Russian Federation: 30 years of existence and a number of wars

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From Chechnya to Syria via Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been involved in several wars since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. A bellicose policy whose military attack in Ukraine on Thursday morning seems to be continuity.

Georgia, Chechnya, Syria…Since the advent of the Russian Federation in 1991, the current master of the Kremlin has involved Russia in numerous conflicts, driven by one objective: to support the powers favorable to Moscow, by crushing their opponents in the blood. An expansionist thought, to which the decision taken by Vladimir Putin, Thursday, February 24, at dawn, seems to echo: after months of tension, the Russian president announced a “military operation” in Ukraine to defend the “republics” self-proclaimed separatists from the east of the country, whose independence he recognized. The master of the Kremlin had massed tens of thousands of soldiers on the Ukrainian borders.

Two bloody wars in Chechnya

At the end of 1994, after having tolerated the de facto independence of Chechnya for three years, Moscow brought in its army to bring this republic of the Russian Caucasus into line. Facing fierce resistance, federal troops withdrew in 1996.

But in October 1999, under the impetus of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, soon to be elected to the presidency, Russian forces entered Chechnya again for an “anti-terrorist operation”, after an attack by Chechen separatists against the Russian Caucasian republic of Dagestan. and several murderous attacks in Russia, attributed to the Chechens by Moscow.

In February 2000, Russia retook the capital Grozny, razed by Russian artillery and air force. But the guerrilla warfare continues. In 2009, the Kremlin decreed the end of its operation, leaving after these two conflicts tens of thousands of dead on both sides.

Russian-Georgian “Lightning War”

In the summer of 2008, Georgia launched a deadly military operation against South Ossetia, a pro-Russian separatist territory that had escaped Tbilisi’s control since the fall of the USSR, and a war in the early 1990s.

Russia responded massively by sending its troops to Georgian territory and inflicted, in the space of five days, a crushing defeat on the former Soviet republic. The fighting left several hundred dead.

In the process, the Kremlin recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist province, and has since maintained a strong military presence there. Westerners denounce a de facto occupation.

Conflict in Ukraine

In 2014, after the pro-European Union movement of Maidan and the flight to Russia of President Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, an annexation not recognized by the international community.

In the aftermath, pro-Russian separatist movements emerged in eastern Ukraine, in Donetsk and Luhansk, Donbass regions bordering Russia. Two republics are self-proclaimed, leading to an intense armed conflict.

Kiev and the West accuse Russia of supporting the separatists by sending men and equipment. Moscow has always denied, recognizing the presence in Ukraine only of Russian “volunteers”. The conflict decreased in intensity from 2015 and the signing of the Minsk Peace Accords.

From the end of 2021, Moscow is carrying out extensive land, air and sea military maneuvers around Ukrainian territory, positioning up to more than 150,000 soldiers on its borders. After several months of tension, Vladimir Putin recognized, on February 21, the independence of the two secessionist republics and ordered his troops to deploy there, before announcing, three days later, a “military operation”. The Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks of a “large-scale invasion”.

Clashes in Ukraine have claimed more than 14,000 lives since 2014.

Intervention in Syria

Since 2015, Russia has been deployed militarily in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The intervention, with a lot of deadly bombardments and massive destruction, changed the course of the war and allowed the regime in Damascus to win decisive victories, regaining the ground it had lost against the rebels and the jihadists.

Moscow has two military bases in Syria: the airfield of Hmeimim, in the northwest of the country, and the port of Tartous, further south. More than 63,000 Russian servicemen served in the Syrian campaign.

With AFP