Chechnya is undoubtedly the most fascinating place I’ve visited in the Russian Caucasus. Its enduring relevance throughout the post-Soviet period – from Russia’s most rebellious province to its most loyal – has made it a compelling lens through which to examine the evolution of Moscow’s politics and statecraft, as well as the longer-term viability of the Russian Federation.
I’m sure that many of those who followed developments in Chechnya during the 1990s and early 2000s will associate this small north Caucasian republic with violence and destruction, above all, its capital Grozny lying in rubble and ruin. Yet the Chechnya I visited was almost unrecognisable from that experience. As such, I will start with the history before recounting my travels through here.
In Soviet times, Chechnya folded into the larger republic of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, shared with its neighbour to the west. Readers of my Abkhazia post might recognise it had the same constitutional status: de jure enjoying its own constitution and government but functionally subordinate to the union republic it was part of, in Chechnya’s case, Russia. Chechens and Ingush are distinct though similar. They are both highlanders who adopted Islam, with languages that share roughly 85% of their basic vocabulary. Unlike Ingushetia, however, the people of Chechnya determined to win their independence by force when the Soviet Union collapsed. The result was two incredibly violent wars that raged from 1994-1996 and 1999-2009, with the separatist movement only being fully quashed by the late 2010s.
The first war, at its simplest, needs to be understood in the context of the turmoil that bedevilled post-Soviet Russia. Russian forces, although conventionally stronger, were horribly disorganised and demoralised, resulting in poor battlefield performances that culminated in the loss of Grozny during a surprise attack in 1996. The subsequent ceasefire and peace treaty saw Russian troops withdraw from the territory and granted Chechnya de facto independence. The second war is particularly fascinating to me because Putin achieved success here at a time when the two other major counterinsurgencies being fought against Islamic militants ended in ignominious failure: Iraq and Afghanistan. Where the US and its coalition partners were unable to translate their overwhelming military superiority into durable stability, Russia was.
And I think, with an eye to Ukraine, this is quite instructive. It would be fair to say that Moscow has a higher pain threshold than we do in the West. To compare this conflict with Iraq (2003-2011): approximately 13,000 Russian soldiers died, compared with 4,400 Americans – bearing in mind the US population was around double Russia’s at the time. Civilian deaths in both stood at a minimum of 100,000, though figures are heavily contested; Iraq’s population, however, was roughly twenty times the size of Chechnya’s. In the face of enormous Russian and Ukrainian casualties, it is worth bearing this in mind as the West tries to calculate what will bring Putin to the negotiating table.
All of this was swirling around my mind as I entered Grozny, which today is home to approximately a third of Chechnya’s one million-strong population. It is a thoroughly bizarre place, probably best described as Russian Dubai, with sleek skyscrapers, gold-laden mosques and pictures of the dear leaders everywhere. This is true for the city centre at least, because unlike Dubai, funds for lavish building projects are far fewer here. The whole thing felt like a caricature of wartime Russia, complete with humorous Chechenised knock-offs of Western chains (their version of KFC being a personal favourite) and children driving miniature tanks around the main square. It was perhaps best encapsulated by a chance stop at a local petrol station chain called Groztek. A little more high-octane than my local Esso, the place was fit with militaristic murals, tables shaped like oil barrels, and a wide selection of protein powders and switchblades to choose from at the checkout counter. If Vladikavkaz felt like the quintessential model Russian town, Grozny is the ultimate political Potemkin village: loud and glitzy, with a fierce fusion of Islamic militarism and Russian patriotism.
This has inevitably bled into the Ukraine war. Official figures put the number of Chechens fighting there at just under 50,000, which would approximate to 5% of the republic’s population. Many will remember the terrifying scenes of Chechen fighters scything their way through Kyiv in the early days of the war, reportedly hunting for Zelensky and other senior officials.
As a propaganda coup, it is remarkable. Putin has converted Russia’s most rebellious province into a bastion of loyalty. The architect of that transformation at the local level is Ramzan Kadyrov, and his family history is inseparable from understanding how it was achieved. His father Akhmad – a notable Chechen religious and political figure who had initially fought against Russia before defecting to Moscow’s side – was killed in a bomb attack in Grozny in 2004, in circumstances that smell of the Kremlin’s hand. After a brief interregnum, Ramzan was installed as his successor. He has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist ever since, pinning his colours more firmly to the Russian mast than any other regional leader – though in fairness, given how his father met his end, one might ask what realistic choice he has. He is rumoured to be gravely ill but, whatever happens next, not much will fundamentally change. Whether a family dynasty continues or not, this republic, like all others in the Federation, will be governed by whoever is willing to do Moscow’s bidding.
The crowning monument to the father-son dynasty is the memorial museum dedicated to Akhmad Kadyrov. What strikes you immediately is how little there is about either of them. Busts of obscure Russian (non-Chechen) generals line the approach, followed inside by the thoroughly surreal inclusion of Michael Jackson-inspired artwork. The cumulative impression is of a great deal of effort expended to suggest very little was actually accomplished.
In 1992, Chechens erected a memorial in the centre of Grozny to the memory of the Stalinist deportations during the 1940s, which happened concurrently with the Ingush expulsions. It was originally a stone fist standing amid headstones taken from cemeteries, clenching a sword with the inscription: “We will not weep! We will not break! We will not forget!” What followed was a less deft management of inconvenient memory than in Ingushetia, and one that exposed the limits of Kadyrov’s reach. The memorial was partially destroyed during the Russian bombardments of the 1990s. In 2008, the Kadyrov government attempted to relocate it near a former waste disposal site; public outcry forced a partial climbdown, but the monument was fenced off so that nothing indicated to a passing stranger what lay behind it. Then, in 2014, on the eve of the deportation’s seventieth anniversary, it was quietly dismantled. Its headstones were moved to a new memorial complex dedicated not to the deported but to Akhmad Kadyrov. The commemoration date itself was shifted from 23 February, the day the deportations began, to 10 May, the anniversary of Akhmad’s burial. Even that revision eventually proved too much. Chechens continued to mark the original date regardless and in 2020 the official ceremony quietly returned to February. It seems that Kadyrov had overplayed his hand. Chechens may have been willing to relinquish political control, but their identity was not to be trifled with.
This to me sits at the heart of the question concerning Chechnya’s future. Those I spoke to were despondent but patient. Given Russia’s currently revanchist bent and reconstituted military capabilities, open defiance would carry considerable risk. Walk down Grozny’s main promenades and you will pass underneath streetlights bearing images of the destruction visited upon the city during the First Chechen War – a subtle warning, perhaps, of what open defiance of Moscow entails. Yet, as one Chechen pointed out to me, who would have thought, less than fifty years after the 1944 expulsions, that the Soviet Union would simply cease to exist? The mountain peoples of the Caucasus have seen many empires come and go; they are acutely aware of power’s impermanence. The rebellion of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 was invoked in conversation as evidence of exactly that fragility. The iconic Chechen dress bears powder cases across the breast of each warrior. After two convulsive wars, they have retrenched. They are keeping their powder dry… for now.
