“Remember my words: Russia will disappear when the Ukrainian sun rises” – Djokhar Dudayev, Revolutionary leader and President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (1991-1996)

Djokhar Dudayev was killed in April 1996 by a Russian missile strike that targeted his whereabouts. Four months later, the First Chechen War (1994–1996) ended with the signing of the Khasavyurt Accords, after Chechen fighters had forced Russian troops out of their capital, Grozny. Chechnya was the first republic to clash with the Kremlin after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Chechens refused to remain part of a state that had long oppressed them. Under both Tsarist and Soviet rule, mass deportations and repression had eroded their homeland and ethnic identity in the hopes of subduing revival of any nationalist sentiment. In 1999, a brutal military campaign launched by then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin crushed Chechen hopes for sovereignty in the Second Chechen War (1999-2009). Grozny was levelled by indiscriminate aerial bombing, ballistic missile strikes, and a continuous artillery siege of the capital, killing some 8,000 civilians. The campaign strengthened Putin’s position in Moscow, helping secure his rise by popular ascent to an effectively uncontested presidency. … More Ethnic Animus Within the Russian Federation Toward the Kremlin