Russian Conflicts After 1991 - Part One

Today, we begin a two-part series to discuss the conflicts that have plagued Russia and its neighbors after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. If you'd like to support the podcast with a small monthly donation, click this link - https://www.buzzsprout.com/385372/support

Transcript

Episode 281 - Russian Conflicts After 1991 – Part One

Last time, we finished up our two-part series on the turning points of Russian and Soviet history. While we ended in 1991, there were many conflicts that the newly formed Russian Federation got themselves into. In this episode, we will talk about the first nine of the total of nineteen of them. There are quite a few more, but these are the most important.

While researching this topic, I came across a number of sites that broke down the conflicts based on geography. The most common were those wars in the North Caucasus, South Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. Instead, I will use a timeline method to show how steady the stream of fights the now dismantled Soviet Union was facing, especially between Russia and its former partners.

After the breakup of the USSR, there was a naïve belief in the West that the former Soviet states would evolve a new democratic system, hoping to shed the repressive communist ideals. In hindsight, it seems like a ridiculous thought, but having lived through it, I also hoped and believed it. That was a significant mistake, something that would haunt us to this very day, with the conflict in Ukraine being a prime example. While there were wars in Central Asia, they were all internal conflicts that did not involve Russia.

The first war began before the breakup but continued for years after. It occurred in the South Caucasus and is known as the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Obviously, with a name like that, there is a second one, but we will only get to that next episode as it begins in 2020. 

As the Soviet Union began showing signs of collapse in the late-1980s, several separatist movements flourished. This separatist conflict leads to the de facto independence of the Republic of Artsakh, also known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. On the one side, we have the opposition led by the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Israel, Turkey, and for a short time, Russia. On the side of the Artsakh people, we have Armenia, Greece, and towards the end, Russia. It would begin relatively peacefully in 1988, but it would eventually lead to extreme ethnic violence.

The region had a majority of Armenians, with a substantial number of ethnic Azerbaijanis living there as well. The conflict would gradually grow into an increasingly violent conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in ethnic cleansing, including the Sumgait in 1988 and Baku in 1990, pogroms that were directed against Armenians, and the Gugark pogrom of 1988 and Khojaly Massacre of 1992 directed against Azerbaijanis.

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan are an old conflict. A war broke out between the two countries in 1918 and was settled in 1920 when the Russians intervened. Ethnic hatred between the two would fester for decades until the USSR began to falter. The ensuing war would cost the lives of over 35,000 people, with the Azerbaijanis taking the bulk of the losses.

After six years of fighting and the Armenian-backed Artsakh army having a clear shot at the Azerbaijan capital of Baku, Russia decided to act as a peacekeeper. There was good reason for the Azerbaijan leadership to sue for peace, as the ethnic Armenians were more than willing to fight. As Russian professor Georgi Mirsky put it, "Karabakh does not matter to Azerbaijanis as much as it does to Armenians. Probably, this is why young volunteers from Armenia proper have been much more eager to fight and die for Karabakh than the Azerbaijanis have." As Andrei Sakharov famously remarked: "For Azerbaijan, the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life or death." Peace, if you could call it that, would be declared on May 12, 1994.

Hostilities would continue between the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and the beginning of the Second War. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War led to strong anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan and an obvious anti-Azerbaijani sentiment in Armenia. 

The second conflict we will discuss, based in Eastern Europe, is also the longest-running one. It began before the breakup of the Soviet Union on August 2, 1990. and is still going on to this day in late August of 2023. It is known as the Transnistria Conflict. This dispute is considered an ongoing frozen conflict between Moldova and the unrecognized state of Transnistria. According to international relations, a frozen conflict is a situation in which active armed conflict has been brought to an end, but no peace treaty or other political framework resolves the conflict. This is a common issue within the former Soviet countries. One example of a frozen conflict is between North and South Korea. 

Transnistria is a region of Moldova that has yearned for independence for quite some time. The region's origins can be traced to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, formed in 1924 within the Ukrainian SSR. It is a land between the Dniester River and the border of Ukraine. Hence the name Transnistria, translated from Romanian, means "beyond the Dniester River."

The first use of the term Transnistria comes from a speech by poet and politician Leonida Lari. “I will throw out the invaders, aliens, and mankurt over the Dniester, I will throw them out of Transnistria, and you, the Romanians, are the real owners of this long-suffering land ... We will make them speak Romanian, respect our language, our culture!" This open conflict would lead to the Transnistrian War, which we will discuss in a bit. While only three post-Soviet unrecognized states: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Artsakh, have acknowledged the right of Transnistria to be autonomous of Moldova, the people there are for it. In 2006 two ballot initiatives were placed in front of the people. The first was "Renunciation of independence and potential future integration into Moldova"; the second was "Independence and potential future integration into Russia". The results of this double referendum were that a large section of the population was against the first statement (96.61%) and in favor of the second one (98.07%). 

Our next conflict is in the South Caucasus, known as the 1991-2 South Ossetia War. It was fought between Georgian government forces and ethnic Georgian militia on one side and the forces of South Ossetia and North Ossetian volunteers who wanted South Ossetia to secede from Georgia and become an independent state on the other. The Ossetians were backed by Russia.

The conflict began in the 1920s when the South Ossetians allied with the Russian Bolsheviks against the newly independent Menshevik Georgia. We know that the Bolsheviks would eventually win, and as a reward, South Ossetia was given autonomous oblast status within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Tensions between ethnic Ossetians and Georgians were relatively low during Soviet times but would reemerge in 1988. Hostilities would begin on January 5, 1991, while the Soviet Union was still in marginal power. 

Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected after Georgia became independent with the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991. His policies favored native Georgians at the expense of other minorities within his country. South Ossetian was furious and demanded autonomy. South Ossetian forces consisted of militia, volunteers from North Ossetia, and other regions in North Caucasus. Most of their equipment and arms were former Soviet arms abandoned following the breakup of the Soviet Union. They were, admittedly, a rag-tag band of fighters, but they did have support from the Russian Federation, much to the chagrin of former Georgian President Edvard Shevardnadze. 

While there was no reason the Ossetians would have any chance of winning this conflict, serious issues occurred within Georgia at the time. The Georgian Civil War broke out on December 22, 1991, but we will get to that shortly. A ceasefire agreement was agreed to on June 24,1992. It left South Ossetia divided into areas controlled by Georgia and areas controlled by the unrecognized government of South Ossetia.

Our fourth conflict was the aforementioned Georgian Civil War. It would last a little over two years, ending on December 31, 1993. At its heart were inter-ethnic and international conflicts in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as the violent military coup d'état against the first democratically-elected President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and his subsequent uprising in an attempt to regain power. With Russian backing and the re-emergence of the previous President of Georgia during the Gorbachev years, Edvard Shevardnadze, 

Gamsakhurdia, while democratically elected, was a tyrant in every sense of the word, although the government that supplanted him was not significantly different. Gamsakhurdia was considered an anti-Soviet dissident who championed Georgian nationalism. The coup against the Georgian president was led by warlords Tengiz Kitovani, Jaba Ioseliani, and Tengiz Sigua, two of which were formerly allied with Gamsakhurdia. 

Forced to flee to Chechnya, Gamsakhurdia returned to Georgia and tried to regain power in 1993. Despite initial success, the rebellion was eventually crushed by the government forces with the help of the Russian military. Gamsakhurdia would die under suspicious circumstances in early 1994 while hiding in a stronghold of his supporters. Due to the nature of his death, it has been speculated that he was betrayed and killed by someone from his own circle under the instruction of the Georgian government.

Our next fight is back to an area in Eastern Europe we discussed earlier. It is the escalation of the Transnistrian Conflict into a full-out war. Beginning on March 1, 1992, pro-Transnistrian forces, known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic or PMR, started to work with the Russian 14th Army to plan attacks on Moldovia. The Moldavians had the support of Romania, and at first, it looked like they would win the war. 

The Russian support, and in particular the 14th Army, changed everything. On June 22, 1992, acting on news that troops from Russia were ready to cross the Dniester and move deep into Moldova, the Moldovan military ordered an airstrike to destroy the bridge between Bender and Tiraspol. While it failed to deliver a direct hit, it signaled to both sides that there was a need to end hostilities. That would occur on July 21, 1993, but the tension between Moldovia and Transnistria continues to this day.

We head back to the South Caucasus in the area of Georgia with the start of the War of Abkhazia, which began on August 14, 1992. As with most early conflicts, this war was between insurgent natives and the government. You had Abkhaz separatist forces, Russian government armed forces, and North Caucasian militants facing off against the Georgian army.

This was a war of ethnic cleansing. The Georgians would suffer grievously at the hands of the Abkhaz forces as they were backed by the Russians in their ongoing tension with their Georgian neighbor. Hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced, along with thousands being murdered by both sides. Even after a ceasefire, mediated by Moscow, was signed on September 3, 1992, it would not hold for long. The Russians knew that the Abkhaz would break the ceasefire almost immediately. It was a typical response from Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Abkhaz forces would break the treaty on October 1st. The Abkhaz regular army was supported by Chechens and Cossacks from the militarized Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, along with Russian troops. The Georgians would have little chance to protect their people as they had kept their end of the bargain and had withdrawn many of their forces. It was a typical Moscow lie that they would repeat time after time. Russia aimed to weaken any of its stronger neighbors by funding and aiding any separatists in the area. The eventual goal was to weaken countries like Georgia and Ukraine enough to bring them back into the Russian Empire. 

On April 4, 1994, the "declaration on measures for a political settlement of the Georgian-Abkhazian Conflict" was signed in Moscow. While this ended the overt violence, it didn't finish the misery for the people of the region, especially those of Georgian ethnicity in the Abkhaz area. They were told to leave the country immediately or face the consequences. Most took that as a warning and left.

Our next war was waged in the North Caucasus, known as the First Chechen War. This would begin on December 11, 1994, and would rage on for just short of two years. This, as opposed to some of the other conflicts, was a war of independence in which the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria waged against the Russian Federation. The Chechen forces had been involved in some of the other separatist movements in the Caucasus, but this one was in their home territory.

The animosity between the Chechen, Ingush people, and Russia is long and contentious. It began under the reign of Ivan the Terrible. An alliance between Muscovy and Temryuk of Kabarda was formed to gain ground in the central Caucasus for the expanding Tsardom of Russia against stubborn Vainakh defenders.

The first significant incursion was made during the time of Peter the Great when he launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723. The Russians grabbed a substantial area of the Caucasus from the Persians, including lands populated by a people known as the Nakh. The Nakh include the Chechens and Ingush and are thought to have come from the Alans of the Iranian region. 

This animosity would fester over the centuries until we reached Soviet rule. Chechnya and Ingushetia were combined to form the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In the 1930s, during the Holodomor, tens of thousands of Ukrainians poured into the CIASS. During the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis, Chechen, and Ingushetia forces fought bravely against the enemy. Unfortunately for them, Stalin accused them of collaborating with the Nazis, a totally false accusation. Because of this, deported during Operation Lentil to the Kazakh SSR (later Kazakhstan) in 1944, near the end of World War II, where over 60% of Chechen and Ingush populations perished.

Russian estimates claim that between 125 and 200,000 natives from this region were deported, but Chechen sources claim it was over 400,000. A 60% death rate would put the toll at between 75 and 240,000 people. In 2004, the European Parliament designated the deportation as genocide. 

Over 400,000 Chechens and Ingush people returned to their homeland after Stalin’s death. Khrushchev wanted to reverse many of the repressive policies of the late leader, and this was a big one. Many who returned had deep distrust and hatred of the Russians, which would boil over in 1994.

The Chechens declared independence on September 6, 1991. This was before the dissolution of the USSR and was widely panned by the Soviet government. The All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP) party, created by the former Soviet Air Force general Dzhokhar Dudayev, stormed a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic with the aim of asserting independence. The storming caused the death of the head of Grozny's branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Vitaliy Kutsenko, who was defenestrated or fell while trying to escape. This effectively dissolved the government of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Republic of the Soviet Union. For those of you who don't know what defenestration is, it is literally throwing someone out an upper-story window.

Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected President of Chechnya by an overwhelming majority. The Soviet Union declared that the election was illegal. The Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic split in two in June 1992 amidst the Ingush armed conflict against another Russian republic, North Ossetia. The newly created Republic of Ingushetia joined the Russian Federation, while Chechnya declared complete independence from Moscow in 1993 as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

In the ensuing years between 1991 to 1994, tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity left the republic due to harassment and threats of violence. Boris Yeltsin had tried to invade Chechnya but was unsuccessful in all of his attempts. Behind the scenes, the Russians supported the opposition to Dudayev and his supporters. They also attempted several clandestine assaults, which failed clumsily.

On December 11, 1994, five days after Dudayev and Russian Minister of Defense Gen. Pavel Grachev of Russia had agreed to "avoid the further use of force", Russian forces entered the republic in order to "establish constitutional order in Chechnya and to preserve the territorial integrity of Russia." Grachev boasted he could topple Dudayev in a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment and proclaimed that it would be "a bloodless blitzkrieg that would not last any longer than 20 December." As you can see, this is a common thread with the Russians, even before the ascension of Putin. Lie about wanting peace, then immediately attack and invade. 

Initially, the Russians made headway toward the capital of Grozny. They would meet heavy resistance over the course of the first year and a half, with significant losses making the war increasingly unpopular back home. With the 1996 presidential elections in Russia nearing, Boris Yeltsin's government sought a way out of the conflict. The Khasavyurt Accord was signed on August 31, 1996, ending overt hostilities.

The next conflict was another War in Abkhazia, launched on May 18, 1998. It would last 12 months and one week, ending on May 26, 1998. Georgia initiated This battle to regain the territories they lost in the first War in Abkhazia. This was one of the smaller conflicts, as it only consisted of about 2,500 combatants. Still, it caused over 30,000 Georgians to evacuate the region. 

The last conflict we will cover in this episode is the War of Dagestan. This short-lived fight began on August 7, 1999, and ended on September 14th of the same year. This was a profoundly religious insurgency that started when the Chechen-based Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB), an Islamist group led by Shamil Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Ramzan Akhmadov, and Arbi Barayev, invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan. It would end up with a total victory by the Russian forces that backed the government of Dagestan. 

The significance of this war is that it ignited the Second Chechen War, which will begin in the next episode. 

So, I hope you enjoyed today's discussion. Join men next time when we wrap up this short series with a review of the last nine conflicts that involve Russia, all the way to the war with Ukraine, and some of my thoughts about it.

So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba za Vineyamineya.