This episode investigates how Russia, despite overwhelming military power, failed to subdue Chechnya during the First Chechen War. We analyze the chaotic invasion of 1994, the fierce urban warfare in ...

Why has Russia’s military failed to achieve a different outcome in Ukraine than in Chechnya decades earlier, despite years of modernization and investment? The answer lies in Russian president ...

In December 1994, Russian troops launched a brutal and eventually unsuccessful military campaign against Chechen rebels, effectively beginning the First Chechen War. After losing the first and winning ...

Spin Ghul’s desire for jihad started when he was a child in Saudi Arabia. From his elementary school days, he was determined to become a religious soldier.

For most people today, the word Chechnya immediately brings to mind Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian leader who governs the region as a loyal vassal of Vladimir Putin. It evokes images of a turbulent ...

Moscow is cracking down on complaints calling for the return of troops three years after the draft that shocked Russia ...

SOCHI, Russia -- Natasha Yaroslavtseva's son Sasha hanged himself almost a year ago. He was 21, and just back from the war in Chechnya. Back to Sochi, the famous and now run-down Soviet-era resort on ...

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 131. Mark Galeotti is the author of Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine, published by Osprey and out in paperback now For all that ...

Iya Rashevska was told her husband – a member of the country’s armed forces – had gone missing in the frontline in the eastern Donetsk region, in April 2023. The news of Serhiy Skotarenko’s ...

More than three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, two films premiering in the Venice Days sidebar of the Venice Film Festival explore a different conflict that embroiled ...