Casualties of the Second Chechen War

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Main article: Second Chechen War

Note: Some of these figures include the First Chechen War of 1994-1996. They usually don't include the death toll in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and other neighbouring regions of North Caucasus, where the violence spilled-off from Chechnya.

1 Official figures
2 Independent estimates
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Official figures

The following figures are not confirmed by serious academic sources or researches. Military casualty figures from both sides are impossible to verify and are generally believed to be higher, while civilian casualty estimates vary widely.

In May 2000, Chechen rebels reported on their website that they have lost 1,380 men since fighting started with Russia in the breakaway republic. On the Russian side, military officials said they had lost 2,004 soldiers.^[1]

In September 2000, the Prague Watchdog compiled the widely conflicting list of casualties and enemy losses officially announced by both sides in the first year of the conflict.

In November 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed 2,600 deaths among Russian servicemen to date.^[2]

On May 29, 2001, Russian presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembski announced that 3,096 federal servicemen have been killed in Chechnya since October 1999.

This number was in contrast with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's announcement on the previous day, according to which the Center for Registration of Servicemen listed 2,682 killed soldiers since August 1999, including 2,026 Defense Ministry servicemen.^[3]

By December 2002, the official death toll for federal troops was about 4,705.^[4] This was still not updated by July 2003.^[5]

In October 2003, Colonel-General Nikolai Rogozhkin, chief of the Internal Troops staff, told that a total of 2,898 Russian Army soldiers and 4,720 troops of law enforcement agencies died since October 1, 1999.^[6] Russia also claimed her forces had killed more than 15,000 rebels since August 1999.

The Chechen separatist sources in 2003 cited figures of some 250,000 civilians, and up to 50,000 Russian servicemen, killed during the 1994-2003 period. The rebel side also acknowledged about 5,000 separatist combatants killed as of 1999-2004, mostly in the initial phases of the war.

In November 2004, the chairman of Chechnya's pro-Moscow State Council, Taus Djabrailov, said over 200,000 people have been killed in the Chechen Republic since 1994, including over 20,000 children.^[7] In August 2005, Djabrailov gave a conflicting figure of 160,000 killed, mostly Russians.^[8]

In June 2005, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, a deputy prime minister in the Kremlin-controlled Chechen administration, said about 300,000 people have been killed during two wars in Chechnya over the past decade; he also said that more than 200,000 people have gone missing. Every resident of Chechnya has scores of relatives who have been killed or gone missing, he said.^[9]

According to the figures released by the Russian Defense Ministry in August 2005, more than 3,450 Russian Armed Forces soldiers have been killed in action since 1999.^[10] This death toll does not include losses of the Internal Troops, Federal Security Service, Russian police and a local paramilitaries.^[11]

In September 2006, Anatoly Kulikov, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma committee on security said that In the 12 years of our Russian antiterrorist war in the Chechen Republic, aggregate losses among the federal forces, illegal armed groups and civilians are estimated at about 45,000 people.^[12]

In November 2006, acting Chechen Interior Minister Sultan Satuyev said that the 624 employees of the republic's Interior Ministry had been killed and 941 wounded since the start of the "anti-terrorist operation" in 1999.^[13]

Same month, self-exiled separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev said that "Putin has already killed more than 250,000 innocent Chechens".^[14]

In September 2007, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev of the Regional Tactical Command reported that almost 1,000 Russian police officers were killed during the second war in Chechnya.^[15]

Same month, Major-General Alexander Kerilin, the head of the memorial center of the Armed Forces, said that about 6,668 servicemen had been killed in Chechnya since 1994,^[16] a much lower number than the previous official figures of around 10,000.^[17]

In October 2007, Chechnya's Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said that 1,045 Chechen police officers have died, 2,852 were wounded, and 106 were disabled "during anti-terrorist operations".^[18] In January 2008 Alkhanov said 72 militants were killed in Chechnya in 2007.^[19]

[edit] Independent estimates

In 2000, the Russian weekly Nezavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye (Independent Military Review) compiled an incomplete list of 1,176 military servicemen fallen in Chechnya during the first year of conflict. If available the list included name, year and place of birth, rank and military unit, place, date and cause of death.^[20]

For the period from 1994 to 2003, estimates ranged from 50,000 to 250,000 civilians and 10,000 to 50,000 Russian servicemen killed. Given that almost certainly both sides have tended to exaggerate enemy military casualties while minimizing their own and grossly underestimating its responsibility for civilian losses, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society set the conservative estimate of death toll in this time period at about 150,000 - 200,000 civilians, 20,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers, and possibly the same amount of Chechen rebels.^[6]

In February 2003, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, estimated that some 11,000 servicemen have been killed, with another 25,000 wounded, since 1999. It also estimated the civilian death toll at about 20,000 people.^[4] Their estimate for the earlier Chechen war was 14,000 dead troops as compared with the official figure of 5,500.

According to 2003 Military Balance, the annual report International Institute for Strategic Studies, the British-based think-tank, Russian forces suffered 4,749 dead in Chechnya between August 2002 and August 2003.^[21]

In 2004, the British strategic-research centre Jane's Information Group estimated that the federal forces in Chechnya suffered some 9,000 to 11,000 combat deaths during the second war's most intense phase, from its beginning in late summer 1999 to early 2002. In 2003, they lost roughly 3,000 dead.^[22]

In 2004, the human rights group Memorial estimated the amount of civilian casualties of both wars at "more than 200,000" and the amount of Russian soldiers killed at 20,000 to 40,000 ^[23]

In 2006, Alexander Cherkasov of the human rights group Memorial pointed out that the Russian government did not make any attempt to count civilian casualties in the war of 1994-96, nor after 1999. Many figures have been quoted, some greatly exaggerated; a figure of 250,000 [civilian] dead in the two wars is sometimes repeated, but without there being adequate substantiation of such a number, Cherkasov said, and concluded: The total number of peaceful residents of the Chechen Republic who perished during the two wars may have reached 70,000. (...) [In the second war] the total number of civilians killed, including those who disappeared, adds up to between 14,800 to 24,100. However, he admitted that the accuracy of his estimates was not high.

In 2007, Memorial estimated about 15,000 Russian soldiers have died in total, while others estimated up to 40,000.^[17]

According to Amnesty International in 2007 the second war has killed up to 25,000 civilians since 1999 (many in the first months of the conflict), while up to another 5,000 people are missing. "Many thousands" of people are believed to be buried in unmarked graves.^[24]^[25]

The Society for Threatened Peoples estimated the civilians casualties of the first war at 80,000 and the second war at 50,000, but it's unsure when this report was made.^[26]