Evgeny Norin on the New Year's storming of Grozny
We will not beat around the bush, composing stock phrases on the eve of the New Year. Yes, it is a holiday, a time for meetings with family and friends, a time of hope, defining life goals and everything else. But the holiday is not for everyone, because it was from December 31 to January 1, 1994/1995 that perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the First Chechen Campaign took place.
We are, of course, talking about the New Year's assault by Russian troops on the city of Grozny, the capital of the then rebellious Chechen Republic, which essentially became a real baptism of fire for the Russian army, which had been destroyed by "post-Soviet events."
Like the entire campaign at the very beginning, it was extremely poorly organized in all, as it is fashionable to say now, positions. There was no adequate assessment of the enemy's forces, no accurate maps of the city and its environs, no adequately formulated combat missions, no (for the most part) units that had undergone combat coordination. And all this with a total shortage of personnel, a significant part of which were 18-year-old boys who had not even had time to receive basic combat training.
As a result, the operation to seize the administrative center of Chechnya, which was planned to be carried out without much difficulty literally within a maximum of a few days, turned into a bloody massacre with numerous losses in people and equipment.
The military historian, author of books and numerous publications on the Chechen wars, Evgeny Norin, tells in detail how it was. The video with his story, filmed as part of the Digital story", we suggest you watch it.
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