In early morning on December 31, 1994, Russian armored armadas started assaulting the Chechen capital. A 90,000 gang of aggressors supported by 6,000 pieces of the heavy and light military hardware, artillery complexes, rocket missile launch facilities and subsidiary weapons and equipment, entered Dzhoxar (former Grozny) from three sides under a permanent aerial cover and massive air raids.

Under the order of the Chechen command, columns of the Russian military vehicles were allowed, as on October 26, 1994, during the assault of Grozny (today Dzhoxar) by pro-Moscow opposition, to enter the center of the city. Then the famous Chechen counterattack started. In one day only, advanced Russian army detachments and military equipment were eliminated.

Fierce fighting took place right near the Presidential Palace. Mobile groups of foot Chechen soldiers and villagers fired with grenade launchers at tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Few Chechen tanks broke to the city center from time to time and attacked the enemies. However, on the third day of the fighting, the Chechen headquarters stopped using Chechen APC’s because the village soldiers shot on them, thinking sometimes that they were Russian.

The vice-president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, exerted general command on site and the chief of the main staff of the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, guided directly the defense of the city from the Presidential Palace.

The President Dzhoxar Dudaev stayed in a reserve headquarters in the settlement Aldy west of Grozny at that time and coordinated the operations of the Armed Forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

The Chechen mujahedeen, who consisted mainly of people’s home guard, smashed the assaulting Russian army in the battles on December, 31, 1994, and in subsequent days of January 1995. Then followed many other storms where Chechen fighters and village soldiers showed unbending power and courage.

Hundreds of pieces of military equipment and thousands of killed aggressors’ bodies rolled in the streets of the Chechen capital. Whole Russian regiments and brigades were defeated in those unexampled battles. Hundreds of invaders were captured.

The battles for Grozny were proceeding for two and a half months. The total losses of the Russian army in the battles for Grozny made 18,000 to 22,000 soldiers and officers. More than 1,200 pieces of the military equipment were burnt with Chechen grenade launchers.

Well known is the battle for the railway station, where the Russian Maikop Motorized Brigade was completely destroyed.

Only in mid-March 1995, last large subdivisions of the Chechen army left the capital and on the order by Shamil Basayev blasted the TV tower.

Russian propaganda is still trying to diminish the complete military success of the Chechen army, 90 per cent of which consisted of simple village soldiers who took submachine guns for the first time in their lives.

The occupation command and Russian generals piled up heaps of lies about non-existent “Dudaev’s pillboxes and bunkers”, many-tier “defensive lines” which had to be “taken for the cost of the incredible efforts and heroism of Russian soldiers”, about mythical mercenary-professionals and Baltic biathlon-sniper girls who got paid with 1,000 dollars per day by Dudaev.

The author of this article is a first-hand participant of those events and can testify that Russian General Rokhlin’s division, for instance, was immobilized during one and a half month by several dozens Chechen fighters who defended the positions at the Communist Youth House, the building of the Stary District Communist Party Committee, the building of the Council of Ministers and Hotel “Caucasus”.

The only irresistible force for the Russian armada was a simple Chechen village soldier who came to fight relying on Allah’s grace.

I.Said for Kavkaz Center