RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

arms and financial aid for their increasing military activities in the summer of 1994. Moscow’s
assistance culminated in what proved to be an ill-fated decision to secure clear military superiority
for the opposition in November 1994. More than 70 tanks, helicopters, combat aircraft and Russian
officers recruited by the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service (FSK) were sent to join the opposition
forces in Nadterechny. After a failed assault on Grozny on 26 November, 70 Russian servicemen
were captured by Chechen forces, revealing the hand of Moscow, and prompting a sudden upsurge
in support for Dudayev. 133 With Dudayev’s support increased again, it seemed to Moscow that its
whole policy of supporting the Chechen opposition had failed miserably.
The decision to back the opposition in Nadterechny was the logical outcome of the policy of
promoting pro-Russian forces enshrined in the December 1992 Security Council report. It was also
in keeping with a general trend in Russian policy towards the former Soviet republics in 1992 and
1993. Here, financial and indirect military assistance was given to nominally pro-Russian forces in
Moldova, Azerbaijan and Georgia; and destabilizing economic and political pressure was
successfully exerted on the Baltic States, Ukraine and Central Asia to bolster Russia’s strategic
position. 134
In the absence of some new internal or external frame of reference, Moscow’s approach was
conditioned by the old Soviet practice of “divide and rule” in the North Caucasus. Internally, there
were no constitutional mechanisms or instruments in place for dealing with a crisis like Chechnya,
and with the ultimate structure of the Russian Federation still unresolved Moscow had nothing
concrete to offer the republic in terms of guaranteed rights. 135 Externally, the international system
has no protocol for dealing with such a complex situation where a nationally-defined administrative
unit secedes from a state that is itself the newly-recognized successor state to a large multi-ethnic
Empire—apart from to discourage it. The general political environment, therefore, consigned both
Russia and Chechnya to operate in legal limbo. The initiative was thus with the side that could bring
the most force to bear to break-out of the impasse—Russia.
8. The Third Russian Military Intervention in Chechnya:
133 See for example, John Thornhill, “Chechnya Threat to Russian Lives: Breakaway republic warns that captured
fighters face execution,” Financial Times, November 29, 1994.
134 See Hill and Jewett, Back in the USSR for a discussion of Russia’s political and economic intervention in these
republics.
135 Chechnya had seceded before the dissolution of the USSR and, therefore, when the old Soviet Constitution was
still in place. Under the provisions of the Soviet Constitution, as outlined in Section I on the structural legacy of
the USSR, as an ASSR (autonomous republic) rather than an SSR (union republic), Chechnya did not have the
right to secede. Its declaration of independence was, therefore, illegal in 1991. However, the old Soviet
Constitution was later rendered invalid by the 1992 Federal Treaty and the 1993 Russian Constitution, which
became the two primary documents for regulating relations between the Russian Federation and its constituent
units. Chechnya rejected both of these documents, and refused to conclude an interim bilateral treaty with
Moscow. This meant that, in the post-Soviet period, there was no common body of legislation for Moscow and
Grozny to refer to in their dispute.
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