CHECHEN WARS: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History





Published in 2023 by Hourly History.

I chose to read this short history about Chechnya in order to be a bit more informed about Putin's wars in Chechnya and then apply that knowledge to the war in Ukraine. What I read does not inspire confidence.

Chechnya is an unfortunate victim of geography - it lies in a buffer zone between traditional great powers - the Russians, the Ottoman Turks, and the Persians. Even worse, they are on a natural land bridge between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Throw in a religious difference between Russia and the Chechens and you have even more trouble.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya made a serious effort at independence that ended up in multiple military incursions by the Russians and decades of on and off irregular warfare (think guerrilla warfare plus outright terrorism).

For their part, the Russians responded with their own forms of irregular warfare - assassinations, possible false flag operations, and more.

As I read this, the tit for tat back and forth actions just sort of blend together and in the end it was hard for this outsider to see which corrupt oligarchy The West should support. 

Back to what I referred to in the first paragraph - what can some knowledge of the Chechen Wars tell us about the war in Ukraine? To me it says that Russia has a very solid sense of what territories it believes legitimately belong to Russia and it will hang on to that territory, even if it comes with tremendous costs.

Considering that Ukraine is much closer in a cultural sense to Russia than Chechnya is, this bodes poorly for Ukraine. I'm not saying Ukraine should be abandoned (far from it!), but this is going to be a very long-term issue.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Chechen Wars: A History from Beginning to End. 

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