Aggressors may resort to the direct and open use of armed forces to invade the territory of another state or region. The deployment of the army is used to overthrow the legitimate government, change the political regime, or physically establish control over key infrastructure and administrative centers.
To construct the base on the lands of the Nokhchi, the administration brought in armed detachments: historian E. N. Kusheva writes that in the spring of 1567 the voivodes A. S. Babichev and P. Protasyev were dispatched from Moscow "with many men, as well as ordnance, cannons, and arquebuses"[1], while historians A. S. Kulikov and V. A. Runov note that they were sent "with firepower and many men"[2].
The occupation administration of the Tsardom of Muscovy systematically brought armed detachments into the lands of the Nokhchi to hold the bridgehead: the compiler of the collection of documents E. N. Kusheva indicates that at the site of the fortress, "by order of the Terek voivodes, a detachment of streltsy and Cossacks was permanently stationed"[3], and during the siege of 1653 it held "Russian service men, Terek atamans, and Cossacks"[3].
The occupation administration systematically brought in regular troops to maintain the garrison: historians A. S. Kulikov and V. A. Runov note that in the early 17th century «the garrison numbered more than a thousand streltsy and Cossacks»[2].
The occupation administration of Tersky Town dispatched armed detachments which, as the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky and his son the Kabardian prince Sholokh reported to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, made their way «across the mountains and through mountain crevices, impassable places»[3] in order to suppress the defiant communities.
Armed detachments loyal to the metropole carried out incursions into the territories of the Nokhchi mountain communities in order to suppress their resistance: the historian I. Kh. Tkhamokova notes that in 1628 the Kabardian murza Konshov-murza Bitemryukov «went against these "mountain people" together with the "free" atamans and Cossacks and with the "Okochans"»[4].
When covert methods of destabilization proved insufficient, the tsardom moved to open military invasion. The regular Muscovite army tried to subdue the Hetmanate by force, which ended in catastrophe at Konotop. The imperial historian Soloviev admitted: "The flower of the Muscovite cavalry, which had made the fortunate campaigns of '54 and '55, perished in a single day… Never again was the tsar of Muscovy able to field such a strong host"[5].
Physical destruction of the armed forces of the supporters of independence in a general battle in order to eliminate the military potential of the resistance[6].
The Regular Army of the Russian Empire deployed armed contingents to suppress resistance in the region: historian Sh. B. Akhmadov records that "on July 23, 1722, a tsarist detachment headed by General Veterani... approached the village of Enderi"[7].
The Regular Army of the Russian Empire dispatched armed contingents to preemptively suppress an anti-colonial uprising: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov cites a report by General Douglas, who ordered that the assembled rebel force must, «not being allowed to multiply, be averted and destroyed by the dispatched detachment»[8], after which, as historian Sh. B. Akhmadov states, «on July 4, 1732, the tsarist authorities dispatched a military detachment to Chechnya, headed by General Douglas, who commanded the troops at the Holy Cross fortress»[7].
The encirclement and forcible seizure of the Sich by imperial troops right after the Cossacks had helped the empire win the war. The manifesto records the operation matter-of-factly: "On June 4, Our Lieutenant-General Tekeli, with the troops entrusted to him by us, occupied the Zaporozhian Sich"[9].
The Russian Empire sent troops into the lands of the Nokhchi in order to force its way deep into Greater Chechnya and break the resistance of its communities. The historian D. A. Khozhaev describes General Bulgakov's troops as having "come with fire and sword to the Chechen land," and the Khankala battle of 1807 as bloody[10]. In February 1807, three detachments under the overall command of the commander of the Caucasus Line, General Bulgakov, crossed the Terek; on February 13, the troops broke through the Khankala Gorge by storm, which the inhabitants had fortified with barricades, ditches, and abatis. The commander of the Caucasus Line, General Bulgakov, reported that he had entered "for the exemplary punishment" of the Nokhchi communities, that the inhabitants, having gathered in number about 10,000, "resolved to perish rather than let the Russian troops pass through the gorge"; during the storming of the gorge, of the defending Chechens, according to his report, there were "about 1,000 killed on the spot"[11]. The imperial historian Potto admits that after Bulgakov's storming of the Khankala Gorge, Russian attempts to penetrate deep into Chechnya "were never renewed"[12].
The Regular Army of the Russian Empire moved troops onto the Nokhchi lands between the Terek and the Sunzha in order to forcibly shift the forward fortified line deep into Chechen territory and place the region under military control. Historian D. A. Khozhaev defines the meaning of moving the line as squeezing Chechnya that had not submitted «with new fortresses and fortifications»[10]. The imperial general Yermolov, in his «Notes», attests to the deployment of troops: «on May 24 the entire detachment crossed over… in a single march it moved from the Terek to the Sunzha River»[13].
The deployment of troops to forcibly suppress the liberation movement: the detachments created by the insurgents "were routed by the tsarist troops in April–May 1831"[14].
The empire answered the Chechen uprising by sending in troops. General Pullo, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), reported on 9 March 1840 about marching out against the insurgents: "I set out yesterday for Khankala with 5 companies" (Khankala - a tract by the Groznaya fortress)[15]. The second deployment was a detachment on the Sunzha river: an imperial instruction of 25 March 1840 set it the task of "keeping the Karabulaks in submission" (the Karabulaks - a Vainakh community between Chechnya and Ingushetia; "submission" - the empire's formula of subordination)[15].
Three times in 1842-1845 the empire threw large armies at Chechnya. On 30 May 1842 general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), led a ten-thousand-strong detachment from the Gerzel fortress into Ichkeria (mountainous south-eastern Chechnya) - towards Dargo, the residence of Shamil (the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest); historian N. I. Pokrovsky: "In a six-day battle in the dense Ichkerian forests Grabbe suffered a decisive defeat"[16]; the historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov count: "The total losses in killed, wounded and missing came to 66 officers and over 1700 lower ranks"[17]. On 14 November 1843 emperor Nicholas I personally assigned new forces: "I am sending you for one year 2 divisions of 24 battalions... I give you such forces as the Caucasus has not seen even in a dream... You must penetrate into the mountains, rout Shamil wherever he stands against you, annihilate everything that resists you, but spare everything that submits without a fight" - and added, on bribery: "Scatter money, trying to attract to our side people who have influence over the tribes"[15]. In summer 1845 Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, on the direct order of Nicholas I led an army against Dargo: Pokrovsky counts the detachment at 9500 men, historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov - "an army of 21 thousand soldiers and officers with 42 artillery pieces"[16][17]. The march ended in catastrophe: "Of the 9500 men who made up Vorontsov's detachment, 3510 men were put out of action, among them 3 generals, 28 staff officers and 158 line officers"[16]. The fate of Dargo itself the sources convey differently: according to Pokrovsky, the troops found the aul "cleared and set alight by the murids themselves"; by the record of Gadzhi-Ali, Shamil's companion and chronicler, the Russians "after an insignificant skirmish took possession" of Dargo, and burned about 700 of their own tents as they left; historian D. A. Khozhayev writes that the village was burned by the tsarist troops themselves[16][18][10].
The direct deployment of Red troops, heavy fighting for the stations, and the storming of Kyiv. The march on Kyiv was led by Muravyov: he "headed the march of Soviet troops on Kyiv in January 1918"[19]. Overall command was exercised by Antonov-Ovseenko: "in December 1917 - March 1918 - commissar for combating counter-revolution in the South, he led the Soviet troops in the struggle against otaman A. Kaledin and the Ukrainian Central Rada"[20].
In January 1918 the troops of Bolshevik Russia were advancing on Kyiv. At Kruty station the Ukrainian defense barred their way. From late December 1917 the yunkers - cadets of the 1st Kyiv Youth Military School named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky, four companies of 150 cadets each with 20 officers and 18 machine guns - under the command of Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko held Bakhmach, a railway junction on the border of the UNR and the RSFSR[21]. On January 27 the first company of the student volunteer battalion under Sotnyk Omelchenko arrived from Kyiv to join them - 115-130 volunteers: students and senior-grade gymnasium pupils, teenagers, many of them 17 years old[21][22]. Together with the company the Ukrainian command also sent out a demolition team; the volunteers dug in on both sides of the railway line between the stations of Kruty and Plisky[23]. The battle began on the morning of January 29, 1918. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences write: it took place "during the offensive on the city of Kyiv by the troops of Bolshevik Russia", with the positions attacked by the forces of "a 6-thousand-strong Bolshevik detachment of Petrograd and Moscow Red Guards" led by Yegorov[21]. The fighting lasted until evening, the defenders repelled several attacks; historians put the defenders' losses at "up to 300 killed, wounded, captured"[21]. Toward evening Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko ordered a withdrawal to their echelon - the detachment's train waiting two kilometers away; during the retreat part of the student company was encircled, and one platoon lost its bearings at dusk and came out at the station already held by the Red Guards - 27 captured teenagers and students were shot[21]. The defenders delayed the Red Guards' advance on Kyiv: explaining the heavy losses and the delay, Muravyov claimed in his report that the Ukrainian forces had been commanded by "S. Petliura himself" - as the compilers of the collection of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory note[23].
A full-scale offensive by the Ukrainian Front of the Red Army in early 1919 to recapture Ukrainian cities after the withdrawal of Austro-German troops[24].⏎In the summer of 1919 Ukraine was also under attack by the White army - the Armed Forces of South Russia led by General Denikin[25]. The advance of Denikin's White army on Kyiv ran under the slogan of restoring a "united and indivisible Russia"[24]. On August 30, 1919, Kyiv, abandoned by the Reds almost without a fight, was taken by the combined Ukrainian forces - the 1st and 3rd corps of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) and the Zaporizhzhia Group of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) under the overall command of the Galician general Kravs; for 4 p.m. the next day, Sunday, August 31, Kravs scheduled a ceremonial parade of the Ukrainian troops on Khreshchatyk with the participation of Symon Petliura, head of the UNR Directory[26]. The day after the Ukrainian armies entered the capital, Kyiv was also occupied by Denikin's troops under General Bredov, who forced the Ukrainian units out[26]. The events of August 31, 1919 became known as the "Kyiv catastrophe"[26][24]. A catastrophe this day was for the Ukrainian armies and for the statehood of the UNR: they lost the capital, taken the day before, within a single day; the armed clash on Duma Square left dead and wounded, and several hundred men were taken prisoner[26]. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences conclude: "the initially successful operation of the Ukrainian forces turned into a painful defeat". Of the consequences they write: the catastrophe "had a demoralizing effect on the Ukrainian army and deepened the divergence in the strategic aims" of the two Ukrainian political leaderships - that of Dnieper Ukraine and that of Galicia[26].⏎The course of the day is known from the diary of the Supreme Command - the staff of the Ukrainian Galician Army. The staff described the morning of August 31 thus: at 8 o'clock Denikin's units entered the city, "it seems - across the middle unoccupied bridge and also across the railway bridge, over which several armored trains crossed", and positioned themselves in the southeastern suburbs[27]. The senior Galician commander, Otaman Vimetal, agreed with Denikin's commanders on a provisional demarcation line, but between 4 and 5 p.m. Denikin's general Stackelberg, with a delegation of officers and a detachment of 100-200 men, approached the City Duma, already held by the Galicians; Kravs demanded that they be withdrawn behind the agreed line[27]. The staff recorded the denouement thus: the assembled crowd, "knowing of the presence of Denikin's troops in Kyiv, demanded that the Russian flag be hung on the Duma in addition to the Ukrainian one we had already planted there", and Kravs, "in order to calm the crowd, in which there were many former Russian officers", permitted it with the justification "as a banner of the common struggle of both armies against the Bolsheviks"[27]. Units of the Zaporizhzhia Group passing by the Duma "tore down the Russian flag"; shooting broke out - Denikin's detachments attacked the Galician units scattered across the city, and of the fire from roofs and balconies the diary entry reads: "the civilian population also fired at our units"[27]. The day's toll in the diary: "10 Cossacks killed", the disarmed staff of the III Galician Corps and eleven of its companies, the guns of the Zaporizhzhia Group abandoned in the city; Kravs estimated Denikin's forces at "at least two divisions"[27]. There was no battle for the city: after the shooting at the Duma "great panic" set in - several units were disarmed, the rest fought their way out of the city; the staff summed up: "a unified resistance was impossible because of the panic mentioned"[27]. Kravs set out to negotiate with Bredov and already on his way met "strong columns of volunteers [soldiers of Denikin's Volunteer Army]" marching on the city[27].⏎Kyiv remained with Denikin's forces. On the night of September 1 Kravs signed with Bredov an agreement on the withdrawal of the Galician units; by September 2 the group's troops were already assembling on the Ihnativka - Vasylkiv line[27]. The withdrawal was the command's decision: the riflemen of the group, according to the entry for September 1, "deeply dispirited by the recent events, demand a new offensive on Kyiv"[27].⏎In the fall of 1919 the Red Army went over to a counteroffensive, now against Denikin's forces[24].
On December 12, 1919, the command of the Soviet Southern Front issued secret directive No. 188. The document was signed by front commander Yegorov, the future head of the USSR Stalin, and chief of staff Petin. The directive gave the invaders' army its task: «to capture the city of Kyiv in the shortest possible time»[28]. On December 16, 1919, the army of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) took Kyiv for the third time since the start of the communist revolution[28][24].
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) is the Ukrainian state proclaimed in 1917. By December 1919 its army - eight to ten thousand soldiers, many of them sick with typhus - was pinned near Starokostiantyniv in Volhynia: the Volunteer Army of Denikin to the south and east, the Polish army to the west, the troops of Soviet Russia to the north. Contemporaries called this position the «triangle of death»[14]. At a meeting in Nova Chortoryia on December 4-6, 1919, the head of the UNR Directory Symon Petliura and the army command decided to dissolve the regular front. The UNR Army under the command of Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko set out on a raid through the rear of the Soviet and White forces: in 180 days, from December 6, 1919 to May 6, 1920, some ten thousand soldiers marched two and a half thousand kilometres across Ukraine. This raid is known as the First Winter Campaign[14].
That same winter Soviet troops occupied most of Ukraine. The dates of the cities' capture, according to the front reports: December 11, 1919 - Poltava and Kharkiv, December 16 - Kupiansk, December 24 - Luhansk, January 5, 1920 - Mariupol, February 7 - Odesa[28]. On the Right Bank the Russian occupier reached the Polish front line: Kamianets-Podilskyi, Proskuriv and Starokostiantyniv were held by the Poles[14].
The UNR leadership signed an alliance with Poland and secured the support of its army in the fight against the Russian occupiers. In the spring of 1920 the armies of Poland and the UNR moved to liberate Kyiv. On May 6, 1920, Yegorov, commander of the Southwestern Front of the Soviet army, telegraphed in secret order No. 304: «Kyiv must fall to the enemy only at the cost of the heaviest losses on his part»[29]. The armies of the UNR and Poland retook Kyiv: on May 7 Polish reconnaissance units rode to the centre of the city by tram, and on May 8 ten regiments of the 3rd Polish Army entered the capital[30].
The occupier gathered its forces and on June 6 broke through the Polish front south of Kyiv, at Samhorodok. On June 10 the Polish troops, having blown up the Chain and Rusanivskyi bridges, withdrew from Kyiv[30]. On June 12, 1920, Yegorov reported: «Units of the 58th Division have taken Pechersk and are entering Kyiv». The orders to cut the Kyiv - Korosten railway, issued the day before, were signed by Yegorov and Stalin[29].
On October 18, 1920, an armistice took effect on the Polish-Soviet front, and the UNR Army was left to face the invader alone[30]. By November 10 it held the front with 8,968 bayonets and 3,250 sabres, with 95 guns and 687 machine guns. Against it the Soviet command moved the 12th and 14th armies, the Bashkir cavalry brigade and Kotovsky's cavalry brigade: 24,000 bayonets, 4,000 sabres, 120 guns and five armoured trains[31]. The occupation troops attacked first and thwarted the offensive being prepared in Podillia, in today's Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi oblasts. In eleven days of fighting the UNR Army lost about 13 thousand soldiers, almost all of its artillery and four armoured trains[30].
On November 21, 1920, about 12 thousand UNR soldiers, together with the staff of Symon Petliura and the ministries, crossed the Zbruch River, along which ran the border with the lands ceded to Poland under the Treaty of Warsaw[30]. Mykhailo Andrusiak, a participant in the retreat, recalled: «Sadly, with bowed heads, the Cossacks laid down their arms after crossing the bridge and marched on to the West»[32].
In the autumn of 1921 the soldiers of the UNR army made a last attempt to raise a general uprising against the Soviet occupiers. This raid is known as the Second Winter Campaign, and its course is known from the report of the chief of the Field Insurgent Staff, Colonel Yurii Otmarshtein, submitted to Symon Petliura. At 2 a.m. on November 4, 1921, the detachment crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border near the village of Borove: 155 officers and officials, 645 Cossacks, 32 horses, with about 56 percent of the men armed with rifles[33]. On November 7 the detachment under the overall command of Yurii Tiutiunnyk liberated the Korosten railway junction in battle and freed 600 political prisoners from the jail, but withdrew that same morning: an armoured train of the Soviet occupiers was approaching the town with guns the detachment had nothing to counter, and ammunition had to be spared. Seven officers and twelve Cossacks died in the battle[33].
The detachment could go no further. Half of the infantry marched without boots and with frostbitten feet, the wagon train carried up to 80 wounded, and ammunition was replenished only with what was taken from killed and captured Russians. The staff decided to turn back, towards Poland[33]. The troops of the Russian invader blockaded the area of the UNR raid and on November 17 encircled the detachment near the village of Mali Mynky in the north of Zhytomyr Oblast. Over 400 soldiers died in the battle, 537 were taken prisoner, and more than a hundred broke out of the encirclement and crossed the Polish border on November 20[20][34]. The prisoners were taken to the village of Bazar, where 359 of them were shot[35]. The armed struggle of the regular UNR Army ended there[26].
On 25 August 1925 the USSR sent troops into the Chechen Autonomous Oblast to take away the weapons of its inhabitants; the operation was conducted by the army and the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) under the overall command of Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai[36]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write of the forces gathered against the Chechen villages: "In all, about seven thousand Red Army men with 240 machine guns and 24 [artillery] guns were brought in to take part in it. In addition, two aviation detachments and an armored train were at the disposal of the operation's commander. Tactically the troops, as well as the operational groups of the GPU, were divided into seven groupings"[17]. Historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva gives, from the military documents, a different count: 6183 Red Army men with 137 heavy and 102 light machine guns, 14 mountain and 10 light [artillery] guns, and beyond that 341 OGPU officers assembled from across the whole North Caucasus[36]. Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, recalled that "It was agreed to send two divisions into Chechnya 'for exercises'. The exercises were to include contact with the population, amateur performance evenings, concerts, closeness with the local youth, which was to strengthen still further the trust in Soviet power"[37]; the same legend was scattered from the air - the account of a surviving companion of imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, printed in 1936 in the Warsaw journal Severny Kavkaz, says: "To calm the population, proclamations were scattered from aeroplanes, in which it was written that ordinary maneuvers were taking place and the inhabitants were asked not to worry and to stay in their homes"[38]. The head of Chechnya itself - Eldarkhanov, chairman of the Chechen TsIK (the highest organ of power of the autonomous oblast) - was not informed of the preparations: "The center and the organs of the OGPU did not consider it necessary to inform even the chairman of the Chechen TsIK, T. Eldarkhanov, of the action being prepared. The concentration of troops in Grozny was explained by forthcoming maneuvers"[36]. At the same time the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 wrote the Chechen TsIK into every step of the execution: its representatives enter the surrounded aul together with the command and convene the assembly, sit on the weapons-reception commissions, are obliged to provide profiles of the districts, and after "all the enumerated measures of influence" receive the authority to dissolve village executive committees and install revkoms[39]. Even before the troops went in, the OGPU had described every village: historian E. F. Zhupikova relates - "The organs of the OGPU gathered information about the most influential mullahs and sheikhs, about the honored elders, about the guides without whom it was impossible to penetrate into the mountains"[40]; for every settlement a questionnaire was drawn up with the number of inhabitants and households, the composition of the population by taips (clans) and the quantity of weapons planned for removal[39].
The direct armed invasion of Polish territory by the Red Army on September 17, 1939 for the military occupation of the western Ukrainian lands; the seizure was consolidated by "the treaty of the USSR with Germany (September 28, 1939)," which "confirmed the incorporation of the western Ukrainian lands into the USSR"[41].
The use of regular troops without insignia to establish control over the peninsula. A year later V. Putin admitted it on his call-in show of 17 April 2014: "behind the backs of Crimea's self-defense forces, our servicemen, of course, stood. They acted very correctly, but… decisively and professionally"[42]. Ukrainian garrisons on the peninsula were blockaded and disarmed, as Putin himself admitted: "and the way the Ukrainian units were disarmed - all of this was done so swiftly that it seemed it had been prepared for an incredibly long time"[42].
The overt crossing of the state border by regular Russian troops in the summer and autumn of 2014 to save the separatists from defeat: the "DNR" commander admitted that the decisive role was played by Russian servicemen who came "on leave" - "it was mostly 'vacationers' who advanced on Mariupol. When they left, both the front line and the opportunities became precarious"[43]. The offensive resulted in heavy losses for the Ukrainian army near Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. The presence of regular troops continued into 2015: the GRU men captured near Shchastia were "soldiers of the 3rd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, who arrived on the territory of Ukraine on March 26 and were quartered in Luhansk"[44].
The invasion by the regular Russian army and massive missile and air strikes on Ukrainian cities: "On 24 February 2022, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, announced his decision to conduct a 'special military operation' in Ukraine to seek its 'demilitarization and denazification'. On the same day, Russian troops crossed various border points into Ukraine, including through Belarus, and launched attacks by land, air and sea"[45]. The UN Commission investigated the events of February-March 2022 in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy Provinces[45].