Following a sequence of terrorism-related incidents, most notably the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Putin administration in Russia portrayed its entire conflict with Chechnya (1994–6 and from 1999 onwards) successfully to the outside world as part of the global war against terrorism. Internationally, the need to maintain the US-led coalition against Islamic fundamentalism persuaded foreign leaders to downplay other crucial elements in this complex and multi-layered confrontation. In Russia, the demonization of all shades of Chechen resistance, intensified since the apartment bombs of Autumn 1999 and reinforced by the sieges of Dubrovka and Beslan, helped maintain support for Putin's hard line and uncompromising policy in Chechnya.

A War Like No Other

A curious feature of the Russo-Chechen conflict is the lengths that successive Russian administrations have gone to avoid depicting the confrontation as a ‘war’, while throughout Russia, Chechnya and the rest of the world it is routinely referred to as the ‘Russo-Chechen war’ or the ‘war in Chechnya’.

Whereas President Yeltsin's campaign (1994–6) for the ‘restoration of constitutional order’ was generally perceived, both in Russia and abroad, to be little more than a fig leaf for a war aimed at preventing Chechnya's secession, President Putin's equally euphemistic ‘counter-terrorism operation’ (1999 to date), has not been subjected to the same disparagement. Indeed, Putin has managed, albeit not entirely successfully, to have the entire Russo-Chechen conflict retrospectively viewed as part of the global war against terrorism.