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30 March 2015

The Chechen Wars Cast a Long Shadow

By PAUL MUTTER

The TOS-1 thermobaric rocket launcher is a nasty reminder of the Chechen wars. The weapon is an anti-personnel, anti-fortification system that uses fuel-air explosives. It can literally tear the air from someone’s lungs.

The Kremlin used it extensively during the second Chechen war — which lasted from from 1999 to 2009. It was one of many brutal tools of a counter-insurgency strategy that saw Chechnya “returned” to the Russian Federation after winning de facto independence in 1996.

According to Mark Galeotti’s new book Russia’s Wars in Chechnya 1994–2009, it’s “worth questioning just how much of a victory this really was for Moscow.”

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