|
|
On 2 August
1999 the Chechen armed detachments invaded Dagestan hoping to
destabilize the situation in the neighboring republic by drawing on
the support of the large Chechen minority there. Substantial Russian
forces were immediately deployed in Dagestan to repel the Chechen
armed units. The leaders of Dagestan
demanded that Maskhadov dissociate himself from the Chechen warlords
who led their units into Dagestan and condemn the invasion.
Maskhadov, however, refused to do so. |
In September
the Chechen separatists were blamed for the terrorist acts unheard
of in Russian history: four residential blocks were razed to the
ground by bomb explosions, one in Dagestan, two in Moscow, and one
in southern Russia, causing hundreds of casualties. The Dagestan
affair and the horrendous explosions across Russia sealed the fate
of Chechen independence. The Russian leadership mounted a
large-scale antiterrorist operation involving army units and the
police and succeeded in routing organized armed detachments of the
separatists.
If in 1995
nearly two-thirds of the Russian population were against the
military solution of the Chechen problem, in 1999 an equal share of
the population supported the preservation of Russia’s territorial
integrity by force of arms. The reasons for this turnabout in the
popular mood in relation to the Chechnya problem are not hard to
figure. Russian society became completely disaffected with the
results of the “Chechen revolution,” as the so-called fighters for
national self-determination revealed their true colors as cutthroats
and terrorists, blowing up residential blocks.
Tired of
economic and political instability and military reverses, Russian
society yearned for victory. The news of the military successes of
the federal troops in repelling the attacks of Chechen armed bands
in Dagestan gave people hope that the Chechen problem could be
resolved by military means after all and that the government’s
strong-armed tactics could work in stabilizing Russia’s situation as
a whole. These hopes were associated, first of all, with the rising
political star of Vladimir Putin, who was appointed prime minister
several days after the start of the Chechen invasion of Dagestan.
In addition,
NATO’s military operation in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 had
provided a demonstration to Russian political and military elites of
the viability of the military solution. “If the West is allowed to
pursue its political objectives by bombing civilian targets in a
foreign country, then surely nothing can stop us doing the same in
our own country,” was the sentiment shared by many among the Russian
military.
