Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 162 - The First Chechen War Part 4: The One Where Everyone Invades Hospitals

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

the conclusion to our First Chechen War series 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 Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm the always incapable of doing his job host, Joe. And with me is my co-host, Nick. Hello, Nick.

Are you going to do that in Spanish now? I can't speak Spanish. I think it's like, hola, bienvenido, holos. I can't say lines in Spanish, apparently. Tigre. No, that's definitely tiger. No, fuck that. I think it's like Leonidas. Leonidas.

Yes, sir. This is the scene from Inglourious Bastards where they're like, you speak the third best Italian. I don't speak Italian. That's why I said third best. I think that's just you. I definitely don't speak Spanish. Spanish is one of those languages that you kind of understand. And honestly, I understand more of it than I can speak it.

So I just make my grandma really unhappy. I mean, what is a bigger tradition on this podcast than making our family disappointed in us? I took two years of Spanish in high school because it was the only foreign language offered and we had to take it. Let's see. How long did I live at home? I took 18 years of Spanish.

17? Yeah. 17 to 18 years of Spanish. Duh. I mean, that's like me and armenian like my family all speaks armenian i barely fucking know and you're sitting there like hey dolma yeah hey bro yeah i know that word i just pull my my shirt collar down and flash to the chest hair and they're like yes oh so nick when I left you this last time on part three, I left you in another cliffhanger because that's what we call good podcast writing.

And I told you that Shamil Basayev, one of the many warlords in Chechnya, was staging an invasion of Russia. Now, the Russians, through sheer force of numbers of poor, poor human conscripts and bomb tonnage, had finally taken the upper hand over the Chechen Republic of Echkiria. The war was now growing increasingly unpopular in Russia as casualties mounted and people saw the horror that the Russian army had brought to bear against what most Russians saw as their fellow countrymen. I mean, the Russian soldiers and government are very racist towards Chechnya. And I think that there's a general baseline racism that Russians would have towards Chechens, but they still thought them to be citizens of Russia, right? Right. There's news footage. This isn't like the Soviet war in Afghanistan. There is footage of these

things. You couldn't just bolt people into a fucking zinc coffin and drop them on someone's front. That age has passed. There is something of a freedom of brass. Yeah. Could you imagine the lawn care afterwards? It's like when you accidentally leave a piece of garbage on your lawn and the grass all dies around it. Yeah. Except it's your son.

Several Russian republics, think of them as states right it's a federation passed laws that said they would shield their young men from the law if they dodged the draft knowing that they'd be sent to chechnya for duty draft dodging skyrocketed across the country and you couldn't find enough of the contract soldiers to fill the gaps behind just imagine like during vietnam if like was like, no, if you dodge the draft, we're not going to arrest you. That's kind of crazy, right? Right. That's really fucking cool. I don't often stand random Russian republics, but you know what? They deserve props. Draft dodging? Yes, sir. Meanwhile, the war in Chechnya was spreading. Chechen fighters driven

into the mountains and forests fled into the surrounding republics of Ungushetia and Oshetia for safety. Only Russian forces followed them, invading more parts of their own country without authorization or, again, approval from parliament, bringing along with them their careless carpet bombing and artillery strikes. carpet bombing, and artillery strikes. Soldiers deployed into these areas lashed out at the civilians there too, even though they weren't in rebellion and occasionally got drunk and shot one another in full view of their commanders and in one case, a state lawmaker. What?

Just imagine you are deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever the fuck else our next war is going to be, and you just get fucking trashed on boot polish and then shoot someone in front of the congressperson that came to visit. Who the fuck is carrying boot polish around? If you carry that around to get fucked up, you need help.

You have an artisanal taste. So like, you know, you guys are just going to have liquor mailed to you because it is that easy. I, on the other hand, I'm going to eat this boot polish, this bespoke alcoholic beverage. Mmm, the Kiwi brand. Just imagine like gunning down another soldier in front of like, I don't know, any congressperson who comes by for like a visit overseas. Like, because that's kind of what happened.

Oh, he's visiting. Yeah, a member of the state Duma came down to the war zone to see like the conduct of, I believe it was Oshetia when troops went over to Oshetia. I want to see how my boys are doing out there. Oh, they're shooting each other. Oh, shit. Meanwhile, the Chechen Mufti Ahmed Kadriov declared that the Chechens were not simply fighting for independence from Russia, but they are fighting a holy war or jihad against the Russians, for all of the Ummah or Islamic community. This is generally in stark contrast to what many warlords and the Chechen government had in mind. Dudayev was a Muslim like most Chechens, but saw the struggle against Russia as a national one, not a religious one. This would slowly start

to shift as nationalist fighters died off or became radicalized by incoming new recruits from around the world. By the end of the war, and certainly by the start of the Second Chechen War, the Islamist fighters, rather than the nationalist ones like the National Guard, would become the driving force of the separatist movement. The mostly secular Chechens were wary of these guys at first, but as they were busy getting carpet bombed and shelled into oblivion, they weren't exactly in the position to turn down help. Right. And another thing this did was open up fundraising. Like a lot of Islamic charities that kind of work in a black market capacity to funnel money to certain groups poured money into Chechnya for the fight as well.

It was a very weird shift by 1996. And that's when Dudayev finally died. How'd he die? Dzhokhar Dudayev's opinion on the matter of the encroaching religious government movement was rendered pointless when he was assassinated via Russian airstrike in April of 1996. Oh.

Yeah. Kadyrov's decision led several prominent foreign fighters and their militias to find their way into the Chechen battlefield from places like Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Many of these men had also fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. So, at this point, it's kind of like picking up an old hobby after a short break. Oh, okay. One of those guys is kind of infamous and named Abin Al-Khattab. He was a Saudi who saw what was going on in Chechnya while he was in Afghanistan.

He had done fighting in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and a few other places. Oh, okay. He was chilling on his couch in Afghanistan in late 1995, watching the news and saw there was a war in Chechnya. And he was like, oh, I guess I'll go fight there. And then just went and did it. How could this year get any better? Yeah. He picked up his shit, posed as a journalist, and then snuck over the border into Chechnya, which honestly didn't sound like it was that difficult.

Like he didn't have to pose at all? No, he just walked in. He could have just walked across, yeah. Once there, he put a group together made up of other foreign fighters and some locals and began laying waste to the Russians. In one infamous battle, that was more of an ambush than a battle at shatoy he and his men quartered and nearly decimated an entire russian battalion in three hours losing only three men in the process jesus what now if you're wondering how could this happen

how could this have possibly unfolded in such a way absolutely the entire ambush was videotaped and you can watch it it's very graphic i don don't recommend it unless you're us and your brain is broken and you're dead inside. This videotaping of ambushes and IED strikes and things like that would become more and more common. This is actually something that happened in Afghanistan as well. They would be like highlight reels on tape and be brought across the border and kind of like entice people to come for like, look at how we're winning. Right. I mean, ISIS did the same thing. Right.

It's not uncommon. Their video editing is super weird to me. It's the video editing version of graphic design is my passion type people where it's like, no, I've watched a couple of YouTube videos. I know how to do this. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to ISIS, but they can certainly edit footage better than I can. I don't know about that.

I don't even produce this podcast. Every once in a while when I went to the computer lab and I did the slideshow and I made that shit disappear into Thanos dust, I felt like a fucking baller. And Nick is going to practice on

PowerPoint and then take an unpaid internship in a group called Boko Haram. Oh. These videos began to leak out. Despite hardcore Russian censorship of the realities of war, the video got on TV and people were pretty horrified and demanded the resignation of Yeltsin and Grachev. But most people were pretty mad at Grachev in general. Nobody liked him anyway. Doesn't seem like a likable guy.

Which should have happened years ago anyway. But it didn't matter because Daddy Yeltsin still loved his drunk boy. In another situation, sometimes called the Second Battle of Grozny on March of 1996, 2,000 Chechen fighters infiltrated the capital, attacking it from within.

Now they knew every alley and sewer line, and they kind of like popped up at random parts of the city, set police stations on fire, steal or blow up ammo dumps. This is where they brought in Zagayev, again, to try to set up a loyal Russian government. And they just slaughtered his police officers and stuff like that. And it just attempted to turn the entire city to chaos, which they did succeed in that. Right. Now, Dudayev is dead, and the formal presidency

of Chechnya fell to a guy named Zemlikhan Yanderbayev. He was a hardcore extremist and probably the most radical of anyone who could have taken power. You probably should have thought about that before you assassinated the last guy. Didn't think that one through. Now, Yanderbayev was originally a history teacher before picking up a gun and turning out to be someone who is incredibly hard to negotiate with. One Russian diplomat. Didn't you want to be a history teacher? I was a history teacher. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And actually, so was a few other well-known figures from military history. It's kind of weird how that works out. Not that I'm a well-known figure of military history, but it's a weird track. You can be. One day. The Russian diplomat said it would be easier if Shemil Basayev, a man who, remember, was once accused of drinking his enemy's blood, had become president. That's the kind of guy Yonderbaev is. Right. He's a fucking dead-eyed psycho. Though, Yonderbaev would eventually send a ceasefire in May of 1996 that would immediately be ignored by both sides of the conflict, something that continues to happen.

It's just kind of crazy that a Russian diplomat is like, no, no, the guy who invented a new execution style and then gargles the blood of dead Georgian soldiers, that guy would have been a better president. Clearly. that guy would have been a better president. Clearly. So as negotiations stalled, Basayev would think of a new and more psychotic way to restart them, an attempt to end the war in June of 1996. Okay, so before Christmas. Yeah, end the war by Christmas,

putting a spin on an old classic. But there is some backstory to this. Six months before this, nearly Basayev's entire family was killed in a targeted airstrike on his family home, killing his wife, two children, and several members of his family. Now, I'm not saying I agree with anything that Shemuel Basayev did in his entire life, or what we're about to describe, but it does put a certain spin on the whole thing as being more of a revenge plot. Like a fucking Batman movie.

Yeah, they created a fucking supervillain. Which, like, Basayev's not alone in that. Now, he gathered a group of mid, and they hid themselves in captured military trucks and smuggled themselves out of Chechnya. They made it about 70 miles to the town of Budnovask, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing incorrectly. In one of the trucks, the 100 or so dudes he was running with

got pulled over by traffic police for speeding. Fucking idiots. Imagine being a local cop in a very rural area of Russia. I'm like, oh, those military trucks are speeding. I'm going to pull them over. And then like 100 fucking Chechen soldiers jump out. Like, I was two days from retirement. Imagine being the cop pulling them over.

Like, why? Just let them be like, who's going to pull over a military vehicle? I've been pulled over. Yeah, I believe it. In Washington. Was it State Patrol? Because that explains a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, in Washington, in order to do any type of big training, you have to go three hours out of the way onto the five. And you already know that's fucking hell on earth with a vehicle. Try it with a fucking military vehicle. Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, the Washington State Patrol will pull you over for going two miles over the speed limit. They don't give a shit.

We weren't even going over speed limit. We just got pulled over for no reason. Were you driving? I was just making sure you guys' paperwork was right. We're like, dude, really? I was under the impression that someone who was not white was driving this truck. Ah, shit. I was TC.

There you go. I was fucking good. State Patrol climbs into the window like, sir, are you Mexican? Like, god damn it. That was like when you were driving around my little ass town four different times for just looking different yeah washington it's great folks that's like one of my favorite this is completely off topic i don't care but like it's one of my favorite

things with the pacific northwest everybody's like oh you fucking stupid liberal hippies like that is the most racist fucking place I have ever lived. And I lived in Texas. Ooh, yeah. It's kind of incredible that people don't realize that. I also attribute to the area that we also lived in. Sure. I mean, would that happen in Seattle? Yeah, probably. But instead of getting pulled over, CLPD would just start fucking hitting you. The Pacific Northwest is absolutely one

of the most racist places I've ever lived. It's just on the down, though. Everybody just thinks of Seattle and Portland, and they don't think of everything else, the place that you can probably afford to live in. Basayev and his men decided, fuck it. We got far enough. This is good. So they jumped out of the

truck and began shooting wildly in every direction. Fuck it. Death blossom. The cops were pretty much immediately killed. truck and began shooting wildly in every direction. Fuck it. Death blossom. Like, I'm sure the cops were pretty much immediately killed. They raided local government offices and eventually raised the flag of the Chechen Republic over the local police station.

Baller move. Yeah, big dick energy. Big warlord energy. And then when Russian reinforcements began to arrive, they retreated into the local hospital, taking the entire thing hostage with all of its occupants inside. I was just here for a checkup. Yeah, just going there to get like a fucking allergy shot and you get held up by militants. They had about 100 people, give or take. They were spread out around several buildings. But

the population within the hospital is hard to nail down, but it's thought to be as high as 2,000 people. Jesus. in the hospital is hard to nail down, but it's thought to be as high as 2,000 people. Just taking a whole small town hostage, which, I mean, to be fair, they also did that once too. Okay. And the Russians took it back by blowing the village up. Jesus. You can't hold the hostage if we kill them all.

Which, to be fair, that was also their tactic in the Moscow theater crisis as well. Like, we'll just kill everyone and you'll have no hostages. Face problem solved. Scoreboard! Yeah, they're doing that old, well, my job's done here. It's that meme of the guy tapping his head. Can't have a hostage crisis if I kill all the hostages. It's true. It's true, though.

Yeah. Using these hostages, Bosayev began making demands and this isn't even the first time this occurred during the war early in the same year another warlord named salman will die of led a group of fighters over the border into dagestan and raided a russian air base whenever you say dagestan i'm just thinking you know fucking ufc and oh yeah yeah yeah uh 100 kabib yeah yeah i mean that is where khabib mergamedov is from yeah i believe yeah i think if i already pointed out at one point during the series i just don't remember i think it was the first episode uh now as they were leaving

the airbase they had around 200 men and they got chased off by russian reinforcements so they entered the nearby town of kislar and then took the entire fucking thing hostage, which amounted to be around 1,200 people. They're on a roll here. The Russians attempted to storm the village, but eventually decided just to flatten it with artillery and rockets after their rescue mission failed. Voldaev used the surviving

hostages as a negotiation tool to secure their safe passage back to Chechnya, but it didn't work, and the Russians ambushed them anyway, killing more hostages in the process. This whole ordeal did not slow the Chechens down. They have momentum. What it did show is if you're Chechen, if you're a fighter and you take Russian civilians hostage, they will probably negotiate with you, which is like they kind of do over their own POWs, but not really. This is a lesson learned because, you know, you're a fucking psycho threatening his own civilians. But in order to prove his point

that he meant business, Basayev said if the Russians did not start the negotiation process, and by this, I mean negotiating with him about ending the war in Chechnya, he would start shooting hostages. This is disregarded as a bluff by the Russian security minister. So Basayev proved him wrong by shooting a whole bunch of hostages at random in the hospital. Huh? Yeah. I bet that guy felt like a real asshole after that. He's not doing it.

He's bluffing. Sir, we hear gunshots coming from the hospital. Blanks. I tell you, blanks. Crisis actors. Yeah. This led to a rescue attempt by interior ministry troops and special forces. Blanks! I tell you, blanks! Crisis actors! This led to a rescue attempt by Interior Ministry troops and Special Forces. Soldiers fired blindly into the front window of the hospital to distract the Chechens while members of the Special Forces Alpha Group advanced unseen from a different angle.

They succeeded in two things. Killing a whole lot of hostages at the front of the hospital and capturing a few parts of the hospital where the Alpha group was. But the vast majority of the hospital, and therefore the hostages, were left in Chechen control. Two hours later, the Russians tried again, killing more hostages and gaining no more

ground. What the fuck? Like the Chechens are like, guys, we're not even doing anything. Yeah, we'll distract them. You go in through the window where they can't see you right there. That's the front window right next to the door you're shooting. Exactly. Yeah.

What if we do suppressive fire directly into the hospital full of innocent civilians? They'll never see that move coming. Wild card, bitches. Wild card. When Basayev got on the phone to yell at the negotiators, he was told these forces were acting completely independently from government control. I have no idea if that's true or not, or the Russian commanders were like,

I'm not owning this one. I would call and be like, I don't think you guys are good at your job. Yeah. At this point, Basayev knows how to deal with Russians. I think even he's kind of astonished by this, right? You guys are good at your job yeah like at this point boss af knows how to deal with russians i think even he's kind of astonished by this right you guys are metal like could you guys stop shooting all the hostages before long i'm not gonna have any leverage i don't have any hostages to shoot anymore you shot them all by june 19th after nearly a week-long standoff the russians

stopped trying to retake the hospital so imagine the snipers were looking at the hostages and be like, I got a clean shot. They could see the terrorists, but they were just looking at the hostages. No, don't shoot the terrorists. The nurse, take her out. Oh, God. Now, the war wouldn't end at this hostage-taking extravaganza, but Basayev and his men would release the remaining hostages. And then, incredibly... All of them wounded.

All of them shot in the knees. All of them would be allowed to return to Chechnya using a few volunteer hostages as human shields. Okay. By the end, 130 civilians, 18 policemen, and 18 soldiers were killed, along with 500 people being wounded. And 11 of Basayev's men were killed as well.

Those are not good numbers. No. This is like the bad news bears of hostage situation. And like, Basayev said that he got all the men's bodies back to Chechya by like shoving them all in a refrigeration truck. I mean, gotta slow down the decomposition. Priorities, I guess. How many of you don't need them anymore? Just throw them outside.

Throw them in the dumpster. The Russian response to this incident nearly toppled the government and deflated any possible morale that the Russians had previous to this from taking the Chechen capital of Grozny and attempting to install their own friendly government. The Russians and Chechens once again signed a ceasefire in order to lead to negotiations. The negotiations, of course, would be the end of the war. Everyone would assume that this would be fast this time around, but it wouldn't. By July, the entire process had collapsed once again.

entire process had collapsed once again while military operations had been ongoing the russian government pulled out of the agreement and large-scale operations continued after that okay during the negotiations they were still doing i guess what we would consider counterinsurgency like doing patrols and stuff they weren't like planning any offensives into the mountain right right but with the yonder berebaev and the Russian government were having arguments, and it all came down to the status of Chechnya. The Russians weren't even fully against pulling out of Chechnya, but they're like, no, no, no, we'll leave, but you still have to be part of Russia. And Yanderebaev's like, why the fuck do you think we're fighting?

Like, what the fuck? Yeah. The Russian government wanted a – they were fine with an empty victory. They just needed something to say that they won. No, no. You can win by us pulling all of our troops back, but you also have to be part of Russia so we can look good. They're going to have that OT loss where it's got the three fucking records on there.

What do you mean? Where it just doesn't even matter. Pretty much. That OT win that nobody really cares about it's like that that when you're watching football and they suddenly somehow manage to get a tie like how did you do that now for our european listeners i mean hand egg or gridiron or whatever the fuck that's called that's soccer but the negotiations fell apart and large-scale operations continued once again. Now, if you're in the Russian army in the 1990s, that just means drinking a bunch of vodka and shooting each other, I guess. Here's another thing. They wanted the war to end on positive terms because Boris Yeltsin had a presidential election in 1996, right?

Right. But he won anyway, because most people uh kind of think that he it was crooked which probably you know yeah uh boris yeltsin won re-election in 1996 and he finally fired pavel grachev so we got that's good for us yeah only two years and one entire war too late that was the lone bright spot as he campaigned on ending the war, which was only about to get worse for Russia, despite Yeltsin declaring the entire thing done and over and won back in May, if you remember. The Russians were massing their forces in the south of Chechnya, where the bulk of the rebels had held up in the mountains after losing the capital. had held up in the mountains after losing the capital. They're expecting a brutal but decisive fight that would finally smash them once and for all.

And they had been funneling more and more men from the main garrison at Grozny, more tanks, more everything. South, everything is getting sent for their south. Now, obviously this battle doesn't happen. What happens instead is that the Chechens saw and knew exactly what they were doing, and it meant they pulled thousands of people out of Grozny to move themselves. So, Basayev and a few other warlords gathered around 1,500 men, armed mostly with small arms, and infiltrated the city again.

Good, good, good, good. Like last time, they knew the city much better than the 12,000 or so Russians that were occupying it. And it made sneaking in pretty fucking easy. This is generally considered the third battle of Grozny. Though, it's hard to put a hard line in the sand, right? Because like, Grozny was never pacified. They were still fighting in Grozny all the time.

If anything, the first battle of Grozny just kind of lasted for a couple of years. Generally, to sneak into the city, all these guys had to do was avoid a couple of checkpoints that had set up on some streets. Because securing a whole city sounds pretty annoying and hard. So you don't really want to try too hard, right? You don't want to overachieve. The Russians couldn't even get a cordon that functioned when they were actively

attempting to invade the city. Now that they thought that they had won, it was effectively like going to a military base where the only thing keeping you going through the traffic control point is honesty. You can easily sneak

onto any military base it's not guarded just stay away from the entry points and nobody fucking knows right but honesty keeps you going oh i'm gonna go through the ecp and like all the all the chechens did was like i'm gonna it's gonna go around uh yeah i'll be about 500 meters down that way and y'all ain't gonna fucking see me let me just go down one block. Yeah, exactly. Right. Now, the Chechen plan of attack was to target various points like the airport, various government buildings, intelligence services.

All these government ministries had moved back into the city after the Russians had retaken it. They were going to target them specifically, kind of like what they did last time of surrounding areas of Russian control and just kind of trying to snuff them out. And on August 6th, 1996, it began again, right as Boris Yeltsin is being sworn in for another term as president. As Chechen fighters broke up the Russian defenses, much like the first time, splitting them into smaller groups and slowly picking them off, Yeltsin had just gone on vacation. I mean, I would. I guess not. I mean, all right. To be fair, there is nothing that Boris Yeltsin could have done to make the situation any better. He could only make it worse.

This guy wasn't a military officer. Where the fuck would he go on vacation? I think a lot of them go down to like the Black Sea. Doesn't sound fun. Oh, I mean, as a as a beach i guess i feel like that beach is depressing yeah there's just cigarette butts laying everywhere cigarette butts and sunflower seeds yeah like what the fuck y'all want to go down to the beach. Broken vodka bottles everywhere. I mean, to be fair, we are also describing Brighton Beach, New York.

I don't know if you've ever been there. I've never been to New York. So for reference, that's where the Lord of War starts in. That's Brighton Beach. Gotcha. Okay, I see what you're saying now. Yeah. Him going on vacation and he left the entire problem to be figured out by the defense minister. The problem was since Yeltsin's re-election, it's pretty obvious that he's getting older,

sicker, and drunker. He's less in control of day-to-day functions and spending either time completely blackout drunk or he was living part-time in a sanitarium, which is old-timey speak for chronically sick people. It's almost like hospice, right? I mean, he wasn't dying, but he almost lived there every day. There's internal political battles over who was really in control. According to a guy named Gennady Zhuganov, the guy who actually came in second place in the election. This led to various parts of the Kremlin passing different orders down to the front lines through generals they considered

loyal to them, not necessarily good ones or any good battle plans for whatever reason. So by the time the orders finally got down to soldiers fighting in and around Grozny, they made no sense. It's that telephone game again.

Some soldiers were told to advance and reinforce those trapped in Grozny, while still others were told to retreat. Other units were given explicit orders to recapture the city by the time Yeltsin was inaugurated, leading to something that looked like a lot of human wave attacks as Russian commanders tried desperately to meet a tight timeline rather than objective goals. This isn't something that is unheard of. This happens like trying to get something done by the centennial. There was an incident in the Soviet Union where they accidentally blew up 100 fucking people with a rocket. Jeez.

They rushed safety procedures so they could get things done by a specific date. It was like the fucking 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution or something. I don't fucking remember. But continually just setting arbitrary timelines for things that don't need them. But each time they failed in face of such a clusterfuck, Yeltsin blamed everyone who wasn't him, including the totally powerless regional government led by Zagayev that he had just put in place to take charge of Grozny like the year before and had no actual political power because again, he didn't control anything. Russians actually did do something that should

remind a lot of people of something American soldiers did recently to prepare for counterattacks. They had been so badly mauled by Chechen RPG teams, they now began to weld armor onto their vehicles to protect themselves, including cages that would detonate RPGs before they hit the bodies of tanks or APCs. We called that hillbilly armor in Iraq. People were welding a giant piece of cages for one. You'd see sandbags, logs, things like that. Because they actually wasn't good enough. They were just getting mauled and eaten alive by RPG-7s. Right.

But the day before this, Ahmed Zakhaev had taken a train station and included in that train station. I mean, the battle killed like 300 Russian soldiers. So it wasn't a small battle. But he also found a lot of the supplies they had left behind. One of those things they left behind was crates of something called an RPO launcher. Now, this launched a thermobaric warhead, effectively a rocket-propelled flamethrower. Okay, this is what I'm... Yeah. Now, if this sounds like it would not be effective against armor, you'd be right.

You can't just flamethrower a tank and kill people inside. But it didn't have to be. Chechen fighters would shoot these things at the Russians. And despite fighting in this war for two goddamn years, they had not stopped riding on tanks and APCs as a common mode of transportation for infantry. This means when the armor was relatively unscathed, the infantry would be melted to the outside of the tanks. Yeah. Also, remember this, I keep pointing this out.

It's been almost two years, right? That meant that there's several different waves of soldiers that's been drafted, done their time in Chechnya, their draft time is over, they go home, new draftees come in. There's no trickle down of experience. That makes any sense. There's no hardcore veterans. You do your 12 months and you get the fuck out of there you get new draftees in and it'd be very inexperienced uh due to draft rotations would see a fireball engulf their goddamn vehicle assume they're on fire and then abandon their vehicle uh this you know thinking you're about to explode or or whatever right uh and to be fair, maybe they were going to.

You know, it's maybe like lights off a fuel reserve or something, but they would jump out. As soon as they jump out, they'd get machine gunned, and then the Chechens would take the vehicle. Not have a good time. Yeah. In another part of the city where Russians and Chechens were fighting, Russians decided to hit the Chechens with an UNO reverse card.

Trapped and with no way out, Russian troops burst into a nearby hospital and held 500 hostages until the Chechen fighters allowed them to leave. I mean, you got to do what you got to do. The Chechens were like, God damn it, we gave them an idea. It worked.

It's not even original yeah it fucking worked uh the chechen's like okay okay you can get out you can leave it's fine which is better about it kind of surprising it doesn't seem like they really tried to take it back the russians told them that you know if you don't let us go we'll start killing all these civilians and the chechen's like damn bro okay. Fuck. Turn it down a notch, man. Now, in another group, this did not work. A group of pro-Russian Chechen Oman police officers attempted to surrender to Chechen fighters led by a guy named Mdoka Omerov. These police officers had taken hostages. And Omerov said that if they surrendered and handed

over their firearm you know let the hostages go they'd be freely given passage out of the city instead what happens they were disarmed and executed oh yeah the only survivor was a colonel named syed magomed kakiyev who was shot and then played dead until the i guess the chechens didn't want to like double tap yeah hey everybody joe here from the lines 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. And now back to the show. It's weird how that happens because, I mean, it was a rather large group. I think it was 30 or so guys.

Like, if you're going to go through the effort of committing gross war crimes, you're not going to double check your work. No, you don't need to. I guess. It's hard to really describe what was going on in the city because the Russian defenders in the city had no real command and control. There was no cohesive effort. It was almost as if, I mean, this kind of goes for the Chechens too, right? The warlords had their own independent militias and Dudayev's National Guard has largely been rendered non-existent at this point. Everybody's just kind of working in cliques, I guess. There's no overall tactical control. Everybody is just kind of like, it's small groups of dudes fighting other small groups of dudes held up in the city. And mind you, the Russians outnumbered them by about 10,000.

Oh, yeah. That should show just how disorganized they were. They could not master forces. Russians kept introducing more and more forces into the city in a piecemeal fashion. Now, I read a war college paper by a US Army officer on this war and in this battle that pointed out that one of the biggest weaknesses that the Russians faced was that their seeming total inability to coordinate different units

to support one another. At no point in this war did Chechens even come close to equaling the firepower or numbers that Russians brought to the battle. In reality, they should have been brushed aside in all of these fights right the writer compares what the russians did to attempting to punch someone with a fist but

it's a fist you couldn't close so like because since you can't mass your fingers into a fist say i'm trying to punch you but i have like two fingers sticking out and i just break my fucking fingers ouch might as well slap them yeah so each time the russians tried to reinforce or rescue forces trapped within the city they would send in single brigades or sometimes an entire regiment of 900 soldiers but as i learned during the first battle if you're attacking the city you need more fucking people than that you need support elements right you know you need multiple units of this size working together uh instead they just kept feeding these units in one at a time to be fucking like it's like it was like feeding conscripts into

a wood chipper right this one will break them. Yep. The last three brigades didn't work. This fourth one should. Sir, we have three other brigades. Why don't we just send them all in together? No, no, no. One at a time. Like if you're a nameless goon in like a Jet Li movie, we need to attack him one at a time.

Nearly half of the 276th Motor Rifle Regiment was destroyed and almost the entirety of the 205th Motor Rifle Regiment was destroyed and almost the entirety of the 205th Motor Rifle Brigade. Each time this would happen, the Russians did what they always did, carpet bombed and shelled the city. Though this time they did mostly manage not to blow themselves up.

So, I mean, I guess they learned that. But instead, they wiped out a convoy of refugees that was packed and everything that moved, trying to get the fuck out of the city. Oh. Yeah. And when the convoy of refugees made it through the bombing, all men above the age of 11, which they considered military age, were sent back into the city by Russian forces to probably be killed in that airstrike. Right.

Now, to be fair, there were a lot of child soldiers fighting with the Chechens, which is fucked. So the Russians considered pretty much every boy to be military-aged. Now, fully embarrassed that their much larger army had once again gotten fucking dusted, on August 19th, General Konstantin Polakovsky demanded the Chechens surrender or face an all-out attack, which, if you're Russian, meant a total carpet bombing of the city. Right. Now, if you're wondering, what about all those thousands of Russian soldiers inside? Polakovsky didn't seem to be too worried about that. He gave this warning to the Chechens without approval of the government or any other layer of the military.

Oh, fuck. This bombing would have almost certainly killed thousands of his own soldiers, not to mention however many civilians are still in the city, which the Russians had already killed. I don't know. This is weird. He just was giving unauthorized threats. And that was enough for a guy named Alexander Labed. He was the man that Yeltsin had put in charge of the situation because he was too fucked up or sick to handle it himself. And Labed came to a conclusion.

They had to end their war because the only option was attempting to retake Grozny again and just holding on to the small pockets that were still there for the third time around and cost them thousands of soldiers or doing what polkovsky wanted to do which was wiping the city off the face of the planet and you know this was alongside the war becoming so unpopular in russia there's like protests against it things like that right and you know again the president is so sick he's living in a sanitarium. We can't keep doing all of these things. We have to end the fucking war. But just because he's in charge of the situation didn't mean the government was actually working

together. Segments of the government and military did not want the war to end. If that sounds familiar it should i can see why uh because everything that happened so far made the government and the military look like shit this turned into something of a power struggle uh when the prime minister came out in favor of ending the war someone tried to blow his car up jesus yeah a lot of the rationale that they had, a lot of these guys have is like, if we just take Grozny and crush Yonder Bayev and like whatever remains of his army that will regain our prestige.

Right. It won't. There's, there's no way you're coming back from this. Clearly it's not working so far. Right. Right. It's just not winnable.

Like that was the thing that like Labad pointed out was like, the only thing that we can do is retake Grozny and do this a third or a fourth time. And we all remember how that went last time. Yeah. So on August 20th, Labad declared a ceasefire. And then 10 days later, the Kasa Yurt Accords were assigned, effectively ending the war. Oh, that's good. Now, this entire treaty is kind of fucked. While it did mean

all federal Russian forces had to leave the Republic of Chechnya, it didn't officially figure out the status of Chechnya as a nation or a territory or anything. Instead, it is what has to be the greatest kicking the can down the road I've ever seen in the form of diplomacy. It would leave them in limbo as they did just before the war started. As an extra fuck you to pretty much all of Russia and Chechnya, it's stipulated that any agreement made between Chechnya and Russia regarding the status or independence would have to be made sometime after 2001. Now, if you're thinking, what's the significance of 2001? Yeltsin would be out of office and it'd be someone else's job to fucking deal with.

That's literally what it was. And you know who that guy ended up being? Vladimir Putin. What? Yep. Because he'd be the next president and he would immediately lead into the second Chechen War. Jesus. Yeah. There's a whole lot more to it, obviously

than that. But the line in the Casa de Acord is like, this isn't my problem anymore. You have to wait until you get another president. We're just going to hold off on this. Yeah, we're going to hit a big old pause button on this whole war thing. That is the most diplomatic kicking the can down the road I've ever heard of it's kind of impressive i mean i guess that's all like an armistice is like but

still it's kind of like they didn't even try to hide it like no no no no no no i want nothing to do with this in the treaty both sides agreed to never use force again to solve their disputes if you can't tell from my laughter, that did not happen. In agreement, they would both break multiple times over the course of two more wars in the next few years. They might as well just bunch it up into one war. Yeah, we really need to centralize our warring. Chechnya was left in limbo, with its capital being described as the most destroyed place on earth. Tens of thousands of people were dead, with doctors at the border saying at least 50,000 civilians were killed out of a population

of just 1 million. Jesus. Nominally independent and name only and cut off from the Russian government, the entire country fell into a state of complete and total disrepair. Lacking the funds, knowledge, or manpower to do so, none of the Republic's infrastructure was rebuilt after the war ended. Mashkadov, now in charge of the entire mess, was unable and unwilling in some ways to bring safety and security or even an end to the reign of countless armed bands of former fighters turned bandits and kidnappers. The only nation who recognized the Republic's independence, strangely enough, was the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the Taliban.

Which, to be fair, that means one more nation recognized Chechnya than the Confederate States of America. I love that. That is great. And I think three recognize the Taliban. I think three countries recognize the Taliban. I think it was like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and maybe Oman

or something like that. I don't know. When Russia agreed to send war reparations to try to rebuild some of what was destroyed, it was all stolen by corrupt officials. Guns, explosives, and even tanks were sold openly on the street, which I really want to know what the running price for a tank was.

Right? I got $50. Is it running? How many miles does it have on it? A lot. I mean, from Moscow to Chechnya and then not much more after that. These weapons that were bought and sold openly in the street would then be used against one another in gang or politically motivated killings and assassinations and things like that. These weapons that were bought and sold openly in the street would then be used against one another in gang or politically motivated killings and assassinations and things like that. Can you imagine fucking gang violence with a fucking tank?

I mean, that's the dystopian future I hope for. If we're going to go full failed state, end of the war type shit, I want to see someone do a drive-by using a main gun. That'd be fucking insane. Like coaxial?

All right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's like no real shortage of like the only thing they have a shortage of is like gas because like their oil infrastructure was decimated. But like they have an endless supply of ammunition for the fucker. Oh, absolutely. Slowly, the Islamic fundamentalist sect of the warlords began to get more and more influential and Mashkadov tried to keep up with them in order to keep his own political power, eventually instituting Sharia law in the Republic, which ended his own Sharia court, deciding his parliament was not following religious law, leading to it to be disbanded. What the fuck?

How? I mean, it's like it's a game of political chicken that you and it's like an incredible cell phone right like no no i am also very religious just like these men like oh my religious court says that i'm against really fuck uh you know what i guess I have to say that. Thank you, Francis. Our friend over at Hell of a Way to Die, Francis Horton, put a whole bunch of new stuff on the soundboard after deleting the Soviet National Anthem on accident. So, you know, it's kind of revolutionary. More and more hardcore fundamentalists formed their own government to rival his, naming themselves the Meck Shura and declaring that Al-Khattab invaded the Russian Republic of Dagestan,

setting the stage for the Second Chechen War and President Vladimir Putin ending independent Chechnya once and for all under a massive hail of artillery strikes and tens of thousands of civilian casualties. And that is the First Chechen War. All right. I like to end things at a high note, you know? I really don't like to be much of a downer.

Oh, yeah. I can tell. Yeah. Before we go into the question from Legion, I do want to thank everybody for listening to this. I wanted to do the Chechen Wars for quite some time. They're really not known about in the West because, I mean, Russia isn't too happy with them either.

I mean, it doesn't make them look good. You see a lot of breadcrumbs that lead from one conflict to another, especially people like Basayev and al-Bin al-Khattab being like the Forrest Gump of war through the Caucasus. It's really weird. So thank you, everybody, for joining us. But we do a thing on the show called Question from the Legion. I swear I'm eventually going to have a sound effect for that.

I don't have one yet. If you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show, you know, a dollar, whatever. Slide into my DMs, talk to us on Patreon and one of the threads on there and ask us a

question. And today's question is, Oh God. Um, it's pretty obvious that we're both huge sports fans, various different sports, mostly hockey for me. Uh,

you're mostly a baseball guy, aren't you? Baseball, hockey. Yeah. What is one hot take that you have involving sports that you think some people would hate? Ooh, God, I don't even think I have one. I'll tailor mine to baseball because you know more about baseball than I do. And that is Babe Ruth sucks. I don't like Babe Ruth either.

I say this because he was hitting balls thrown off only white men uh he only had to compete against white dudes and those those fastballs are going like 50 miles an hour yeah like first of all if you see their pitching form not good their throwing form was awful also their hitting form awful as well right like i can respect a man who's considered a peak athlete while eating dog shit and chain smoking and drinking. I love it. Do I consider him one of the all-time greats of baseball?

No. Maybe in the old-timey days, but we're past that, man. This was like 100 goddamn years ago. When I play MLB The Show and he's a diamond card, why? Why? Why is he not getting fucking a heart attack for a ball coming at him at 90 there's a reason why he's not known for his like field abilities like nobody's ever like oh man he uh he really hustled to get that ball wow he's looking real athletic out there. The body composition of Bisquick sprinting after a loose ball.

I don't buy it. I'm pretty sure he was a douchebag. I'm sure he was. I mean, one of my favorite players in baseball history was clearly a man who was not all well in his head. Fuck, I forget which team he played for. But he was a pitcher. And he would just run off the diamond whenever fire trucks went by because he liked chasing fire trucks. Huh?

Yeah. God damn. I can't remember. I think it was The Rube or something like that. Fuck, I don't know. Those are the people we should champion in baseball, not Babe Ruth. Jesus Christ. All right.

Here's one just to tug on you. Steve Ise... to tug on you. Steve Iserman. I'll fight you. Well, finish your opinion, sir. Oh, I didn't have one. I just wanted to see what would happen. I like Steve Iserman. No, I mean, he's good.

He's general manager of the Red Wings now. Doesn't he own Detroit or something? I mean, metaphysically. Yes. I'm still convinced that Steve Eisenman could run for governor of Michigan and win. Like he doesn't actually have to have like any political stances. Uh,

he could just like show up to a debate wearing his old, you know, 19 sweater and then just like slap a puck against the wall and then like shrug and be like, yeah, good point. Count the rings, bitch.

Or what was that one thing that George Bush did when he was playing golf after he was done talking about the terrorism? He's like, watch this drive. Yeah. He was like, we don't need to talk about the deficit. Let's watch this wrist shot.

Like, yeah. Yes. I would vote for him. So, Nick, thank you. Everybody, thanks for supporting the show, making everything that we do possible. Send us your questions.

Until next time, if you're in a pinch, take hostages. It's so true. I don't know if I could say that. Here's my backup. You're getting a speeding ticket, sir. Oh, shit. Just drive to the nearest hospital.

Fuck. Later.