Word: grachev
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From that initial miscalculation, the Chechnya expedition became a long journey of blunders and contradictions. The advice of military and intelligence chiefs close to Yeltsin, beginning with Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, was foolishly optimistic. In the early stages, Grachev, an arrogant airborne commander, boasted that a regiment of paratroops could clean up Chechnya in two hours. Perhaps believing his own sloganeering, he ordered the army into action with only a slapdash plan and hastily assembled forces. According to some reports, no experienced general would take command of the operation...
...organize and arm. A barrage of air strikes failed to do anything but stiffen resistance. Once the fight was joined, the Chechens made hash of the raw Russian troops, ill-trained and unprepared, who fought poorly and used tactics any military academy cadet would be expected to avoid. Grachev had remarked recently that only an "incompetent commander" would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable to rocket launchers, grenades, even Molotov cocktails. Yet at the end of December he did it. Forgetting the cardinal rule that infantry precedes armor to scour buildings for lurking...
...Grachev seemed fully aware of the military's plight only two months ago when he warned the Russian parliament that "no army in the world is in such a poor state as ours." It was a sin, he said, to keep it "half-starved and destitute." That was no exaggeration. Thousands of troops who were pulled back from the far reaches of the Soviet empire are living in barracks and with relatives in Russia because there is no housing for them. Large-unit field exercises have not been held since 1992. Russian pilots fly only an hour...
Nevertheless, Grachev unhesitatingly sent the army into Grozny. It began massing on the republic's borders in early December. On Dec. 21, Grachev told the top-level Russian Security Council that once air strikes had knocked out key targets, the ground forces in the region would be reinforced and then would attack the city on Jan. 15. Meanwhile, the invaders failed to seal off the city, allowing Chechen reinforcements to enter...
...protests at all the bloodshed -- snipers were also picking off Russian soldiers waiting outside the city -- increased the pressure for a quick victory. Grachev moved up his D-day to New Year's Eve. The buildup of forces was halted, and local commanders had to go in with whatever units they could cobble together. Some were only at half-strength, and others were Interior Ministry troops, a kind of national guard used for internal security. "There was no joint training," says Sherman Garnett, a former head of Russian affairs at the Pentagon in Washington, "and the command was divided...