2. The war was given another ideological justification. The First Chechen War was still presented as a war against Chechen “separatists” or “bandits.” The Second Chechen War was presented as a war against “international Islamist terrorism.”
3. In the First Chechen War the Russian soldiers were almost exclusively conscripts. In the Second Chechen War, alongside conscripts, contract soldiers (kontraktniki) also were engaged. This could explain the increased ferocity of the violence against the civilian population.
4. The First Chechen War was, on the Russian side, fought mainly by ethnic Russian soldiers. In the Second Chechen War, however, the Kremlin, after some time, went over to a Chechenization of the conflict, in which Chechens fought Chechens. This policy of divide and rule not only secured Russia a “victory”—albeit provisional and still fragile—but it was an additional factor that contributed to the growth in violence against the civilian population.
5. When the First Chechen War started, Russia was not a member of the Council of Europe. It became a member only on February 28, 1996—one month before Yeltsin presented his peace plan that ended the First Chechen War. During the Second Chechen War, however, Russia was a fully fledged member of the Council and there was a flagrant contradiction between the humanitarian obligations required by the membership of this organization and the situation on the ground in Chechnya.
THE DETONATOR: A SECRET WAR AGAINST THE RUSSIAN POPULATION?
The official reason, given in September 1999 by the Russian government, which, at that time, was headed by prime minister Vladimir Putin, for starting the second war in Chechnya was a series of events. These events started with an incursion by the radical Chechen leader Shamil Basayev with two thousand armed men into the neighboring republic of Dagestan on August 8, 1999. This attack was followed by a series of terrorist explosions in apartment buildings in Buikansk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September. These explosions were immediately ascribed to Chechen terrorists. There remain, however, many unanswered questions concerning the Chechen incursion into Dagestan, as well as the apartment explosions, that cast doubt on the official version. From different sides, the Russian authorities have been accused of presenting an official version of the events that was, in effect, a smokescreen behind which another, darker and murkier reality was hidden. The Second Chechen War was presented by the Russian authorities as a spontaneous Russian response to an unexpected Chechen attack. However, the facts do not completely fit this narrative. Different authors suggest that, as in the case of the First Chechen War, the military attack was carefully planned within the Kremlin walls—only this time better.
When Yeltsin started the First Chechen War he had two objectives: first, to end the political instability in this region, and, second, to safeguard his reelection. The purpose of the Second Chechen War was to defend the interests of the Kremlin, especially of the “Family,” the group around Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko. This group included oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, but also Aleksandr Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration, and his two predecessors Valentin Yumashev (who would marry Tatyana in 2002) and Anatoly Chubais. On May 25, 1998, Vladimir Putin was appointed first deputy head of the presidential administration. Three months later, on July 25, 1998, he became director of the FSB, the secret service. Putin was considered by the members of the Family to be one of them. He certainly was one of them, although he had his personal agenda.
PANIC IN THE FAMILY
In the spring of 1999 the Family had a sense of urgency that was bordering on panic. This time the situation was even more pressing than in 1994—before the start of the First Chechen War. Soon, in December 1999, there would be elections for the State Duma, followed by the presidential election in the spring of 2000. According to the constitution, Boris Yeltsin, having served two terms, would have to leave the Kremlin. This imminent change of the country’s leadership was extremely threatening. Yevgeny Primakov, who was appointed prime minister in September 1998 under the pressure of a hostile Duma, was working closely together with Yury Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow. Both men had a good chance of winning the parliamentary elections in December. And one of them could become the next president. Primakov had already threatened to sue all oligarchs who illegally had enriched themselves. This happened at the same time as the Swiss authorities had opened an investigation into the so-called Mabetex affair. Mabetex was a construction company that was said to have paid $15 million in kickbacks to Yeltsin, his two daughters, and senior Kremlin officials, in order to receive a renovation contract for the Kremlin buildings. At the same time US investigators alleged that $10 billion in funds from Russia had been illegally deposited in the Bank of New York. It was suspected that part of it came from a $20 billion loan the IMF had paid to Russia since 1992 to stabilize the economy. Members of the Family were not only afraid that the new leadership would strip them of their newly acquired wealth, but—even worse—they feared that they could end up in prison. There were ominous signs on the wall. Russia’s highest investigator, Procurator General Yury Skuratov, had already begun a series of investigations that included the Mabetex affair and irregularities at Aeroflot and the Russian Central Bank, which were all connected with the Family.[2] It was in this context of a regime in panic that felt itself increasingly cornered, that the search for a suitable successor to Yeltsin began.
In his memoirs Yeltsin wrote about his attempts to find a suitable successor, where “suitable” meant a person who was capable and strong-willed, and at the same time trustworthy enough to give the Family a guarantee that its members would not be persecuted in the courts after Yeltsin would have left office. However, whether or not such a successor could be found in time was very uncertain. Therefore Yeltsin and the Family also prepared for a second option: to declare a state of emergency, disband the Duma, ban the Communist Party, and postpone the elections. On May 16, 1999, however, the option of such a Bonapartist coup d’état was dropped. On this day the Communist opposition in the State Duma failed to muster enough votes to start an impeachment procedure against Yeltsin. (One of the five charges against Yeltsin was, ironically, that he had started the first war against Chechnya.)[3] Immediately after the vote Yeltsin sacked Primakov as prime minister and appointed Sergey Stepashin, minister of the interior and former FSB chief, in his place. It seemed at first that Stepashin was Yeltsin’s ultimate choice for “Operation Successor.” But Yeltsin soon had doubts about the new man. “Stepashin was soft,” Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs, “and he liked to pose a bit. He loved theatrical gestures. I wasn’t certain he could hold out to the end or display that tremendous will and resolve needed in a fierce political battle. I couldn’t imagine a president of Russia without these tough character traits.”[4] Within three months Stepashin was sacked and, on August 9, 1999, he was replaced by the reserved and uncharismatic apparatchik Vladimir Putin.
Whatever option the Family would choose: a Bonapartist coup d’état or “Operation Successor”—in both cases an appropriate climate would have to be created in Russia: in the first case to justify a state of emergency, in the second case to boost the popularity of the Family’s presidential candidate.[5] And again—as in 1994—the Chechen option was chosen. At the end of March 1999 a meeting of the “power ministers” was held in which Sergey Stepashin, at that time still minister of the interior, Igor Sergeyev, minister of defense, Anatoly Kvashnin, head of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Vladimir Putin, director of the FSB, participated.[6] They adopted a plan to intervene militarily in Chechnya. The original plan, considered in March 1999, was more modest than the one that would ultimately be chosen. It intended just “to seal Chechnya off” by creating a cordon sanitaire around the republic. The plan included the occupation of about one third of the Chechen territory north of the river Terek—but it did not include the capture of the capital, Grozny. Additionally, the border zone of Chechnya with Georgia would be occupied. In April the Russian Security Council approved this plan. At that point, this council had, for only a few days, been headed by Putin.
2
Skuratov would soon be dismissed. On March 17, 1999, a video was broadcast on state television showing him naked on a bed with two prostitutes. This was a classic case of Russian
3
John B. Dunlop, “‘Storm in Moscow’: A Plan of the Yeltsin ‘Family’ to Destabilize Russia,” The Hoover Institution (October 8, 2004), 20.
5
How serious the threat of a coup d’état was in May 1999 became clear from the publication in the
6
It was Sergey Stepashin, critical of the war in Chechnya, who, in an article in the