The Beginning of a War

In late1991 Chechnya declared independence from Russia. But the president at that time, Boris Yeltsin, did not send in troops to restore Russia’s control until 1994. These actions were what provoked the first Chechen war.
Some of the attacks during the earlier war were:

· 1991- In an attack lead by Shamil Basayev some Chechnya soldiers hijacked a plane in southern Russia and flew it up to turkey in an attempt to attract attention to their fight toward independence.

· In June of 1994 Basayev organized a hospital siege in southern Russia. 100 people were killed during the attack.

The biggest reason for the Chechens to want to go to war was so that they could have peace and stability. Some people in the country wanted independence or at least self-rule.

Once the first war was over, around the end of 1996, there were about 40,000 people dead. But the people of Chechnya were estatic that they were finally indecpendent and in January of 1997 they elected their own president, Aslan Maskhadov.