Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 160 - The First Chechen War Part 2: So You've Accidentally Killed Your Own Conscripts

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Part 2 of our 4 part series. Russia invades the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and promptly bombs and shells themselves without mercy. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. Donkeys podcast, Chechen edition. I'm Joe and with me again is Nick. Not a local Chechen expert. Yeah, local expert of the Chechen Republic of Ichkera. That's why we hired you, Nick. Just for this. What episode are we on? We've been doing this for three years, and we figured we would give you time to warm up on your expertise on the region that you graduated with a doctorate from, from Grozny University.

I don't know if that's a school i assume there's a university in grozny i don't dabble in any of this i i only dabble in uh dagestani law um anyway we're in part two of the first first chechen war uh and when we left you last time russia had finally committed to invading the small breakaway republic of Chechnya, formerly known as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. But as we kind of spoke ahead of ourselves at the end of the last episode, things were not that easy. Now, for about seven-ish hours, we already talked about the Soviet army as it was deployed in Afghanistan. How are you feeling about the capabilities of that

military, Nick? I feel like they're going to look big and scary at first, and then all of a sudden shit just starts falling apart. Yeah, it's pretty accurate. Rather than retreading that territory, if you're new to the show or whatever, I highly recommend you go back and listen to at least one or two of the episodes where we talk about that because all of those problems are still there. Instead of them being fixed by the Soviet military no longer being a thing and this now being the Russian military, which you think would be easier for them to retrofit or modernize or do something to to fix all these problems. It's only worse now.

So same, same. I would have rather been a soldier in the Red Army in Afghanistan than the Russian Army in Chechnya. Really? That's insane. The general quality of life is... We'll talk about that at length here in a little bit. Oh, we're doing another soldier quality of life? Not really.

We're just going to talk about the realities of life as a normal soldier in Russia in 1994. And honestly, being in Russia generally in 1994 is not a good time of their history. So being a conscript in this military, even worse time. Now, as you can imagine, Boris Yeltsin believed that this would not be that much of a military adventure. You didn't see this as a war. Say you're deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and all of the logistics involved in that effort. How long do you think you want to give your chiefs of staff your defense ministers and things like that and not to mention remember how big russia is how hard it's going to be to

draw those forces there how long do you think you want to give these guys to figure this out like a couple months a year i would say like six months to a year because we're talking like the 90s. You got 14 days, Nick. All right. You got 14 days. Boris Yeltsin wanted not only plans hashed out and complete, but he wanted soldiers staged and ready to march within 14 days. That's a time crunch. Yeah. I don't know if this is something that the the u.s or russia to be capable of now uh not in this capacity like we both nations obviously us a little bit more than they

have the ability to rapidly deploy soldiers in various parts of the world but a full invasion with within 14 days uh with tanks and apcs and jets and helicopters and all these other things. It's a big fucking ask. Oh, yeah. Since the fall of the USSR, the vaunted Red Army had gotten their shit kicked in in Afghanistan and fallen into disrepair. This is a fact that was not a secret. This is not something that was hidden away. It was

very well known and acknowledged by several people within the government, including the chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee. Outside of politicians, senior military leadership also believe that this entire plan to invade Chechnya was absolutely batshit insane. Well, at least they know. Yeah, like, unfortunately, he gets down to the yes-men,

which is bad. Yeah. Now, they point out that they might be able to invade Chechnya. That's not the big ask. The thing is, they need more time and they need more money because they need to train all of these new recruits that they're getting. They're in cycles of conscription. A lot of these new conscripts simply haven't been trained yet. They were all disregarded, despite the fact that many of these soldiers sent to units where they would receive absolutely no formal training before their upcoming deployment to Chechnya. It's a long time ago, but we talked about the Red Army going to Afghanistan. Someone's probably said, well, it wasn't technically the Red Army. It was the Soviet ground forces. Shut up. Everybody knows it was the Red Army. At least they got training. It wasn't great, but they knew how to use the rifle.

A lot of the conscripts that would cross the border into Chechnya had never fired their rifle before. Many of them would not get ammo up until the point they deployed. What? Yeah. They just didn't have any fucking money. They're like, yeah, we have ammo, but we have weapons, but all the ammo is gone.

All the rifles are gone. Commander sold them. Ask your buddy how to use it. Yeah. He doesn't know either. Well. Trickle down knowledge of rifle marksmanship. Yeah.

Remember how I said all of the systemic issues, the just insane, violent hazing, still there. In-ranked slavery, still there. Just outright theft, even worse even worse well at least they kept that tradition going that is one thing they did keep over and like that's actually still kind of a problem today for things that i've read yeah uh it's not as bad they've almost fully transitioned to a professional contract military which began being a thing in this war they were called contract Nicky, and where you could sign a contract and start a career rather than be a conscript.

There's a very good book called One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko, and he was a conscript during the first war and a contract Nicky during the second. Just liked it so much. It's a lot of the same kind of stuff that American veterans deal with, or he just did not know how to become a person anymore so he's like i might as well go back to war he's had a very weird life but there was just like outright hatred between the contract nicky and the conscripts they stole from each other shit like that like there was outright murder and hazing and violence yeah that's crazy all of these things exist in the 70s and 80s they exist again now in 1994 and remember how we talked about the last episode a lot of these things existed in the 70s and 80s. They exist again now in 1984.

And remember how we talked about the last episode. A lot of these fucking guys simply have gutted their own armies, like the commanders and stuff, to line their pockets. The equipment availability, readiness, and quality is all markedly less than it was in Afghanistan. Despite the fact it was decades ago. Right. Okay. Now, it was around this point that around 500 officers were fired or demoted for opposing the invasion of Chechnya.

Another 800 refused to take part with 83 of them eventually being brought up on charges for it. Still others voluntarily quit, including the Deputy Minister of Defense, Boris Gromov, who is a hero of the Afghan war

and of the Soviet Union. Oh, wow. Yeah, Gromov said that the war would be a quote a bloodbath another afghanistan on live television which turns out he was right not a lot of fans no no uh definitely not that's how i says like he got down to the yes men because they're like look you're either gonna draw up these plans or your career's over and a lot of people like i'd rather my fucking career you're either going to draw up these plans or your career's over. And a lot of people are like, I'd rather my fucking career be over. You're not paying me anyway.

That actually sounds pretty good. Yeah. I'll take my fucking walking papers. Fuck you. And other people point out the legal problems involved in this war. Remember, Chechnya is legally part of Russia. This would be like us deploying the US Army to invade Oklahoma. It's illegal.

You can't do that. And people point out like actually deploying the military against their own civilians is explicitly against the Russian Constitution, right? Now, thankfully for Boris Yeltsin, nobody ever let something called like the law stop them from doing a war.

That's what I like. That's a go-getter. He didn't even ask Parliament for approval. He just invaded part of the country. You don't need it. You don't need it. You know, law, order, constitutions. It's all more of a vibe. Those are just like, how do you say with those old packing lists?

It's optional. All of these things are optional. All of the social construct of a nation state is just more of a suggestion. The social construct of a nation state is just more of a suggestion. Now, that's when General Vorboyev, who is the deputy commander of the Russian ground forces, was sent to Mozdok, which is very close to the Chechen border, to oversee operations for planning and planning logistics, things like that, for the upcoming operation. And what he saw left him virtually speechless. It was so badly thought out and planned he called the entire military operation a, quote, sheer adventure. Oh, nice.

In response, he was told to turn his resignation paperwork. He's like, sweet. Oh, thank God. Afterwards, he began to publicly shit talk his old boss, saying Defense Minister Pavel Grachev had lacked the courage to tell

President Boris Yeltsin that his troops were woefully unprepared for the invasion. Now, this might be true. Also, in the last episode, I mistakenly called Pavel Grachev Boris Grachev. It's Boris is all the way down. I apologize. He's not, in fact, one of them. He's a Pavel. Grachev was seemingly the one person who did not oppose the war, and he just so happened to be the only person that Yeltsin would listen to. Like I said, he's someone we've talked about before, years ago. Grachev was known even then as an notoriously corrupt asshole who was terrible at his job. Someone said that he was Boris Yeltsin's personal defense minister because he never left Yeltsin's side, which is not his job.

He was a yes man he was given the sarcastic nickname pasha mercedes due to his level of obscene corruption and the wealth he had illegally obtained due to selling off russian and east german weapon stocks oh wow and he owned personally like a dozen mercedes like you need to try to hide it and everybody fucking do it. Are they all different colors? Like I hope so. I'm going to assume

looking at him and how he operated, they're all black with tinted windows. I was thinking like a boring gray. He might have a gray. I feel like that this is

solid Russian mob blacked out type shit. I could see that too. Just all of them. All of them and all driven by matching former police officers that are bald and hairless and kind of look like human thumbs as personal drivers. Like in Agent 47. That's what I was thinking of.

I was thinking of Agent 47 in a Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is Agent 47 if Agent 47 melted like a candle. Yeah, Agent 47 is real smooth. He's a very svelte boy. Pavel Grachev was also very well known for being blind drunk all the time. He drank at work. And there was also a fair amount of evidence, though, I will say allegedly here, not that he can sue me. He's dead.

Yeah, he's dead. Let me double check my sources that he was like alcohol dependent and suffered from withdrawals if he didn't drink all the time and actually same rumors for Boris Yeltsin yes so they would all just

suffer the shakes together at work there's also the time he almost certainly ordered a couple of his airborne officers to murder a journalist who was uncovering his corruption while he was stationed in east germany what the fuck when the berlin wall fell now a lot of east germans vehicles and weapons were left behind which led to a very weird situation when they merged the former people's army of whatever east germ Germany was officially called.

I'm going to spitball here and say the People's Democratic Republic of Germany. Just because I feel like that fits the naming conventions. East Germany. A lot of those would be kept by the Bundeswehr for target practice or be sold off. Because there's just so many of them. But other of them were just stolen and sold. A lot of them by Gratchiff. The guy literally made an incalculable amount of money doing this. Nobody's sure how much money he made, but it's assumed it's in the hundreds of millions of

dollars. Jesus Christ. A journalist who's a pretty young guy was uncovering this because the man's very stupid, Gratchiff is. He's not good at anything. The only thing he was good at was becoming a general and putting himself in the position to be able to rob East Germany blind. He left evidence everywhere. Fucking everywhere there's evidence. So this journalist found it, and Gratchiff was originally an airborne commander

before he was defense minister. And they're airborne, much like our airborne, is kind of a cult. So like his officers listen to him more like like a mob boss than a general. So he's like, hey, they're cutting in on our hustle.

And that guy caught a whole bunch of bullets in the face. Really? I think they caught one of them, but he was like found not guilty or something like that. I was kind of hoping that they were going to say no, that's wrong.

Weird how that happens. Didn't happen. His success and elevation to defense minister had absolutely nothing to do with his skill, but rather his friendship and personal loyalty to Boris Yeltsin, who backed and protected him from any blowback or punishment from all of his various crimes of which there are just so many

that's friendship well the thing was as yeltsin it was handy to have a defense minister who was a spineless yes man and owed things to you as you can tell because without gratchev this war doesn't happen like any other defense minister who Yeltsin didn't have just like an endless amount of dirt on would have been like no this is fucking stupid and on the flip side of that people have said that like Grachev probably had dirt on

Yeltsin too it was like mutually assured blackmail destruction in this circumstance like they're both pointing guns at each other yeah yeah I don't know that they're pointing guns at each other but they both know that they might be pointing guns at each other yeah and like when there was the damn near civil war that yeltsin ended up coming up on the right side of gratchev like had no compunction about like rolling tanks through the downtown moscow and and helping out his friend so like yeltsin was indebted to him and gratchev well

both of them are corrupt dickheads but gratchev was an incredibly corrupt dickhead. Like, look, I'll keep making sure nobody fucks with you, but you have to overlook the fact that I sold East Germany. And Yeltsin's like, deal, friend. So when Yeltsin told Gratchev that he wanted to invade Chechnya, Gratchev's like, yeah, sure, fuck it. Let's do it. Let's invade. You think they got stuff to sell? They have oil.

So I'm willing to bet in the circumstance where Russia wins, which, spoiler, they don't, Gratchev steals a lot of oil money too. Absolutely. Now, he had a rough idea of the readiness condition of the Russian military mostly through

second-hand knowledge, because he never left Moscow and hardly ever visited soldiers or talked to their commanders. He believed that that was below him, but he did know things weren't good. Hell yeah, fuck them. Hey, you in the uniform, fuck you in particular. It was hard to dodge the knowledge of how bad off the russian military was just two months before the war grachev told the russian parliament quote no army in the world is in such a poor state of ours it is a sin to keep it half starved and destitute two months before the war

truly incredible now uh in reality the military he was in command of was truly in total shambles. No division-sized training or any kind of training exercise above the, I think it was the regimental level, had been done since 1992. And since it was 1994, you have to look at the reality of the quality of soldier you're dealing with here. So in the US, obviously, we weren't alive for conscription. But on the low end, I think I saw contracts for 3.5 years when I enlisted. It was pretty common. Now they're a little bit higher. But if you hadn't done something in 2 years, that's crazy. But also, you generally have a 3rd or a third or fourth or fifth year sometimes even a

six year depending on what your mos is to catch up on that it's not super uncommon for someone to to learn a skill they haven't done in like a year because you'll still be there right unless you have short timers in which case whatever but because it had been two years since a large scale training exercise in russia that meant not a single soldier within the ranks had any large scale training because they would only be drafted for 24 months. So by the time the last soldiers of 1992

trained, by 1994 they're all out. They're all gone. Now there is a very small minority that stay over their conscription period to become NCOs and warrant officers and stuff. But the number is fucking minuscule because, remember, being a conscript sucks.

And being in the military is not great. By Abchenko point, one of the reasons why the Contract Nikki were so vicious and awful is because who in their right fucking mind is going to volunteer to do this? So a lot of them were criminals running away from shit. They didn't do exactly a lot of background checks. lot of them were criminals running away from shit they

didn't do exactly a lot of background checks some of them were like serial murders and rapists so like yeah like like not surprising but god right right and because of bad record keeping a broken mobilization process and widespread draft dodging, most units were about half strength. Solid. Like draft dodging became so easy and commonplace to do that like people just stopped trying to enforce it. You know, there was political officers

and stuff like that in place during the Soviet Union that could go to like your local neighborhood and force you into going to the draft office. Like the local commissar was a thing. Granted, by the Soviet war war in afghanistan they did

not have that much power anymore but they still kept people in line and made them go to draft offices for fear that like the local political officer is going to come to your door and harass you or possibly throw you in prison so like yeah i'm gonna go register at the draft office they both sound awful now those motherfuckers are gone. The Communist Party is dead, right? So, like, all of these functionaries are gone. So people are like, wait, I can just fucking keep going to work. Nobody's going to come bother me.

Or just, like, move to the next town over and change your address. Like, nobody was keeping track. Or we keep in time the good old fake fake mustache and glasses combo ah i see you're looking for uh ivan well as you can tell i have the rather large nose glasses and mustache that can't be me and like uh yes you're right have a good day sir and also bribes a lot of people were bribing their way out those are still super common now we already talked about how training was dog shit or just mostly non-existent honestly most people were drafted and then they would just simply try to survive there wasn't exactly a lot of military

life going on other than the fact that you wore a uniform and had to live in a barracks like i can't imagine like if you're not training or you're not getting paid what the fuck are you doing uh mostly indentured servitude uh now remember how i said everybody's broke right even officers are broke and this was a thing in the soviet times and it was definitely a thing in the 90s i think it probably still exists today is that officers would rent you out for labor, local construction companies or local rich people or local people with money. Generally, like we need humans. And the officers are like,

I have a large supply of people who cannot legally tell me, no, how much money do you have? And like soldiers end up working construction sites. They'd end up being like butlers doing other more nefarious, awful things, and making absolutely no money of their own. It would all go to their officers. And if you

say no... I'd hold out a tip jar. How about, like, fuck you, sir. I'm not going to go dig a ditch. Well, I have the guys who have six months left on their draft time. They're going to literally murder you if you don't. And I'm not going to prosecute them. I'll see you at the dig site then, sir. They weren't training.

But outside of not having any money for training, they also didn't have any money for housing or food. Remember, the Soviet Union was fucking huge. And a lot of the soldiers within the Soviet Union were Russian. And these soldiers happened to be stationed abroad. Now, when the soviet union collapsed and various soviet republics became their own independent states a lot of them took control of their local units others did not others sometimes russia's like no that's mine and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of units are being pulled back within the borders of the russian

federation and suddenly have no fucking place to live right because they've never been historically stationed they're like this unit's been stationed i don't know fucking here's a stand for the last 30 fucking years we have nowhere to put them well we have to build more barracks well we have no money to build barracks so you guys figure it out so this main soldier is quite literally homeless outside of their own bases because they had nowhere to live other places they were at mercy for like just the local townspeople to let them hot couch. In other places, officers stole supplies to sell to get their

soldiers a place to live. Though that was not as common as you'd hope because they're officers. Right. Makes sense. Russian pilots forced by cuts and a lack of fuel and replacement parts might not fly at all every month in case you're one of like, you know, most pilots have to fly a certain lack of fuel and replacement parts might not fly at all every month in case you're one of like, most pilots have to fly a certain amount of hours every

month to stay certified. I believe in the US at the time, it was like 20 hours a month. And in Russia, a lot of them simply weren't getting any time at all to fly and others were getting like an hour a month. Like I said, officers are pawning off their equipment, selling vehicles to probably mobsters and weapons dealers so they could feed their soldiers. I got this sweet jet. How much rice can I get for this tank?

This led soldiers to have to forage for food in their own country in 1994. Someone pointed out that there was a journalist, I think he was from like Germany. And then he went over to Russia to see this. And he said that it looked like something out of like 1812 when Napoleon invaded that you'd see a whole bunch of soldiers like picking berries and like grass out in the field.

Fucking doing like bushcraft. They have no food. They're like, I could eat this tree. Now, the thing is, this all has blowback, right? Like you can't pump hundreds of thousands or millions of people through this system and not expect to have some kind of like trickle down effects. People got drafted and eventually went home, assuming they didn't get murdered by their

fellow draftees or, I don't know, disappeared by their boss. And they would tell people how fucking awful being in the military is, which of course led more and more and more people to dodge the draft. The draft dodging problem was even greater than it was during the Afghan war. So like, yeah. And that was just an incredible amount of draft dodging. Yeah, but then you get those weirdos that are like, you know what, that sounds awesome.

Let me go fucking sign up. No, that's 100% true. There's a lot of people who wanted to go fight and win valor and honors and stuff in Afghanistan. It certainly did not outweigh the amount of people that they were missing from the ranks, though. Now, none of this stopped Gratcha from telling Yeltsin that he would end the war within a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment. Nice. And he also called it a, a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment. Nice. And he also called it a, quote, bloodless blitzkrieg. Those are the two most incorrect statements

I think in this entire series. Those two words together? Bloodless blitzkrieg? Yeah. It's like fucking for virginity or bobbing for peace, right? He also personally met with Dudayev. Remember, he's the president of chechnya in december the same month the war would start and said not to worry there would never be a war between russian citizens right like we'll figure this whole thing out oh he did the old cross your fingers thing

behind the back yes it doesn't count i crossed my fingers and said, no takesie backsies. You bastard. Dude. I was like, fucking think of this. Nose goes shit, but there was going to be a war. Yeltsin listened to Kratchev assumed the word be over rapidly after a surgical strike. And to their credit,

it kind of seemed that way when the war began on December, it was surgical. It did at first. I'll give them that much. To be fair, it's really easy. On December 11th, Russian jets bombed every combat and civilian aircraft, fixed or rotary wing, in Chechnya,

rendering the entire air force completely useless, as well as the civilian fleet. That is one surgical strike they carried out. It would also be the last. I honestly thought that their definition of surgical strike was well, we started on the day. That's good. We started at

three hours late on the 11th. Normally, Russian surgical strikes require 18-hour long artillery strikes, but they did destroy the entire Chechen Air Force, but Dudayev let them. He knew that he was not going to be able to fucking dogfight it out with the Russian Air Force. He was not going to be able to continue to supply or reload these planes.

All a fucking pipe dream, right? Those were free anyway. They were. And the thing is, we know this because Dudayev knew this was all coming. And to this day, nobody is sure how. The Russians thought they were being slick while massing forces in three different spots along the border. But Dudayev knew exactly what they were doing. The only thing that is known that it is very possible somewhere very high up in Russian intelligence, a leak was occurring going from the Kremlin to the generals on the

ground straight to Dudayev's ears. Now, we know that someone thinks this occurred because a member of the state, Duma, was like, oh yeah, everybody was leaking shit. What? They're selling that shit? I think that's a possibility. I mean, there's also a lot of other stuff. Remember, Dudayev wasn't just some dude. He was a Soviet Air Force general. He had friends. He probably called in a favor. All right. Shamil Basayev might be just like a bloodthirsty monster.

Dudayev was a Soviet guy for a very long time. He had to have friends in the KGB or the FSB. I believe it's called the FSK at the time. Russians really like their abbreviations. It's 100% chance that somebody was leaking. Nobody's sure why. But I'm going to bet it's because Dudayev knew a guy. I mean, remember, everybody involved in the Chechen separatist government is some form or another a former Soviet officer or political officer.

All of these dudes have friends who are still in very high up places in Russia. It's like the Soviet war. People would literally sell the Mujahideen their rifle, knowing they'd be shot by it. They didn't care. They wanted money and they wanted a way out. So Dudayev probably bribed people. He made a lot of money in the black market too. Maybe he called in favors. I don't know. Corruption is rampant at all levels of the Russian government and high levels of the military and also low levels of the military.

It's just all around. It's one of those situations where this could have happened so many ways and nobody's sure how. And nobody's talking for reasons we'll talk about. but he's sure how. And nobody's talking for reasons we'll talk about. But there was at no point that the Russians surprised Dudayev with any move that they made because he knew. But while Dudayev couldn't do anything to save his air force, he could prepare his ground forces for the coming invasion. Now, the Russian army didn't invade Chechnya. Fucking everybody did. And what I mean is the entire Russian security apparatus invaded invaded chechnya there's no good way to put this other than just like it inherited a bloated nightmare of agencies from the ussr and had done absolutely nothing to streamline them that meant there was countless different

police agencies internal ministries intelligence agencies that also had their own ground forces, the Navy, the Air Force, the Army. It's fucking wild. There's so many different agencies involved in this. Like it's an all-star game or some shit. No, because all-star requires talent. These guys had none of that. All right. I will say this, since we're both people who like sports,

you know how you watch an all-star game and they kind of suck at playing together? Yeah. Yeah. It's because they have no teamwork. They don't want to coordinate together. In fact, a lot of them probably dislike one another. Absolutely. That's exactly what happened here.

The federal government did not put any kind of coordination agency or liaison system in place for these dozens of agencies to speak or coordinate or plan with one another they all had their own command structures and absolutely none of them work together finely tuned machine now it's very common for different military branches to have friendly rivalries right we're both

familiar with that people listening are probably familiar with that like army and marines we'll make fun of each other obviously because marines are stupid but but like when we have to go invade something like yeah whatever working with marines like it's a friendly rivalry it's not real i mean we're we're just have the same fucking job most of the time we're not gonna murder each other right unless it's like that guy in africa the green beret that got strangled to death by a whole bunch of seals and marine raiders. Oh, yeah. But that was not a rivalry. That was over money.

I thought it was over drugs and money. I think it was drug money. Yeah. Yeah. This is not the case in Russia. The police agencies all hated one another and everyone else. The internal ministries hated the ground forces and the ground forces hated everyone, including themselves. The internal ministries hated the ground forces, and the ground forces hated everyone, including themselves.

None of the different agencies would talk or work together, and in many cases, units within the same branch also hated each other. Say, two companies within the same battalion. We would refuse to march together. Solid. This is certainly how I would plan an invasion. I want everybody to fucking hate one another. Now direct that hate that way. You know how you really want to shoot the guy next to you how about you shoot chechens instead now when orders came down to invade all hell broke

loose as you can imagine from the 800 different command structures at play here some units refused to march soldiers deserted because they had no idea where they were or what the fuck they were doing there like remember some of these guys like you could quite honestly be thousands and thousands of miles away from home and have never fucking heard of chechnya before right like where am i is that in russia why the fuck are we here fuck this i'm going home and people just fucking desert also a lot of them are from neighboring republics like other muslim majority republics that also kind of sort of had designs and independence and had a lot of cultural things in common with chechens like

yeah fuck this i'm going home other units set out scared other units uh that had gotten no orders causing them to shoot at one another what the fuck yeah other times uh you just start shooting at one another because they didn't like each other like how does that start i i just assumed like hey we got uh we got war orders now they didn't say against who i'm just not understanding how that starts i assume it was like a minor disagreement over money or whatever i don't know heated uno game playing spades and someone just fucking starts spraying akmo at somebody this is the way i don't play spades fucking hate that game i enjoy it now in one circumstances civilians and neighboring unga sharia began to protest

knowing exactly where all of these soldiers were going right and they stopped an armored convoy from moving by standing in front of it, kind of like daring them to run it over, which I don't know if that's a game I'd play with the Russian army. And then they eventually began throwing firebombs at the vehicle, setting them on fire. The soldiers manning them deserted, leaving the burning vehicles and all

of the ammunition to civilians. Jesus. You can have it. Fuck this. I'm going home. Yeah, that's just the Fuck this. I'm going home. Yeah. That's just the whole thing. I'm going home. Other units saw this and decided the best way to get out of all of this mess would just be simply to sabotage their vehicle so they couldn't leave at all. You can't do a war if you don't got a BMP, motherfucker.

Just blowing tracks off of each other's vehicles. Now, some units did move out like they were supposed to. Oh, one of those square units. Fucking losers. Nerds. Going to follow orders. Any minor inconvenience, I'm going home. I swear to God, the second one of these guys looks at me wrong, I'm going to shoot myself in the foot.

The invasion plan was like something that, I don't't know kids would come up with playing like soldiers in the backyard or whatever it was like quite literally three different convoys all of them going in different directions and all of them would end up in grozny at the same time that was all of the plan there was no plan for any of the countless dozens of villages between point a and point b it's just like get to point point B. Fuck it, dude. What if we run into resistance? Just keep driving. Don't worry about it. Like, uh, okay.

An officer that would get captured by the Chechens said, like, their orders were just like, advance. Like, advance where? Just advance. Alright. Go. It's like what happens in a real situation when those war movies, they're like, charge! Where?

It's the whole field in front of, like, where are we going? Shut up and do it. You're ruining my speech. I'm going home. I'm charging the other way. I'm not retreating. Like I said, some units did move out. Even in places that had once been, like, Dudayev's opposition.

Like, there were some villages that never quite fell under dudayev's control as the president when they saw russians invading they decided they were actually pretty cool to die they're like oh yeah because like you know they hate dudayev but they still want to be independent oh okay i thought they'd be down for the russians coming over it's like when you hate the president like sure you want you hate the president but you also you don't want to be a colony of the united kingdom anymore like you don't want to go back in time like no we're fine with independence actually that guy is just the dickhead that goes back to one of our favorite theories in this entire show and that is the general theory of fuck that guy right uh so everybody aligns

themselves with Dudayev. Soon civilians and fighters who hated Dudayev saw him as the defender of their homeland, standing against the Russian aggression, trundling down their goddamn streets. Fighters launched organized defenses against the Russians while civilians blocked the streets with their

own bodies, throwing rocks and bricks at everything else they could get their hands on. They're braver than me because I feel like a Russian would say, I don't really have much to lose. I might just run you over. It really seems like they're patient right now when the civilians in Ungushetia block their... Because this time the Russians responded by just blindly firing in every direction.

They blew up and bombed pretty much every building or house that they saw. This is mostly out of fear. Remember, all these guys are panicked conscripts giving a loaded weapon for the first time and no training whatsoever. Yeltsin ordered the army to show restraint, but nobody ever trained them on what restraint was. It was just a death blossom with fully automatic weapons in every direction. This might sound weird to people who have never been in the military or don't have any knowledge of military training, but you do have to teach soldiers how not to kill people

too. Otherwise, you end up with Eddie Gallagher. You have to teach them how not to shoot people and how to de-escalate situations and also what a threat looks like and what it doesn't look like. Also, what the laws are regarding who you shoot and who you can't shoot.

They didn't have any of that at all. None. Just like, here's a belt-fed weapon. Kid, go get them. You're doing great. Panic conscripts with virtually no training shot at everything that moved. While a lot of these hit and run formations that the Chechens deployed resisted the invasion, it was a little more than a constant delaying action,

right? They're not digging trenches in the street and going toe-to-toe with Russia. They're operating in pretty small groups. Now, the Russians penetrated within 25 kilometers of the capital of Grozny. Now, according to Chechen Colonel Hussein Ishkanov, who did a pretty lengthy interview, weirdly enough, the plan was to dig in and defend the capital in the city center, but they needed more time and wanted more time to prepare. That is when Aslan Mashkadov, which is a former Red Army artillery officer, got a brilliant fucking idea.

See, at this point, the Chechens had been worried that the Russians would simply bomb them if they arrayed themselves on a force-enforce battle. This is due to a lack of firepower. They lacked modern anti-aircraft systems. So if we array all of our artillery out in the open, we'll just get bombed into submission.

We can't do that. So they would deploy their artillery in a different way. So Mashkadov thought a very good idea would be to simply hide the rockets. These are being grad-multiple rocket launch systems the woods outside of the town of Dolenskoy, where he would hide them in very, very, very dense forests. And Russians weren't exactly using advanced targeting systems, so they couldn't really see them. And instead of having them park miles upon miles away from battle and then using them as indirect fire artillery weapons, he would point them directly at the street where the Russians were coming from and point blank them with artillery. Now, mind you, these rockets are like 155 millimeters. Jesus. Huge.

And he can fire dozens of them in rapid succession that's fucking overkill it's brilliant like i never thought like i assumed you couldn't use them that way for some reason you know when russian vehicles begin to drive down the road mashkadov unleashed several batteries of missiles at point blank range you know how terrifying that would be you'll on the bright side is you only feel the fear for a second before your body is just melted by the incoming rocket. Imagine being the survivor. I'm going home. You throw the vehicle

in reverse. You guys can have Chechnya. Seems like a great place. Bye! But yeah, they just got a fucking annihilated. Hundreds of soldiers were killed and then the fighters within the town began shooting at them as well. Oh yeah. No. Fuck that. This is also something that the town began shooting at them as well. Oh, yeah. No.

Fuck that. This is also something that the Chechens use this as a learning opportunity. And that is the Russian Air Force had no ability, want, or desire to give close air support to the ground forces. Because they didn't like each other? There's that. And I think a lot of it is they simply were afraid to get close, do close air support. But also... Yeah, look at that new tactic they just came up with. I really don't feel like catching a rocket to my face.

Who knows what they got for us? In modern militaries, you have the ability to call in airstrikes from forward observers and things like that, or just loitering aircraft. You have the ability to communicate with those aircrafts and call in airstrikes. The Russians didn't. ability to communicate with those aircrafts and call in airstrikes. The Russians didn't. They said that most ground forces did not have the

ability to speak to any kind of air power. That includes helicopters. Some did, but overall, most did not. So if a jet was loitering overhead and dropping bombs, you just had to be like, I really hope they don't hit us.

Good luck, buddy. Spoiler alert. That happens a lot. The Russians bombs you just had to be like i really hope they don't hit us uh good luck buddy uh spoiler alert that happens a lot the russians bomb themselves frequently oh almost as much as they bomb the chechens did they not know what was going on with the air force like oh okay never mind you you already said they didn't talk to each other no they did not uh and they and the air force had no desire to fix that. Again, like most people, they believe that those fucking conscripts are below us. Who gives a shit? They just didn't care.

One of the more overarching things that really dawned on me while reading this is very few people in the Russian military actually gave a shit about soldiers at all. I haven't heard one thing humans even to soldiers yeah even as humans like i and i understand that like everybody in the military is a shitty leader at some point uh but like just an absolute disregard for life is impressive you don't see that often and it seems to be a common strain amongst most... Outside of very, very junior leaders. Because obviously, these people are people. They know each other. They work together at a squad and platoon level. I'm sure they're all friends because soldiers are soldiers throughout history. But once you go on to the larger picture, just nobody gives a shit. It's kind of incredible.

After that, the Russians decided, well, moving forward is hard, right? We need to get behind this. We need to fight these guys on their level. We need to expand our advance in a different way. That way, they can't just target these three positions. So they went with an airborne operation. 50 paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines with the mission

of setting up a landing zone that could be used to ferry in more paratroopers, as well as hunt down and destroy an arms depot that was reported to be in the area. To be fair, that probably would have hurt the Chechens if such an arms depot existed. It did not. I had no idea where they got the intelligence

from, but when Chechens heard about it, they were like, we didn't have any arms depot. All of our ammo was captured from you. They were frighteningly low on ammo with a lot of fighters going out of half of a magazine. The first thing they would do was just rob the shit out of Russian bodies and vehicles

that were left behind because they just didn't have anything right because remember it's been years since this whole thing started this started in 1991 when ussr fell and since then the vast quantities of ammunition that chechnya did once had had been expended on each other uh so like these huge depots of arms that they should have were all mostly burned up in what at this point is pretty much a civil war up until that point. So everybody has guns and vehicles and shit,

but they're like, we have no gas or bullets. One of the things that Iskanov talks about is like, we had artillery, we sent me fucking ammo for it. We could have used our artillery like we used the rockets, but each gun had like five shots and we'd be out. So they used them instead to build like IEDs,

which had a much better effect of like denying the Russians roads. Oh, I imagine. Their offensive was almost explicitly confined to roads because they were using tanks and APCs and stuff. So like,

oh, let's blow them up. They're on the order of go. Yeah. Advance! But yeah, so this paratroop operation to the mysterious arms depot that did not exist. Yeah, I still feel like the 50 is probably not enough. It's not nearly enough. The Russian plan was to set up and get a hold at the front

and they could just ferry soldiers in. So like, I guess for clearing an area they believe to be easy, 50 people would be enough maybe i don't know of course since you're listening to the show in this episode you probably know that isn't what happened there's already the possibility of leaks blowing this plan that we've already talked about uh though it's kind of unknown if an operation this small would have been leaked because it was made independent of the kremlin which happens quite frequently just commanders on the ground doing whatever the fuck they want. One of the common refrains of just the sheer amount of contempt that a lot of these officers

and enlisted men and conscripts had for the government was they called them the whores in Moscow or the Kremlin brothel and shit like that. Military officers thought Yelton was a fucking idiot. They thought Gratchef was a fucking idiot, which like they both were, but to the point that they didn't even bother running their plans by them anymore. And that went both ways. So like you could see that could be a problem.

Let's say the leak didn't happen. So the Chechens don't know the paratroopers are coming, but you want to know what they did see? A whole bunch of dudes floating down from the sky connected to parachutes in broad daylight oh in broad daylight yep yep no need to do that at night nick no no no everybody within miles saw them slowly floating down to the earth which is not good for your secret mission no we're still there dropped directly into a forest which if you're unaware of how paratrooping works,

which I'm not, I'm not airborne. Nick is an airborne, but I do know being dropped into trees sucks. Oh yeah. Uh, so people get, people got like stuck up in trees.

They fell through breaking their limbs, you know, shit like that. I think one guy died. It's kind of up in the air of how this whole thing ended. According to one of their officer and Major General Igor Morozov. Sorry, Major Igor. He wasn't a general.

He's just a major. He said there was a firefight leading to two people being killed. Civilians say there was no firefight. The paratroopers and the two people who were killed were killed because they fucked up their landing. Landed into a tree. Then the tree broke. Whatever. There was no firefight, according to the civilians. okay it was cold and raining and miserable outside because remember it's december

and fucking russia right the soldiers were not giving any kind of waterproof clothing and had very limited rations they also were not wearing winter boots major marazoff attempted to radio back to the headquarters telling them all of these problems and how their mission was going to shit but they were ignored the mission was only supposed to last three days but marazzo knew everyone in the area had to know where they were so there's no way for them to complete their mission he ordered his men to just hide and they would wait for the helicopters to come pick them up so this is like that junior leader like actually giving a shit about his people situation that we talked about and when three days passed the helicopter still did not show up, abandoning them in the woods.

I kind of felt like that was going to happen. Yeah. Now, the Russians say that it was simply delayed for another couple days because of weather. Morozov disagrees with that. And that's when a group of civilians found them. Morozov knows that they're armed with little more than hunting rifles, and many of them were kids and old people.

So Morozoza or his soldiers simply surrender to them now marazza was a veteran of the afghan war and he said that when he saw who the chechens were he realized immediately what they were doing and he didn't want to take part because like he never fucking met a chechen before most of these guys haven't right though the chechens got a little too confident in their ability to go toe-to-toe with the Russians after winning everything so far at this point. The Russian forces moved into Kanakala Airfield, which was an old Soviet airbase that had fallen into disrepair on the outskirts of Grozny. The Chechens launched a full-scale counterattack using tanks, APCs, and infantry. Now this, it turns out, happened to be the one thing the Russians were good at.

It's a straight up armor battle on an open plane. The Russians and the tanks also suffering from a deficit of training and stuff like that, but their deficit of training was still more than what the Chechens had, which was none. So, you know, they won. The Chechens weren't

necessarily destroyed as much as they simply called off the attack, realizing that they weren't going to be able to chase off these guys. They lost several of their tanks in the process, though one of them pointed out that there really was no point of keeping them. They had no fuel for the motherfuckers anyway. The decision was made to pull all the way back to the capital of Grozny and fighters and civilians went to work welding together tank obstacles with the local factory's equipment. And they made thousands of these fucking things, like hedgehogs and stuff like that. Yeah.

What they were trying to do was funnel them in directions they wanted the tanks to go because the Russians had accidentally, given the Chechens experience, fighting tanks in close urban combat. Remember their botched proxy invasion back in November? So they learned a lot. They knew their best bet was funneling them into the city center where the roads were very narrow and the buildings are very close together and tall.

Not to mention they had basement windows and sewers and stuff. Now, while the Chechens assume that the Russians would keep up this straightforward advance and just burst right into the city, they didn't. They actually encircled it on december 20th over a week after grachoff said that the war would already be over in case you're keeping track oh what a dick but they did an absolutely terrible job encircling the city now one of the keys of encircling a city is these cordons are supposed to be secure right people nobody in or out you know can't use them smuggling around seems like that would never fucking happen and actually larger than that that would never happen for chechnya in general one of the things that i used was a staff college paper that i believe it was a colonel or a major lieutenant colonel something like that wrote and he's in staff college for the u.s military was

like his uh takeaways of the failures of the Russian war. And one of them was like, they completely lacked the ability to, I'm trying to remember how you put it, like, command the war zone, like, command their space. Because at no point did they actually blockade off Chechnya enough to stop any influx of fighters or outflux of

fighters. They never really sealed off any city. So, like, they never really commanded anything unless they're currently bombing it, which is going to be a problem when you're trying to encircle a city, right? Chechens found it very easy to leave and enter the city at will. This meant more and more fighters from around the Republic would stream into the city and pool their resources together from around the entire Republic into the planned battle remember this is like from the beginning like we're gonna fight them in grosney everything else is a sideshow this is

where the fight is because at this point there's only like 200 fighters in the city against like tens of thousands of russian soldiers i thought there'd be more that's the thing is like there would be eventually that they would eventually blow up to like 5 000 maybe jesus and that's the thing these numbers are not accurate one of the the chechen commanders points out that they only can be certain of the soldiers that would come in and check into what they considered their headquarters which was with the dudayev right or with dudayev's commanders so like that is how the national the chechen National Guard kept track of how many people and who was in charge of who. But almost immediately, that isn't the case. Remember, you have people

like Shamil Bashaev, who's technically working with the government, but he's working for himself. There's dozens of different warlords that command their own militias, totally independent of any state control. So some people say that there was a thousand fighters in the city. Some people say there was 5,000. Now 5,000 is the highest estimate. And they are encircled by tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, not to mention hundreds of tanks and APCs and helicopters and jets. So low level 1,000, high level 5,000, somewhere in the middle, I'm going to guess.

Gotcha. Not to mention all of the civilians, right? There's still civilians in the city. They have nowhere to go. They're surrounded by Russians who are not letting them leave. So a lot of guys who weren't fighters or kids, mostly two, there's a lot of children involved in this. Now the children weren't fed up and grabbing a rifle because these kids some of these kids are like 12 years old but you know they were armed and put out on the line but also old men some women very limited amount of women were like i'm sick of getting bombed and shit too give me a fucking rifle so like soon they're pretty much

fighting the entire city uh because while all of this is going on, the Russians are just shelling and bombing the city mercilessly, like indiscriminate carpet bombing. So people get mad. Now, this defense was a mix of Chechen National Guard, militias from independent various warlords. Now, the training level was really just all over the place. Obviously, like we talked about before,

the National Guard has Soviet-era training because that's where they were born from. All of their officers and NCOs are Soviet vets. A lot of the soldiers are as well. Then you have internationalist militias like Shemil Basayev, who received training from places like Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and also Russia once. Oh, nice. Azerbaijan and also Russia once. Oh, nice. Because during the Oshetian War against the Republic of Georgia, Russia sided with the Oshetians.

And they're like, hey, this guy Shamil wants to fight for you guys. We'll give him training. He trained with, was effectively, the KGB and then would eventually end up fighting them. Thankfully, us as Americans know nothing about that kind of thing ever happening to us. Basayev's fighters were not just Chechens. There's also

Georgians, there's Afghans, there was Azeris, there's Turks, various other groups of people he managed to pick up over the years. There's also even a weird Ukrainian nationalist militia involved. Really? If you're not looking at a map, they're fucking lost.

They call themselves the Ukrainian National Assembly. This almost certainly has to do with just the deep-seated hatred for Russians. I just thought because they were bored. Congrats, this party. Of all of the former Soviet republics, obviously Ukraine's having

a war now, but they weren't having one then. They're like, we're missing out. Let's go across the border and find one, guys. They're war tourists or something. I don't know. lot of it is just like anti-russian solidarity through people who just really had some bad memories of the soviet union which to be fair if anybody would it would be ukraine so like of course i could see that yeah now as the chechens built up and dug in so did the russians for a siege they carpet bombed and indiscriminately shelled the entire city. Some of this could be because

they lacked what we would consider smart munitions or guided missiles to specifically target defenders, but another theory is they're hoping that they could brutalize the civilians within the city so badly they would turn against the government. By the government, I mean Dudayev, but I think a lot

of it is just their dicks i don't think there's a higher calling here and they're in their in their strategy but if anybody's ever looked at a situation quite like this before that's not how that works you cannot drive people apart by brutalizing them you drive them closer together through shared trauma and violence and hatred towards you by bombing them. Yeah. It rallied the population around the fighters even more. And this only amplified when the Russians began to purposely target residential areas of missile strikes. But none of this kept the Chechens down.

During the daylight, they stayed indoors, underground, or in sewers and basements to escape the bombardments. But at night, they took to ambushing the Russian positions on the outskirts of the city. Now, remember, this is all made easier by the fact that virtually every Chechen had served at the Red Army, so they knew exactly how the Russians would array and prepare themselves in a situation

quite like this. They would know how they would dig in. They knew how they would defend, because they were trained to do that, too. Also, they all knew Russian fluently, because they were trained to do that too. Right. Also, they all knew Russian fluently because they had to learn it. This is only a couple of years removed from them being part of the Soviet school system, which forced the Russian language onto everyone in the Soviet Union. So, I mean, that was their fluent language. They spoke Chechen as well, which the two are not compatible. So, like, they could speak Chechen to one another over the radio or in close by to russian soldiers and the russians would have

no idea what they're saying but they could also speak russian virtually unaccented like they learned russian like moscow russian so like oh wow so the chechens would sneak out at night get close to the russians using their own and tactics, begin ambushing and confusing them where they lived and slept. That's a kick in the dick. Yeah, they would walk up to positions acting like they were the relief and calling out to them in Russian. And the guy would get out of the bunker and they'd just shoot him. God, that would suck. Yeah, fucking blows.

I imagine that would happen in most civil wars. I'm sure the Syrian civil war has seen several different shades of this. Same with the ukrainian one but like your normal russian conscript from saint petersburg or moscow is gonna have no fucking idea that his enemy could probably speak his language too right or also that they're my enemy because he doesn't know where he is now when this happened the only thing the russian commanders did in response was to shell graszny harder or the nearby town of Argon. So like they'd get ambushed and like fuck you and just launch missiles at a nearby city just

to spite them. Speak this language. Yeah. Now on the ground they showed panic and confusion amongst the Russian soldiers in their positions. So like instead of hearing someone call out and they're like hey bro I'm coming to relieve you. They just fucking gun them down anything

in the middle of the night would get shot at because they thought they were going to be ambushed by Chechens did you imagine it was actually their relief it was a lot Jesus Christ like they were shooting at everything that was moving like a Chechen fighter remarked that they would be sitting in the city at night and they'd be hearing guns go off in the

perimeter knowing that they're not out there fucking with the Russians and they have to be shooting each other out of confusion. They've sowed so much panic in the ranks that everyone in a foxhole is looking not just towards the city, but 360 degrees. Hey, did we plan an attack tonight? No. Broke fighting the enemy. Woke making the enemy fight themselves. Yeah. broke fighting the enemy, woke making the enemy fight themselves.

Yeah. That meme where he's tapping his head like you don't have to fight the enemy if you convince them to shoot each other. Yeah. Now, after shelling the city blindly, it was time for the ground assault to begin. On New Year's Day, the Battle of Grozny began.

And that is where we will pick up next week. Oh, what the fuck? Nick, how you feeling about being a Russian soldier right about now? Oh, fucking awful. I would have shot myself in the foot fucking days before. I would have been at home. I would not have lasted long enough to end up

on the outskirts of Grozny. The first sign of Chechen shooting at me, I'm running back over the border and throwing my fucking uniform off like it's on fire. As soon as I hear stories of yeah, rockets came out of the trees. That's a hard no for me. Are these bushes speaking Russian?

Yeah. But, Nick, that is part two. Join us next week for part three, the first battle of Grosny because, my friends, there is part two. Join us next week for part three, the first Battle of Grozny, because my friends, there are so many. There are so many Battles of Grozny, and all of them are bad. I don't believe it.

Nick, thank you, as always, for joining me. Everybody, thank you for listening and supporting the show. And until next time, learn how to use a rocket launcher that is meant to be indirect directly. Can I say that oh yeah I can say that don't be in the Russian army

don't be in the Russian army alright fine one last time