Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen War 1994–2009

by Dodge Billingsley

That was Elimpash’s objective—to prevent the Russians from advancing south across the Sunzha.

Interestingly, Chechen accounts of the August 1996 attack on Grozny, which ended the first war in Chechnya’s favor, imply that the Russians did not change much, if anything, in their defense of the capital from the March 1996 attack. This was a huge advantage for the Chechens, as they simply reattacked the same Russian positions that they had attacked months before.

“In close quarters combat, you continue to strike your opponent hard and don’t let him raise his head, which brings you success. You still have to fire rounds intelligently so that he doesn’t have a chance to raise his head. The goal is to not allow him to shoot at you accurately. To fire and to fire accurately are two different things.”

The Chechens did not establish a support-by-fire position along the top of the ridge, where machine guns could have provided continual suppressive fire in addition to the interrupted suppressive fire from the bounding teams. This was probably due to the ad hoc nature of the Chechen force, as well as the uneven level of training in the Chechen force. Lifting and shifting supporting fire requires good communications, extensive practice and experienced machine gunners who can engage the enemy without endangering their own force.

The area in question is a patchwork of fields and wooded area with relatively little changes in elevation. The position of the Russian vehicles against the hillside must have been a good choice by the Russians, since the Chechens also did not attempt to attack from the direction of the hill. Vakha recalls that, “it was too difficult to attack from that direction.” However, the Russians did not appear to have prepared forward defenses against a possible attack.

The attack seems to have been motivated as much by the specific target as a desire to strike Russian forces. The Chechens were aware that the T-90 tank was the newest tank in the inventory, there were very few of them and they represented a substantial financial cost to the Russians. It would be a psychological victory.

The first post-Soviet Russian-Chechen War pitted a larger, poorly-supported, poorly-trained modern mechanized force against a smaller and motivated force backed by village and neighborhood militias (primarily light infantry).

The Russians were much better prepared for the second post-Soviet Russian-Chechen War. They had added a supporting rail line in neighboring Dagestan, their supply and maintenance posture was greatly improved and the troops were better trained and equipped.

All warfare, guerrilla or conventional, is about controlling one’s own lines of communication, supply, advance and retreat while threatening those of the enemy.

During the first war, the Russians preferred contiguous lines and predictable, methodological advances. This led to a series of bloody frontal attacks against defending forces in urban terrain. In the second war, the Russians began holding the defending Chechen force in place with a limited attack while bypassing this defense to capture an objective beyond the Chechen defense. This would unhinge the Chechen defense and provide an opportunity for Russian aviation and artillery to punish the bypassed, retreating Chechens.

The Russian logistics structure for the first post-Soviet Russian-Chechen War was inadequate, especially for the initial urban slugfest in Grozny.

The Russians had their logistics in order for the second war and even added an additional rail line from Kizliyar to Karlan Yurt in Dagestan. This line paid dividends in support capacity during the second war. The Russian side had what they needed when they needed it and guerrilla ambushes never seriously slowed the logistics delivery.

The Chechen logistics system was based on the local village or region, which supplied food, medical support...

Russia’s move to install a former insurgent, Kadyrov, to rule Chechnya pitted Chechen against Chechen, severely undermining the population’s support of the insurgency. Further, locals can provide food and shelter, but they cannot provide mortar ammunition. In the final equation, guerrilla logistics often ended up as a family matter, and Chechnya was full of Tolstoy’s “unhappy families.”