Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 161 - The First Chechen War Part 3: Welcome to Hell

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Russians invade the Chechen capital of Grozny, sparking one of the most devastating urban battles in modern military history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey, this is Francis over at What a Hell of a Way to Die. If you're looking for stickers, patches, and pins for the Lions Led by Donkeys, check out our Lions collection over at our website, hellofawaytodie.com slash shop. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Wines of my Donkeys podcast. With me today is Nick. What's up, Nick? Howdy doody.

And we are both dealing with incredible hangovers, which you can consider method acting, because we're talking about the first battle of Grozny today, Nick. Oh, okay. Yeah, you left me on a cliffhanger last time. It was kind of bullshit. This is part three of our first chechen war series i have a feeling that much like our russo-japanese war series if there's going to be an episode that people are going to just randomly jump into it's going to be this one for our russo-japanese war it was the voyage of the damned and i think this one for a lot of people is certainly like everybody wants to hear about the battle of grozny oh yeah like everybody wants to hear about the Battle of

Grosny. Oh, yeah. I try not to judge like the dumbest shit we've ever covered because like, you know, this is in the 90s. We've covered a lot of dumb shit from like the 1800s, 1600s, whatever, 1970s, you know. It's truly hard to rank a podium of bad or stupid battles. But if we had one, I think Grosny makes it. Not T-Rexes versus the English? That's just good tactics. If you have weaponized wizards in T-Rexes, you use them against Napoleon at Waterloo. For anybody that's

wondering, that is a bonus episode, so give us money and you can figure out what that joke means. So, Nick, when we left you last time, the Russian military was carpet bombing the Chechen Republic of Grozny in preparation for a ground assault. Now, I don't want to undersell the bombardment here. This was the heaviest bombardment of any European city since the destruction of Dresden during World War II. Oh, wow. the war somebody called grosney like the most destroyed city on earth and it's hard not to see why right they're using conventional bombs they're also using like thermobaric weapons and fuel air

bombs which are effective and they they use this shit out of like willie p just absolute like war crime palooza you lost me a fuel air bombs what they also had a thermobaric rocket launcher we're actually going to talk about during this episode. What the fuck is that? That's not on Call of Duty. It is a rocket launch flamethrower, which is wild shit. I didn't even know that exists. I knew about it, like, theoretically, but like, yeah.

How the Chechens used it is actually kind of ingenious. But to get to that point, put your time travel fucking helmet on. We're New Year's Eve, 1994. Not a good year. Probably not. I think Kurt Cobain died in 94. It's not a great year. I might be wrong on that. My sources do not point that Kurt Cobain was in fact a veteran of the first judge.

Yeah, does he have something to do with this? He's wearing flannel and downtown Grosny cradling an AK like, allow Akbar, y'all. Fucking chain smoking too. I mean, he would fit in on that part, at least. Absolutely. Guys, I brought a revolutionary new weapon to the war. Heroin.

Guys, let's listen to fucking Nevermind. It's a great album. It is. But you would think that a major ground assault, the biggest battle of this entire war by far, would require a lot of planning, right? If you've been listening to the last two hours, you're probably assuming, but they didn't plan anything, Joe. You're merely posing questions for no reason. And you would be correct. We have a thing in the US military called the Center for Lessons Learned, which is the most

on-point name that you could possibly think of. How do we learn from how we fucked up? I assume there's plenty of material regarding the war I fought in in that office. You would expect commanders to be like, hmm, what we're doing isn't working. We should try something new. They didn't. They still hadn't learned anything.

They seem to have an active aversion to planning, which is new for me. Don't need it. That planning shit? Pussy shit. Just roll the tanks. Yeah. It's unique in that you normally see just a total aversion to planning. You see things like that during like Iran-Iraq war series. Right. Mostly on the side of Iraq,

because you disagree with Daddy Saddam, you die. You see that during the Winter War, when the Soviet Union just owned itself and the snow spoke Finnish. You see those things happen for authoritarian militaries, which technically Russia is not anymore. I'm doing finger quotes here. They are a representative democracy and a federation at this point. But there's a lot of old thought going on. Making waves is not good for your career. And that's kind of what happened. But on New Year's Day, this is now 1995, also happened to be the birthday of Defense Minister Boris Grashev, who was getting completely drunk far away from the battlefield in Moscow. Nice. There's even rumors that he was getting fucking hammered with Boris Yeltsin himself, like the president and the defense minister, just getting fucking lit on his birthday,

like as boys hanging out together. I mean, why not? And they were friends and they were both alcohol dependent people. They would both have withdrawal if they did not drink every day. So the idea that they're getting smashed together, probably. And then seemingly out of nowhere, Boris Grashev ordered an armored invasion of the Capitol. Well, by all accounts, blackout drunk. Fuck it. Now, there's arguments about this. There's no real official memos or anything because, again, blackout drunk.

I can relate to this. I remember trying to request a Rihanna song one time in a Killeen bar. Sure. Blackout drunk. Yeah. Those two things are the same. Absolutely. They kill as many Russians on accident.

But I love Rihanna. We're all here for the, the Riri. Actually, I don't think I can name a single one of her songs, but that's because I have a horrible taste in music that I've owned up to for years now. They've encircled,

I mean, using quotes here, encircled the capital of Grozny for quite some time. And it's not going great. The barrier around the city is porous. People are coming in and out, seemingly at will. The idea that they're going to invade or assault the capital requires, I don't know, planning, logistics, maybe talking to all of the units that happen to be surrounding Grozny. Makes sense. None of that happened.

You don't need to. These are all tertiary things. The primary thing that you need to worry about is tanks go in city. Now, I shouldn't have to point this out. With infantry support? Oh, sweet summer child. We will get there. I wasn't a summer child, but all right.

I'll take it. Close quarters of urban warfare is a bad place for tanks. Now, if you remember back in November, technically before the war truly started, when they send in a whole bunch of secret squirrel conscripts to drive tanks into the capital. Right. They were proven immediately like, hmm, this doesn't work. And also the Chechens now, like they had a practice run. How many people get to actually do a practice run of tanks running up on them, right? You do a scrimmage. Yeah, that's what that was. A little sparring session, maybe. A little red on blue, yeah. November proved

that. That's a bad idea. And Grachev himself said as much. He said only an incompetent commander would set tanks in a central Grasdy. During another argument, he told someone, quote, tank regiments are commanded by total fucking idiots you send in the infantry first then the tanks you want to guess which one he did not that the opposite of that i mean he was an airborne commander and like that's why uh you know in the beginning of the war he was like i'm gonna smother this with like one regiment of paratroopers in a week. It's going to be a bloodless blitzkrieg. Fuck it.

Drop the tanks in. Airborne. Yeah, exactly. Heavy armor followed by mechanized infantry mounted on and inside APCs. Remember, this is still like the stereotypical picture of the former Sovietviet army of like riding on top of everything with wheels that was like doctrine uh it was part of their mechanized infantry doctrine obviously you'd like to be sitting inside said apcs and i know from someone who unfortunately was effectively an infantry soldier you would jump on anything with wheels so you don't have to fucking walk

i get it it's just not a good idea right and i would have absolutely died the same way i am about to describe all these people dying but would you have died comfortable i i my feet wouldn't have been tired yeah see i have that going for me so yeah tanks followed by apcs with infantry stormed into the capital their plan was flawed from the very beginning the russians believe that if they broke into the capital and captured certain points, like the presidential palace, train station, various other strong points, if you will, Chechens would simply see that they're defeated and stop fighting. Apparently, they haven't been paying attention for all of the other battles that they've had so far. Yeah, right. Call of duty objectives.

Yeah, exactly. You got to capture the flag and then you win on points, right? Just like some Russian soldier like, fucking hacking. What the fuck? I've been sitting here for like five minutes. Now, you remember that there is high level government defense ministry leaks throughout this entire war. Oh, yeah. Nothing that the Russians are doing is a secret. So that the Russian plans were in the laps of the Chechens.

It's all over Twitter. Yes. Someone is like leaking high secret shit. Salt on Grozny, LOL. Hashtag constitutional order. The TikToking. Hashtag I'm not drunk enough. Yeah, they're going to make a TikTok with this in the background.

Oh, I love TikTok. And it's just some soldier just like pumping a map with all the objectives in front of the camera. Just every beat. Each objective. So this actually gets worse now. I said it. I said the thing. Now it gets worse.

There's obviously governmental leaks. But think back to the creation, the training of the Chechen National Guard and the makeup of the soldiers generally fighting the Russians and their equipment. Do you think maybe one of the thousands of Chechens now in the city happened to be, say, a former Soviet communications officer with an in-depth understanding of Russian radio systems used by the military? Because there was. It sounds like that was super detailed in fact do you think that the chechens had those exact same radios perhaps stolen from thousands of dead russians they've already churned up in the woods they did what oh fuck i could put the airborne guys yes uh well the airborne guys for one but also remember before this war even started udayev and the and the National Guard is just stealing all of this shit from the Soviet and then Russian military.

Right. They have a fat stack of Russian military radios lying around. They know how to use all of the encryption. They speak Russian. Right, because, yeah. This would be what would happen, like, effectively if, like, one U.S. military base went to war against the other. Like, everybody has the exact same shit. Now, because of the laws and regulations of the Soviet Union, remember that nearly everyone in the Chechen Reich spoke virtually flawless Russian. But the Russians would have no reason to learn, speak, and understand the local Chechen dialect. would have no reason to learn, speak, and understand the local Chechen dialect. This meant that every single time the Russians used their radio systems,

the Chechens heard and understood everything, all of their plans. But the Chechens could use theirs with a high amount of security. Now, there was some Chechens within the Russian military. There's loyalists and things like that. I like the Zevgayev guy from before. Yeah. In the very beginning, he's a Russian loyalist. He's actually the guy that Boris Yeltsin is grooming to put in place of Dudai, hypothetically winning this war, right? So there is some people that speak Chechen. I feel like whenever they do hear a Chechen transmission, and the guy goes,

oh, I know Chechen, and they're just like, get the fuck out of here. Spy. Go fuck off! Go fuck off! The people that would speak that language were not ground troopers. They weren't in APCs. They weren't assaulting the city, right? Right. The loyalists were actually considered not trustworthy. So, like, they would staff

like the Oman... Kind of felt like that. Yeah, the interior ministry that they would prop up, but like they would not be used for attacks and things like that. So, like, they probably didn't hear any of that. Yeah, the interior ministry that they would prop up, but they would not be used for attacks and things like that. So they probably didn't hear any of it. So knowing all of this, Russian armor entered the city bunched together, and

one Chechen defender said it was like quote, they were on a parade ground. There was no space between them, and they're driving very slowly. That's what I would do. Guys, make sure you put on your best dress uniform. And to be fair, a lot of these guys weren't given explicit orders. One Russian commander said, they just told me to advance.

This is like last episode. Go. Yeah, pointing to the vague skyline of Grazi, like that away. Let's go that away. And a lot of this is like the breakdown between communication of like chains of command where like there was probably a general somewhere that knew, you know, this motor rifle regiment or whoever is supposed to go secure this building by the time it filtered down to the actually like the brigade commander or whatever, they're like, go into the city.

And do what? That fucking game? Yeah, it's telephone, but like thousands of people die. Your ATV died? What? So the Russians with around 600 different armored vehicles between tanks, APCs, infantry fighting vehicles, trucks, things like that. The Chechens faced them had broken up to work in small teams using several different RPG seven launchers per team. Like they use at least two. So they could fire one and then immediately fire another in the exact same location without having to reload. They also had a rifleman and a machine gunner. This meant the teams work to suppress an APC or a tank because remember, this is the early 90s. We have crow systems and things like that now.

But in order to use the external machine guns and things like tank commanders had to expose themselves. So they would fire small arms down into a tank to pin them down i can say this firsthand experience being a tanker as great as these sites are it's really hard to try to pick individual things out in a crowded city which like you may or may not be able to move your site up that high right right okay or that low so it's like needles in a haystack almost. While you're trying to search around with these slave to the turret optics, the RPG teams move into position and then just fuck your shit up. Yeah. They were sure to attack from the top of buildings or the basement of others, sometimes even the fucking sewers. This meant that the

tanks, mostly T-72s, T-62s, could not raise their guns up to fire on them, nor depress low enough to engage the fighters in the basement and sewers. They were effectively sitting ducks. There was four different advancing convoys, and all of them kind of played bumper cars with one another, getting into a traffic jam of their own units. This is where they get ambushed right because remember the last episode that we talked on the chechens were planning for this they welded together hundreds and thousands of tank obstacles with their factory so like they were funneling the tanks they were putting obstacles in places to funnel them in a certain

direction in a way that they wanted them to go. Knowing like, well, this road's really fucking small. We can bottle them all up in here. Do you think they were looking at that and going like, oh, neat. I honestly feel like it's, we use this saying a lot on the show. When dogs chase cars, what if they actually caught the car? What the fuck would they do? And it's like, the Chechens were just so incredibly successful. They're like, I can't believe this is working.

Right. We talked about this a lot during our Soviet Afghan series where the Afghans would ambush columns of Soviet vehicles and there would be an immediate breakdown of leadership and then soldiers would just stay inside of the vehicles rather than get out and actually fight because they thought they're safer in there. Because maybe their warrant officer, which they use in a weird NCO role, or their NCOs or their officers, because it's a pretty top-heavy military, jump out to try to organize a defense and immediately just gets blasted.

Right. And they're like, I'm staying the fucking side. And that same shit happened again, with the minimum amount of infantry that they actually had. These armory comms would get ambushed, right? And then they'd get stuck because, I mean, the first thing you do is blow up the first tank in the convoy, creating a 70-ton roadblock, right? Right. And then the only way to actually take care of this was like, we needed to send out infantry support to go into the buildings and root out these Chechen fire teams. That's what some people

tried to do. Some commanders actually did have effective command and control, but then it immediately broke down. They ordered the soldiers to get out and command and control, but then it immediately broke down. They ordered the soldiers to get out and clear these places, and then the soldiers refused. Oh, wow. Because when the Chechens started seeing the doors of the APCs open, they used their machine guns to suppress them. So, like, stepping out, not a great proposal, right? No, this is an all-around bad situation. And here's another worse situation.

Now, this actually reflects directly on the U Army at the time too. At no point were these soldiers given urban warfare training, which is like 99% of our training now, right? Right. The reason why is this military and our own at that same time period were trained to fight a nuclear war effectively. Okay. Nukes would be dropped in major population centers. And even if they weren't, you were trained to bypass cities because fighting in them is fucking hard. So these soldiers, the ones that even did get out, didn't know what the fuck to do. They had bad training as it was. They had no training whatsoever in cities.

So they sat there confused, disregarding orders and getting shot at until the vehicle there and finally got roasted by an RPG. That happened quite frequently. This got harder and harder to get out of these kill zones, maneuver in any way against these highly mobile teams of Chechen fighters as the dead vehicles piled up on the streets. The only weapon that the Russians could bear on the Chechen teams scrambling all over the city with some level of success was actually the multi-barreled anti-aircraft guns that they brought with them. They could

depress and lower them at will. I think they had four barrels and they could just churn the city apart with them. Nice. But they didn't have that many, right? Because they didn't actually think that they would be in a situation where like, fucking air defense artillery guys, it's like, our time to shine boys

like nobody cares about ada until something blows up and then they're like wait we can use these on the cities fuck yeah which is like admittedly that's you know whenever you watch uh like videos from the syrian civil war or whatever like that's almost always how you see these things being used which like makes sense there is also an apocryphal story. I don't know how true it is of North Korea using one to execute someone. What the fuck? That's fucking overkill. Yeah, right?

Just get fucking atomized. Now, this entire situation was made worse because the Russians panicking, not able to get control of their battle space, called for artillery and air support. The only air support available due to weather was helicopters. So the helicopters swooped in and then bombed the shit out of their own soldiers. What? What the fuck? And then when that failed, the Russians then dropped artillery on themselves.

Jesus. They're right on top of us. Well, like the helicopters I kind of get because at this point, the Chechens and Russians are wearing virtually the same uniform. Well, it's almost like that one training video, that training exercise I sent you, where they fired on their own spectators. Yeah, that's honestly how you deal with air shows. You just bomb the spectators. I think it's the Romanians or the Ukrainians that did that on accident once too. Oh, wow.

No, maybe they just crashed into them. I don't remember. But a lot of people died. This is like that scene from The Simpsons with Sideshow Bob and Everett. He's just surrounded by rakes. He steps out, steps on a rake, hits him in the face. Rake goes down. He's like, I have an idea.

Takes another step, steps on a rake, hits him in the face. Or like, honestly, going back to a bonus episode we were soldiers that scene where they're all in the bushes oh yeah don't worry guys i'll lead you out of here gets a machine gun next guy stands up guys i have an idea yeah yeah it's like every time a russian commander is like oh we have to do something and then just like more of your own soldiers die like fuck god damn it God damn it. Yeah, fuck that. It's that meme with the two buttons, but each button is like a Russian commander wiping sweat. A button is like kill conscripts, kill conscripts.

At that point, you just pick your favorite color. You just start fisting both buttons. Like, fuck it. Hopefully you'll kill me eventually. Now, several Russian units kept good order and discipline and continued to push towards their locations and while a few others while they're advancing actually didn't face that much resistance oh that's good a couple uh units decided they had seen enough uh they didn't want any more of that smoke and then fucked off out the city without

orders i'm with that unit i am a hundred percent with guys. Yeah. You guys are still going forward? Stupid. I'd pull that thing in reverse. All my homies hate Grozny. I'll make a t-shirt for you guys. As the soldiers advanced, they ran into another problem. They were getting very, very

confusing orders. Every few minutes, they'd get more orders. The next ones contradicting the last and then so on and so forth. Nothing made sense. They were getting lost. I feel like they'd also get orders that the dude is supposed to give to his aide. Go get me coffee. Sir, we got orders from the general. We're supposed to pull back and get coffee? Fuck it. Let's get out of here. Let's get coffee. It sounds like a much better idea.

Absolutely. A great idea. Now, if you're thinking that the Chechens decided to get on the radios and fuck with the Russians, you'd be right. According to one Chechen leader, they had an entire room of Russian-speaking Chechens constantly on the radio and just trolling the shit out of them. That is fucking hilarious. This included pretending to be commanders and giving contradicting orders telling simians to pull back and go and support other units but like the units that were sent into support were like to support units that didn't actually exist and there'd be chechens waiting for them oh that would fucking blow or just shit talking them like you can listen to some of this some of it was

recorded you can find it on like first battle of grosney uh recording on youtube you can find a lot of radio stuff was recorded to include like someone said they were gonna fuck someone's mom which is like immediate of course what i would use this for finally russian commanders unable to control their own soldiers and even not sure if they were talking to them or chechens ordered a total radio blackout this only only made things worse. It also sounds bad. Yeah, because you can't use radios anymore. Now, if you think this made controlling, you know, what happened in the battlefield totally impossible, you're right.

And congratulations on your promotion within the Russian ground forces. One unit finally did get to their destination. And as a unit that has unfortunately gone down in infamy of some kind for being annihilated. Oh, what? The 131st Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, known as the MICOP Brigade.

Now, they fought through streets and finally got to their assigned position at the Grozny train station. And because the modern world is terrifying and creepy, we actually know what happened to them almost by the minute. The Chechen commander radioed the commander of the 131st, a guy named Colonel

Alex Savin, or Savin, begging him to leave. Now, if you're wondering, how do you know this? It's recorded and you can listen to it, and I transcribe it here for you. So, the Chechen radio commander, who we don't know exactly who it is, but we do know he is a Chechen. He says, quote, Alec, before it is too late, your men must retreat. Don't do this. Don't do this.

In any case, both you and I will die. What is the point of this? Who will win this? You and I are not going to win this. Do you understand? If we or I see you in action, we won't show you any mercy just like you won't. Understand? It's better if you come to me as a guest. Retreat your men. Have pity for their mothers. Have pity for your guys. Retreat them. Give the order to retreat. And Savin answered with, I can't do that. I can't give that order. The Chechen responded, quote, Alec, listen to me from my heart. I wish you survive this, but you better leave. Now, Savin responded that it didn't matter what they wanted to do and he would have to follow his orders.

The radio went dead for a while. Then right before the battle started around the train station, an unknown vice came over the radio and said, welcome to hell. Jesus Christ. An unknown vice came over the radio and said, Welcome to hell. Jesus Christ. The 131st assumed another motor rifle unit, the 81st, was pushing through the city, coming to reinforce them. But they weren't.

They'd been cut off and unable to come to them. So when the attack on the 131st began, they had no idea. They had been completely cut off and surrounded. All of their calls for help went completely and totally unanswered or worse. The 503rd heard their distress call and took off to help them, only to be shot at by another Russian unit, resulting in a six-hour-long friendly firefight and hundreds of casualties. Even when someone tries to do the right thing

and support their sister unit or whatever someone's gonna get real russian with it and look at these do-gooders friend of the show and co-host of our producer nate bethea's other podcast trash future again milo edwards lived and worked in russia for quite some time he speaks fluent russian and like he said that russian dudes have a certain kind of energy that just like they long for the darkness of death. Like we'll just constantly do insane shit that like, yeah, Russians, right? And that's like one of those things like someone is finally going to do the right thing you expect of like a neighboring motor rifle unit to like, oh shit, they set up a distress call.

We have to do this. This is the most interoperability I've seen of the Russian military during this entire war so far. And some other ones like, hey, look, people are moving. And just start machine gunning them. Those guys are trying to be better than us. The 503rd noted that they knew those were Russians shooting at them. But they're like, we had no choice but to defend ourselves. So we had to shoot back.

Fuck it. There's 100% chance these guys knew each other too. I'm like, yeah, I guess we got to shoot at them Fuck it. There's 100% chance these guys knew each other too. I'm like, yeah, I guess we gotta shoot at them. Jesus. The soldiers of the 131 had abandoned their vehicles and taken cover in the train station because their vehicles were sitting ducks, getting hammered with RPGs and whatnot.

The Chechens then set the train station on fire. What? Yeah. I mean, welcome to hell, I guess. Yeah. I mean, well, burn them out, right? That's been a thing for a while. At nightfall, Colonel Savin knew that things were going badly and he had to get the wounded out. And they still had a couple of functioning vehicles. He ordered them to load up an APC and speed back towards Russian lines with the most badly wounded, which again, shocks me that Colonel Savin actually did this. Because you see so far, even someone as low as a brigade commander, they just don't care about human life. Disregard for their own men. The complete disregard for their own safety and well-being. I understand that ordering people into combat by its very nature means you have to like, I'm going to kill some people under my command.

That's how this works. And I get that. But like, they're just leaving their wounded out in the streets for the most part up until this point. that but like they're just leaving their wounded out in the streets for the most part up until this point and like someone noted and like other battles that like dead and wounded chechens and dead and wounded russians would just be laying on the side of the road as units advanced like nobody even stopped to pick up their own dudes oh fuck that yeah so like colonel savin ordered them badly wounded to be loaded into an apc and then just like floor it back towards the rear where they can get medical care and you know unfortunately he seems to be the into an APC and then just like floor it back towards the rear where they can get medical care. And, you know, unfortunately he seems to be the only...

I'd shoot my foot. I've definitely... I mean, to be fair, I think some people did do that. I don't know. I'm wounded. Look, look. You were going to have to try harder than that. I'll just keep shooting my way up my leg until you see things my way. Colonel Savin seemed to generally care about his men enough to attempt this. I mean, he was forfeiting an APC, the men to operate it, in a very critical position.

Unfortunately, the APC immediately got lost, ambushed, and blown up, and everybody died. Never mind, I'm not wounded. I take it back, I take it back. Suddenly, I care a lot about Chechen independence, lads. Let's talk. Yeah. By the next day, Savin ordered his forces to abandon the rail station.

But by then, it was way too late. There was hardly a cohesive Russian effort within the city anymore. The offensive had been broken and only pockets of Russians remained held up in various parts of the city, cut off and surrounded by Chechens, which was the Chechen tactic. It's actually the same thing the Finns did in the Winter War, just much smaller. If you remember, they took a large front, smash it into smaller pieces, and then surrounded them piecemeal and slowly snuffed them out, right? And that's what the Chechens were doing. They were getting absolutely no help or support of any kind from any of their higher command. Airstrikes ceased. They weren't getting any kind of reinforcements pushed to them. When asked what to do, commanders outside the city told their men to take civilian hostages

so the Chechens would stop shooting them. I would take their clothes. You can listen to that order on that same YouTube video I referenced. The Russian response to that order is like, complete astonishment. Like, you want us to do what? Like, someone mentioned, like, these guys don't give a fuck. One of the things that the higher command says is like the most, has even the most demoralizing thing

I've ever heard. They're like, well, I can't do anything for you. Like, bitch, you put me in the city. Yeah. On Russian TV and radio, they were saying that this was only a minor exchange of gunfire in the city of Grozny. Oh, yeah. Nothing big.

This probably came as a shock as soldiers who are still trapped in the city or out in the barriers could listen to radio broadcasts as their defense minister told the country that the entire city was under the control of the Russian army. That's a kick in the nuts. Right? That's a kick in the nuts. Right? On radio recordings, the soldiers trapped in the city actually mentioned this, saying, quote, Is that what they call us being surrounded and destroyed? Could you imagine the letdown when they actually found out that that wasn't true?

Like, guys, I heard on the radio that we won. Weird, the pile of dead bodies in the APC say otherwise. Yeah, all these guys we're using as cover right now would say something else. Yeah. Other commanders begged for help as they were getting overrun, saying, boys are getting shot point blank. Send anything to help us out. And their commander responded with, I copy, but I can't help you.

Fuck. Like, at that point, I might as well just throw the radio at the Chechens and hope it hits someone. Others were told to hold their positions, not to break out, like at that point, I might as well just throw the radio at the Chechens and hope it hits someone. Absolutely. Others were told to hold their positions, not to break out and rescue column would be sent for them, but it never came. I don't think these guys were going to get out of the encirclement.

Right. Like, I don't think that these individual units were going to break out, but like they were ordered like, no, no, no, stay where you are.

The rescue column is going to come for you. And then the rescue column immediately turned around, like from enemy fire. That looks fucked up over there. At one point over the radio, some guy's like, I can see the rescue column. Why are they driving past us? Some units watched as helicopters flew over them, not giving them the requested air support as the Chechens got closer and closer in. And then you could hear the men yelling at the helicopter pilots over the radio saying,

hey, choppers, what kind of air support are you? You aren't even helping your own men. Are you afraid to fly lower? The helicopter did not respond. Yeah, just leave that man on read. Yeah, exactly. Gonna swipe that one into the delete bin. When someone's commander way too late in the game began firing mortar

support, they fired blindly. And when asked if a unit saw the explosion, the unit commander screamed to him, we don't need fucking mortars. We need to get the fuck out of here. And then the guy firing the mortars answered with, stop whining. It's not so bad for me.

I'm fine back here with the mortars. i don't know what you're bitching about by january 2nd the offensive was completely and totally destroyed the 81st was nearly completely wiped out as was the 131st of the 131st the my cop unit out of a thousand men only a handful made it back to Russian lines alive. Out of a handful, what is a handful looking like? Around maybe 150? That's not good odds. I do not like those

odds one fucking bit. They made a documentary about it when they interviewed some of them. The guys are just complete glassy stares out of it. A few Spetsnaz soldiers of various different army units and GRU and internal ministry guys, a couple of special forces units get inserted into the city. And they were in the city for about three days.

They were sent in without maps, food or water, got lost and then surrendered. Okay, that's... Yeah. That's like one of my favorite things about the Spetsnaz was like oh god it's a spell they're quitting okay we're hungry yeah exactly like uh you guys fucking water we're not really down with this war thing anymore the police and internal ministry forces that were acting as an outer cordon for the city simply left without orders. Some Russian units got back and were unsure where friendly lines were because they went where their last known locations were and they were just abandoned. Only part of the city was organized and still under Russian control.

And that was in the north under a guy named General Rocklin. At this point, they understood that their 5,000 or so soldiers under General Rocklin's control were it. That was all they had. So they dug in, not wanting to surrender the one foothold in the entire city they managed to hold on to. From there, the Chechens, high on their victory

everywhere else in the city, kind of just launched themselves at the Russian positions in almost like human wave attacks, kind of assuming that the Russians would break too. But they didn't. Oh. The Russians carpet bombed the city center once again using fuel air explosives and white

phosphorus. This time, when the Russians launched a second major offensive into the city, they had infantry support leading it, supported by armor, you know, like you're supposed to do. Okay. This did work better, but they were forced to fight building to building, room to room, and slowly inched their way through the capital. Fuck that. Fuck that. Yeah.

At one point, the Russian government declared a ceasefire, which was promptly ignored by all sides of the fighting. This happened a lot. The government would be like, ah, we're going to do a ceasefire so we can, like the Russians and the Chechens, like we never talked about that. We're going to keep shooting each other. This wasn't some ruse by the Russian military either, as some people have framed it, because it happened so often. It was pretty clear that the military was not listening to the government anymore. Like I think I pointed out in the last episode that the amount of contempt that the normal Russian soldier and Russian officer had for the government of Russia was kind of incredible.

Even for like my own jaded standards of how I like because I was in the military when like Obama was president. I remember what people said about him, too. But like the amount of contempt that people had for Boris Yeltsin was incredible. They called the Kremlin like a brothel and he was a prostitute and things like that. So the idea that they were just going to not list like, new phone, who dis, the president of Russia, that happened. Or what also could have happened was generals got the orders to cease fire and was just like, nah, and then didn't tell their soldiers. The Chechens had no idea. There was no negotiations going on at this point they would be eventually but the russians

assumed that they would sweep in take rosney and all this shit would be over did not happen yeah they're fucking high yeah exactly so it leads me then some units did either listen to the ceasefire or just decide they were sick of fighting. It's possible. Both of those things happen quite frequently in the city when people are like, I'm going to go back to the lines with the cops who ran away. Oh, dude. Yeah. It's the one time in my life like, you know, these cops have a point.

Or do I sign up? Yeah. Now, at this point, Yeltsin somehow declared major combat operations in Chechnya over. That is a real mission accomplished moment, if I've ever seen it. Like years before old George W. Bush would fly the banner, Boris Yeltsin did it. Yeltsin then offered the Hero of the Russian Federation Award to the general who managed to hold it all together for them, Lev Rocklin. Rocklin refused the award, saying there was absolutely nothing honorable about his service in Chechnya. Again, he personally fucking hated

Boris Yeltsin, and Boris Yeltsin did not like him either. You can go fuck off with that. Yeah, you can just fuck off back to Moscow and where's my retirement papers? This sparked something of a lifelong hatred between Yeltsin and Rocklin, which at this point is more professional than personal. Most people in the military and most officers think that presidents shouldn't be involved in war because they politic things up. That's kind of where the hatred was at first. But Rocklin told him to his face that like nothing that I did here is honorable and this war is terrible and things. You're a bitch

yeah uh you you alcoholic piece of shit that transferred up from being a professional contempt to a personal one and then uh years later in 1998 after his retirement from the military and during his attempt to organize russian veterans to a political force that's what rocklin was trying to do because rocklin was pretty well known and veterans liked him you know yeltsin was you know piece of shit and he was trying to organize them as a political force. That's what Rockland was trying to do because Rockland was pretty well known and veterans liked him. Yeltsin was a piece of shit and he was trying to organize them as a political force to stand against Yeltsin. Rockland was mysteriously murdered in his bed while he slept. Oh, okay. His wife was almost immediately convicted for his murder under shaky circumstances, though she still claims a group of men burst in and shot her husband. Weird.

By January 18th, the Russians had finally closed in on the presidential palace of Grozny. Chechens defended it as the Russians bombarded it with airstrikes and rocket artillery so heavily that one rocket slammed into it every two to three seconds. Ugh.

Yeah. During the shelling of the southern part of the city they fired nearly 30 000 rounds a day oh yeah that's like some shell shock shit you're getting no break yeah that's like some world war ii shit this is in the 90s this is 1995 someone is dropping 30 000 rounds of artillery into a European city. God, I'm really showing how young... That's when I was born. Great year, in my opinion.

So what you're saying is every time a Casanova is born, someone has to show Grosny. Am I going to have a junior? If you do, it's in your best interest. For the city of Grosny, I might not do it. It's like a ritual that has to be performed whenever a new one is made. It requires the sacrifice of 30,000 artillery shields. Light the fires! Fly the banner!

But that still wasn't enough. General Mashkadov, in the basement commanding the defense, was nearly killed when a bomb from a Russian jet burst through the roof and penetrated 11 floors into a reinforced basement, landing right next to him but not blowing up. How do you react to that? I mean, I assume by immediately lighting a cigarette or whatever. I don't know. Ooh, that was a close one. Yeah.

You got to have a good one-liner. Just sit there patting it. Almost got me, buddy. Like, take off your sunglasses. We nearly bombed this defense. Wow! What was that? CSI Miami shit?

Yeah. CSI Grozny. God, that would be an awful shit. Add that to the soundboard. Mashkadov and his command team decided that they had had enough and they escaped that night, sleeping between Russian lines and escaping into the Chechen countryside. They decided that nearly getting bludgeoned to death with an aircraft bomb was like, nah, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Have you ever looked up and like seen pictures of the Chechen countryside? Yeah.

Yeah. Dude, crazy mountains. Yep. That shit is insane. That's one of the things that kept them independent for so long. People just couldn't be bothered to hike through those mountains for so long. I like to

go up mountains. I actually love it. I would not go up those. Russian conscripts made the trip once. How'd it go? Not great. I think for a lot of them, it was a very short hike. Now, you're probably wondering, after all of this bombing, taking the presidential palace and seizing the city of Grozny, if the Russians finally crushed the Chechen government of

Dudaiya. Nope. Absolutely not. I figured. Figured. Because the constant leak from the Russian government and the military, that meant he kind of knew how to escape being murdered. He knew when the attack on Grozny was coming,

and he simply left. He wasn't even there the whole time. Okay, I was about to ask, where the fuck is this guy chilling at? Several towns away. I mean, smart. Before the battle even started. That's where I'd be. It's the best way to run out of battles, not being in it. You know? Absolutely. Now, by the end of the month, the Chechen president said that if the Russians didn't agree to a ceasefire, they would stop doing prisoner of war exchanges. They've been going on

for quite some time now. This, it turns out, is one of the very few ways to get the Russian military to listen, as most soldiers probably understood that the odds of them being captured were higher than zero. And if they were in their shoes, they would like the possibility of being released. Everything's better than zero.

Yeah, and they have captured I think a couple thousand POWs. It's not a small number. Entire units were surrendering to the Chechens. They captured entire companies, stuff like that. Now, using this as an opening, Dudayev ordered the bulk of the defenders to get the fuck out of the city.

The warlords, like Shamil Basayev and their militias, kept fighting, ignoring orders, because they're more like death squads than members of the guard, exactly. Oh, okay. Those guys. Yeah yeah we'll be talking more about them next episode is it a good talk no okay gotcha no remember if you ever like feel really awful about shamil basayev just know that he's dead and blown to a million pieces that happened i believe in the late 90s early 2000s oh okay gotcha most people we're talking about are dead. It's one of the parts of being involved

in, like, I don't know, Chechen separatism is eventually, at one point, they drop a bomb on your head. Now, some units remained in Grozny, planting IEDs or doing hit-and-run attacks against Russian soldiers, but a pretty large chunk of what would be the Chechen

National Guard or various warlord-led militias got the fuck out of there. At the end of the First Battle of Grozny, more than 2,000 Russian soldiers were dead, with double that being wounded. Now, it's actually thought that the number is much higher. I imagine, because I remember us talking about the Iran-Iraq War. I'm sorry, not that one, the Russian... Oh, yeah. When they're in Afghanistan. Yeah.

There was not a lot of great record keeping. A lot of people went missing, never to be seen again. Those guys are Chechen now. Yeah. We're really into what's that called? Islam. Yeah, we're really into that and independence now, actually. My name is not Sergei anymore. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed by indiscriminate carpet

bombings. Again, that number is thought to be pretty low. But the Russian hold over the city of Grozny would never actually be secure. Hit and run attacks continued. Snipers continued to shoot anybody that got too comfortable. Elements of the southern part of the city held on and kept fighting until March of 1995. Good year. So, for several months. The Russians thought that the Chechens would be on their heels after losing the capital, right? Like, we seized your capital. You certainly have to surrender now. But really, all it did is kind of end the conventional aspect of the war, right? Which the Chechens never truly embraced.

Because remember, in not a single one of these battles are the numbers even remotely equal. The Chechens are, at best, outnumbered by thousands. So, like, they're not going to, like, dig a trench line and sit and do it. And yeah, they simply would treat them to the mountains and outlying villages and realize, we're doing guerrilla shit now. I mean, with those mountains, you fucking better. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why a low-scale intensity conflict went on until 2012, I believe. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And I mean, there's still people out there that are 100% dedicated to fighting the Russian state to free Dagestan and Chechnya and stuff.

There's an entire second Chechen war for a reason, which we will talk about at some later point, I'm sure. Oh, I believe it. But this just dragged the Russians into a phase of guerrilla warfare that they were even less prepared for than fighting in Grozny. Russian troops responded by turning into roving bands of death squads. Murder, mass rape, and looting were common as drunken soldiers went on rampages. Now, contracted, the contract Nikki that we've talked about, and the conscripted soldiers fought each other over the best loot and occasionally broke down into full-on unit on unit firefights. That is insane to me. What the fuck? Yeah. In one incident, the town of

Shamashki, members of the Russian OM oman which is something akin to like a federal military police went on a rampage they burned down houses and shot people people who were originally not fighting them took up arms to defend their village managed to kill 16 policemen before their entire town was wiped out by the end it's thought that 300 civilians were murdered for which one of the cops killed by a villager named Victor Adamshin was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation for his murder spree. Fuck that guy. Yeah. What?

I mean, it's not exactly the same, but there's a lot in common with like Wounded Knee there, you know, from our American West, where cavalry soldiers opened fire on mostly unarmed native people. And they took several casualties, troopers that most of it was actually from friendly fire. They killed hundreds of native people. And I think the military awarded like eight medals of honor. Yeah. Those have not been rescinded. USA? Don't worry.

We'll cover that one eventually too, my friend. Do that with somebody else. Thankfully, you know, one thing that we do have is people have kind of seen how awful that episode was. And like, you know, the wounded knee. At least they don't call it like the battle of wounded knee, which I saw someone like Steven Crowder do. I have seen people call this the battle of Shemoshki. It was not a fucking battle. There was an exchange of gunfire. These

guys were not Chechen separatist fighters. They were dudes who had guns in their houses. And when I saw people brutalizing their neighbors, they're like, I guess we have to defend our village from these cops. And that's what the exchange of gunfire was. They said there's maybe a dozen or so guys in the town that had guns and 300 or more civilians were killed. It was the worst massacre of the war that wasn't conducted via bombardment, like a purposeful massacre. Well, all of this was happening. We get to go back to our friend, Shamil Basayev. He knew, and I think the Russian government knew, and Dudayev certainly knew, that they were on their heels. The concept of winning this war was kind of gone now. They hold no real territory.

They're running. They're not fighting the war they wanted to be fighting. They had to do something to turn the tides of the war. So, Shamil Basayev had a plan that absolutely nobody would see coming. That is an invasion of Russia. Huh? And that is where we'll pick up next time. Yup. That guy is high. Unfortunately,

it ends up working and it does set a pretty awful precedent for Chechen separatist actions in the future. In the next episode, you're going to see the rough outlines of things like the Moscow theater crisis, the Beslan school siege, things like that. Okay, I've heard of that. A lot of awful stuff that Basayev is involved in. And this is the successful blueprint, if you will. Okay.

But that is on part four, the conclusion of the first Chechen war so Nick thank you for joining how you feeling now about being conscripted into the Russian military and set to grow what yeah your orders are in the mail I didn't get it it's kind of

insane like I I went into this research fully knowing everything I already researched about the Soviet Afghan war. And it's kind of incredible that we're, I don't know, 20-ish years in the future from that conflict. And the military involved is so much worse. I don't have any nice things to say about the conduct of the Soviet military in Afghanistan. It was awful. But I also think that that army would have won this war. Really?

Yeah. I think they would have. But I also, you know, it's hard to tell. I still think they would have shit the bed. Maybe. I think they win, but still with incredibly high casualties. Because again. Absolutely.

You have to. They didn't care. They didn't actually care about preserving their soldiers. And the reputation they've run. You got to. Yeah. Like, wow, we won that in one fell swoop. Well, we're going to go blow up that brigade over there.

We can't go back to that again. We don't have enough casualties, you see. Nick, thank you for joining me on this episode. Everybody, thank you for listening. And thank you for supporting the show. Until next time, don't invade Grosny. I'm going to get ibuprofen. Later.

2,000 milligram.