Maskhadov in 1994

Facing the 40,000-strong Russian invasion force was a makeshift army of barely 1000 Chechen fighters, according to the Chechen Chief of Staff Aslan Maskhadov. Volunteers soon flocked to increase that number several times over, but the number of trained men under arms at the beginning of the war was only in the hundreds, some 500 belonging to the National Guard led by Shamil Basayev, another 200 in the Presidential Guard, and a few more in special forces and security service units.

Maskhadov had only been Chief of Staff for a matter of months. He had resigned from the Russian arm and returned to Chechnya in 1992, when the Ingush-Ossetian conflict threatened to spill over into Chechnya. He was immediately appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of Chechnya's forces. Maskhadov, like all of his generation, was born in exile, in Kazakhstan in1951 He says his family were always fighters, his father and his uncle both fought in their time. At the age of seven he returned with his family to their home village of Zebir-Yurt in northern Chechnya. He joined the Soviet army at the age of eighteen and moved all over Russia and Eastern Europe, passing through Leningrad Academy in 1981 and then serving in Hungary for five years. His ast post was commander of a Soviet artillery division in in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 1986 to 1992. He was regarded as as one of the best artillery officers of hi s year, His men remember him as strict but fair. They noticed he improved the quality of the food, as well as the fitness of both officers and soldiers, joining them on runs and training exercises himself, unlike any other commander.

As with Dudayev, the break-up of the Soviet Union and independence demonstrations in the Baltics brought an awareness of nationalism. He was in Vilnius when civilians were killed as KGB troops stormed the television centre. `I was in Lithuania, in Vilnius during those events. I also thought at that time that the Lithuanians were allowed to do what they wanted, to live under the wing of Russia, they lived normally there. And today it is shameful for me that I had those views and I think differently.' In July 1994 as the clashes against the Chechen opposition grew more serious, Maskhadov took over as Chief of Staff of Chechen forces.

`We did not have a regular army, we did not manage to create one. All those parades, it was for show. When I came back from the Russian army, I knew that Russia was preparing to fight us, I quickly began to bring them up to strength, to prepare, but I did not succeed,' Maskhadov said later.


from: Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus, 1998