In the three months of fighting, for two of which Grozny was fully encircled, the Russian Army and their Chechen allies failed to achieve any tangible results in a single sector defended by the militiamen. What’s more, they could not stop the evacuation of the severely wounded and the sick from the besieged city, nor the entry into the capital of small numbers of fresh groups, composed almost entirely of ‘old school’ warriors. While these groups could not influence the outcome of the battle, they were badly needed to lift the morale of the besieged. The fact that the resistance could sneak in new groups and remove the wounded meant that the blockade was porous.
Here’s an illustration. In January 2000, an ad hoc group headed by a commander whose call sign was ‘Abu Huraira’, armed to the teeth and with a full cadre, carrying no ID whatsoever (as you’d expect for a special-forces unit), passed all the many roadblocks and entered Grozny in a minibus. They had come from a Chechen border checkpoint, where they’d carried out a special assignment for the command. I met them and talked to their commander.
‘How did you manage to cross through all the enemy checkpoints without any problems? You were driving through enemy-controlled territory, after all.’
‘It was easy. We armed ourselves, got in the minibus, put at the wheel one of our men who’s infiltrated the enemy and has a Russian pass, and set off.’
‘And why did he need ID if none of you had any?’
‘Well, of course he needed it! If you have a full crew who are meant to be sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage attacks, you can easily arouse suspicion. If you ran into a top pro at one of the checkpoints, he could ask all sorts of questions. So your story is that the driver’s taking you to your destination, linking you up with your contacts and driving back so he can return later to pick you up again.’
‘Did you come to Grozny on orders from the command?’
‘No. After we’d completed our mission, our orders were to stay at the base awaiting further instruction. But our comrades were being killed here in the siege. And we managed to persuade Angel[41] to allow us to join our brothers-in-arms.’
‘Your unit was among those involved in the legendary defence of Bamut in the last war. Tell me, is this war different from the first war? And if so, in what way?’
‘Oh, there’s a huge difference, especially in the type of warfare. In the first war, most of the civilian casualties were from the airstrikes and shelling; this time round there are far more victims from the deliberate destruction of peaceful villages, the killing of civilians. And then there are the ‘cleansing operations’. This time the villagers cannot talk the Russians out of destroying the villages visited by the resistance. Yes, and Russia has prepared much more thoroughly and seriously for this war.’
‘Do you think they’ll take the capital?’
‘They’ll only take Grozny if we decide to abandon it.’
‘How do you think the war will end?’
‘It can only go one way. At some point Russia will leave our homeland. This war is the beginning of the end for Russia. It’s producing thousands of Russian killing machines whose minds are unbalanced, and the ones who survive this slaughterhouse will take back home to Russia ideas about the value of human life they picked up here. Russia is not just at war with us, Russia’s at war with its own citizens. They are preparing butchers for their own people.’
‘And does that make you happy?’
‘No. It pains us. The Russian people have suffered enormously under all sorts of rulers as it is, and now they’re preparing a new set of death squads to use against them. On the other hand, who’s to say? Maybe the Russian people somehow deserve their fate? Nothing ever happens by chance in this world. It’s all the will of God.’
‘And do our people deserve this war?’
‘Perhaps they do to a certain degree. We let this clique of Kremlin crooks and all the undercover Russian agents give our nation a bad image all over the world; we let them drag us into this war. Unfortunately, both the innocent and the guilty are now paying the price. Just like in the story about the Prophet Moses.’
‘Do you think the incursion into Dagestan was a betrayal of the Chechen national interest?’
‘No. We’re certain that Shamil[42] and his men were tricked into it, just as they tricked our entire people.’
‘What about the current situation? Do you see this as a religious war?’
‘It’s a war for freedom. You can be a believer without the need for a war. If you believe, then no one can take that faith away from you. For us, the war will end when the Russian Army leaves Chechnya.’
And this was how the majority of fighters defending the capital felt, even if some individuals, and some groups too, stubbornly insisted this was a war of religion. It is telling that the ranks of the resistance included many Russians. They were Christians, yet they fought valiantly ‘not against Russia but against the Federal Army’. Each had volunteered. There wasn’t a single prisoner forced to fight against the Russians among them. Such a tactic would have been far too risky in a war like this.
As much as the defenders wanted them to, this time the Russians did not pluck up the nerve to storm Grozny. And so Grozny – meaning ‘terrible’ in Russian and named by General Yermolov in the nineteenth century to strike terror into the Chechens – did indeed become a symbol of terror for Yermolov’s Russian heirs in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Russian Army stubbornly continued to pound the city. And the encircled militiamen just as stubbornly continued to hold on to their capital. The city had long ago ceased to have any strategic importance, but for the warring sides possession of Grozny had a psychological importance. They were like two tarantulas locked in mortal combat, unable to back down. Yet victory in this battle would be pyrrhic. Siege warfare is essentially a war of nerves, a battle of the spirit. And from this battle of the spirit Grozny’s defenders emerged victorious.
6
Encirclement, blockade, siege. These synonyms, used exclusively in the context of war, have struck fear in me since childhood. Like some impending doom, from which you could only escape with help from outside. In the Soviet films and history textbooks, war always meant combat action: there was a front and a rear, and the fighters had freedom of manoeuvre. If the enemy became trapped, the outcome was clear. When the enemy were encircled, they were doomed. They could never break free. All they could do was surrender unconditionally. And nobody ever came to their rescue; our valiant Soviet Army wouldn’t allow that. Whereas our men would always break out of an encirclement or blockade, and with minimal losses to boot. Because our side was fighting for the beloved Soviet system, the motherland and the Party. Meaning we’d fight on ferociously, and help was sure to come. The command would never give up on trapped soldiers. No matter what, our comrades would break through the blockade to come to our aid. That’s what we were taught in our textbooks.
However, history also tells of other battles, in earlier times, when a fortress could withstand a siege for a long period, sometimes even for years. But these were mighty forts, specially designed for prolonged siege warfare. They had thick walls of stone, deep moats, tall ramparts, strong garrisons and ample supplies of food and ammunition. Yet by the start of the twentieth century, even the mightiest of forts had become irrelevant to modern warfare. And what of the twenty-first century? There are no tall stone walls, no mighty cannons, no deep moats in modern siege warfare. There are none of the essentials for a fort under siege.