Yeltsin had decided to put an end to a forceful separatist movement in Chechnya, a small republic in the North Caucasus, on the border with Turkey and Georgia. He would use the army to dislodge the local government. But the Chechen resistance was well armed and possessed of ten times the resolve of the Russian troops, along with familiarity with the terrain and the support of the local population. What had been planned as a fast attack, essentially a police operation, turned into an all-out military offensive.
