What happened after the USSR fell?

A group of politicians calling themselves the National Congress of the Chechen People, led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, declared independence for Chechnya. Initially Moscow didn’t react, but in 1994, troops were sent in to sort out the defiant region and ensure that other republics in the region didn’t follow Chechnya’s example and break away. After some initial gains, the incompetent Russian federal military were forced to pull out in 1996 after dogged guerrilla resistance by the separatist forces led by Aslan Maskhadov. The First Chechen War claimed the lives of up to 100,000 civilians and roughly 15,000 soldiers as well as injuring hundreds of thousands more. A ceasefire agreement, the Khasav-Yurt Accord, was signed in August 1996, giving Chechnya a significant degree of autonomy but not complete independence. In January 1997 Russia recognised the government led by Aslan Maskhadov, who had won the presidential election.

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