Louis DiMarco - Concrete Hell

The battle for Grozny demonstrated the importance and effects of information operations on urban combat in the digital communications age. The Russian government tried to prevent information leaving the battlefield rather than managing that information. Reporters were barred from moving with Russian troops and observing the battlefield freely from the Russian side. In contrast, the Chechen commanders encouraged the media to observe their operations and interview commanders and soldiers. The Chechens, using the media effectively, managed to portray the battle as sympathetic freedom fighters fighting against the oppressive army of a tyrannical regime. Despite the efforts of the Russian government, information reached the Russian population anyway, but that information often dramatically contradicted official Russian government statements and was sympathetic to the Chechen point of view. The Russian government quickly lost credibility with both the Russian people and the international community. Political opposition to Russian military operations consequently grew rapidly, both within and outside Russia.

The Russian military successfully seized the city of Grozny from the Chechen fighters in 1995. However, the methods they employed indicated the major characteristics of the Russian military. First, it was a blunt military instrument and incapable of precise operations. The Russian military did not outfight the Chechens, it overwhelmed them. Second, Grozny demonstrated that the Russian government did not understand the careful coordination between the instruments of national power necessary for success in urban operations in a digitally connected and global political environment. Russian disregard for information operations, collateral damage, and particularly civilian casualties gave the Chechens significant strategic advantages even as they lost the battle at the tactical level. Those advantages would build over time, and result in Chechen forces recapturing Grozny in the summer of 1996, and in the negotiated withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya that same year. A formal treaty between the Chechen government and the Russian government was signed in 1997 which stabilized the relationship between the two governments until the war began anew in 1999.