Gekhi-Chu south-west of Grozny with missiles and killed him (see: "Neutralization of the Opposition")^[12][1]. Two days later, Russian prime minister Chernomyrdin announced that Russia would follow "the tactic of expanding peace combined with tough forceful methods"^[1].

On 3 July 1996, in Novye Atagi, a village south of Grozny, the Russian members of the Russia-Ichkeria working group on military questions, headed by General Tikhomirov, declared that they were removing the checkpoints and withdrawing military units from Ichkeria^[13]. On 9 July, while Mikhailov, head of the Russian delegation, was assuring Tim Guldimann, head of the OSCE mission in Ichkeria, that Russia wanted to continue the negotiations, Tikhomirov's troops surrounded Gekhi, a village south-west of Grozny, and by 12 July had killed 19 Chechen civilians there (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks")^[1][14]. On 19 July, Kvashnin, commander of the Russian troops in the North Caucasus, announced that he was ready to meet Aslan Maskhadov, chief of the Main Staff of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and to discuss, among other things, "the future of Aslan Maskhadov himself", and the next day the occupiers launched an offensive in the mountains south-west of Shatoy, a district center in the south of Ichkeria (see: "Indiscriminate Attacks")^[15][1]. On 31 July, Ichkeria declined the meeting^[16]. From 13 to 17 August 1996, General Pulikovsky, acting commander of the occupation forces, met three times with Aslan Maskhadov, chief of the Main Staff of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, at ceasefire negotiations (see: "Sham Ceasefire")^[17]. On the evening of 19 August, Pulikovsky gave the people of Grozny 48 hours to leave, and on the night of 20 August, before the deadline, Russian artillerymen and pilots began shelling and bombing the city (see: "Collective Punishment")^[18][1]. According to journalists' estimates, from 6 to 22 August the occupiers killed about 2,000 civilian townspeople in Grozny. Human rights defenders of Memorial write that no one kept an exact count^[1].

On 1 May 1995, Sergei Kovalyov, a deputy of the Russian parliament, wrote in his testimony to the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress that all attempts to settle the question of Ichkeria's independence by political means, before the war and after it began, were systematically and deliberately torpedoed by the military high command and by others in the government in Moscow^[19].

On 22 August 1996, Lebed, secretary of Russia's Security Council, and Aslan Maskhadov, chief of the Main Staff of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, agreed on a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops^[1].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[17]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[20]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[1].