Russian war crimes
Russian war crimes are violations of international criminal law including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Russia have committed or been accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as the aiding and abetting of crimes by proto-statelets or puppet statelets which are armed and financed by Russia, including the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. These have included murder, torture, terror, persecution, deportation and forced transfer, enforced disappearance, child abductions, rape, looting, unlawful confinement, starvation, inhumane acts, unlawful airstrikes and attacks against civilian objects, use of banned chemical weapons, and wanton destruction.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Médecins Sans Frontières also documented war crimes in Chechnya. In 2017 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that Russia used cluster and incendiary weapons in Syria, constituting the war crime of indiscriminate attacks in a civilian populated area. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, set up by the OHCHR, found Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023. On 13 April 2022, OSCE published a report finding that Russia committed war crimes in the Siege of Mariupol, while its targeted killings and enforced disappearance or abductions of civilians, including journalists and local officials, could tentatively also be crimes against humanity.
By 2009, the European Court of Human Rights issued 115 verdicts in which it found the Russian government guilty of perpetrating enforced disappearances, murder, torture, and failing to properly investigate these crimes in Chechnya. In 2021, the ECHR also separately found Russia guilty of murder, torture, looting and destruction of homes in Georgia, as well as preventing the return of 20,000 displaced Georgians to their territory.
As a consequence of its involvement in the war in Ukraine, wide-scale international sanctions have been imposed on Russian officials by the governments of Western countries. In 2016, Russia withdrew its signature from the International Criminal Court, when the Court began investigating Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea for violations of international law. As a result, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3 officially suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council membership due to war crimes in Ukraine. Many Russian officials were found guilty by local courts for war crimes committed in both Chechnya and Ukraine. Ultimately, since 2023, the ICC indicted six Russian officials, including Russian leader Vladimir Putin, for war crimes in Ukraine.
Russian war crimes before 1991
Imperial Russian war crimes
After the Russo-Turkish War, the area around Kars was ceded to Russia. This resulted in a large number of Muslims leaving and settling in remaining Ottoman lands. Batum and its surrounding area was also ceded to Russia causing many local Turkish and Georgian Muslims to migrate to the west "as a result of persecution, or fear of persecution, by Christian Russians."The historian Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that during the Russian invasion of Ottoman lands, "many atrocities were carried out against the local Turks and Kurds by the Russian army and Armenian volunteers." General Vladimir Liakhov gave the order to kill any Turk on sight and to destroy any mosque.
Soviet war crimes
Chechnya
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared its independence. Russian officials refused to recognize Chechnya's declaration of independence, sparking tensions. These tensions ultimately escalated into a full-scale war when 25,000 Russian soldiers crossed into Chechnya on 11 December 1994. The war ended with de facto Chechen independence and a Russian troop withdrawal in 1996. However, tensions between Russia and Chechnya still existed and they continued to escalate until the second war broke out in 1999, and Russia waged counterinsurgency until 2009. It was concluded when Russia took full control of Chechnya and installed a pro-Russian government. Numerous war crimes were committed, most of them were committed by the Russian armed forces. Some scholars has estimated that the brutality of the Russian attacks on such a small ethnic group amounts to a crime of genocide.During the two wars, the Chechens were dehumanized and Russian propaganda depicted them as "blacks", "bandits", "terrorists", "cockroaches" and "bedbugs". The Russian armed forces perpetrated numerous war crimes.
First Chechen War
Throughout the First Chechen War, human rights organizations accused Russian forces of starting a brutal war with total disregard for international humanitarian law, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary civilian casualties among the Chechen population. The main strategy in the Russian war effort was to use heavy artillery and air strikes, leading to numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, the campaign was "unparalleled in the area since World War II for its scope and destructiveness, followed by months of indiscriminate and targeted fire against civilians".The crimes included the use of prohibited cluster bombs in the 1995 Shali cluster bomb attack, which targeted a market, a gas station and a hospital, and the April 1995 Samashki massacre, in which it is estimated that up to 300 civilians died during the attack. Russian forces conducted an operation of zachistka, house-by-house searches throughout the entire village. Federal soldiers deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings in Samashki by shooting residents and burning houses with flame-throwers. They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding. Russian troops intentionally burned many bodies, either by throwing the bodies into burning houses or by setting them on fire.
During the First Battle of Grozny, Russian air raids and artillery bombardments were described as the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden. The Russian historian and general Dmitri Volkogonov said the Russian military's bombardment of Grozny killed around 35,000 civilians, including 5,000 children. This has led to Western and Chechen sources describing the Russian strategy as deliberate terror bombing. The bloodbath of Grozny shocked Russia and the outside world, causing severe criticism of the war. International monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe described the scenes as nothing short of an "unimaginable catastrophe", while former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the war a "disgraceful, bloody adventure" and German chancellor Helmut Kohl called it "sheer madness".
In a March 1996 report, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights accused Russian troops of firing on civilians and killing them at checkpoints and of summarily executing captured Chechen men, both civilians and fighters. Two cases involved Russian soldiers murdering humanitarian aid workers who tried to save a civilian from execution on a street in Grozny. Russian Ministry of Interior forces officers fired into a group of soldiers who refused to kill the civilian population.
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, which began in 1999, was even more brutal than the previous war. According to human rights activists, Russian troops systematically committed the following crimes in Chechnya: the destruction of cities and villages, not justified by military necessity; shelling and bombardment of unprotected settlements; summary extrajudicial executions and killings of civilians; torture, ill-treatment and infringement of human dignity; serious bodily harm intentionally inflicted on persons not directly participating in hostilities; deliberate strikes against the civilian population, civilian and medical vehicles; illegal detentions of the civilian population; enforced disappearances; looting and destruction of civilian and public property; extortion; taking hostages for ransom; corpse trade. There were also rapes, which, along with women, were also subjected to men.Some of the crimes committed towards the civilian population included the following: 1999 Elistanzhi cluster bomb attack against civilians, leaving mostly women and children dead. The Grozny ballistic missile attack, in which ten hypersonic missiles fell without warning and targeted the city's only maternity hospital, post office, mosque, and a crowded market. The casualties occurred at the central market, and the attack is estimated to have killed over 100 instantly and injured up to 400 others. The Russian Air Force perpetrated repeated rocket attacks on a large convoy of refugees trying to enter Ingushetia through a supposed "safe exit" during the Baku–Rostov highway bombing. This was repeated in December 1999 when Russian soldiers opened fire on a refugee convoy marked with white flags.
During the Alkhan-Yurt massacre where Russian soldiers went on a murdering spree throughout the village and summarily executing, raping, torturing, looting, burning and killing anyone in their way. Nearly all the killings were committed by Russian soldiers who were looting. Civilian attempts to stop the madness were often met with death. There has been no serious attempt conducted by the Russian authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes committed at Alkhan-Yurt. Credible testimony suggests that Russian leadership in the region had knowledge of what was happening and simply chose to ignore it. Russian military leadership dismissed the incident as "fairy tales", claiming that the bodies were planted and the slaughter fabricated in order to damage the reputation of Russian troops. Russian general Vladimir Shamanov dismissed accountability for the abuses in the village saying "Don't you dare touch the soldiers and officers of the Russian army. They are doing a sacred thing today – they are defending Russia. And don't you dare sully the Russian soldier with your dirty hands!"
In what is regarded as one of the gravest war crimes in the war, Russian federal forces went on a village-sweep, that involved summary executions of dozens of people, murder, looting, arson and rape of Chechen civilians in what is known as the Novye Aldi massacre. Russian troops had cluster-bombed the village a day prior before entering the village, telling local residents to come out from their cellars for inspection the next day. Upon entering the village, Russian soldiers shot their victims in cold blood, with automatic fire at close range. Victims ranged from one-year-old babies to an 82 year old woman. Victims were asked for money or jewelry by Russian soldiers, which served as a pretext for their execution if the amount was insufficient. Federal soldiers removed gold teeth from their victims and looted their corpses. Killings were accompanied by arson in an attempt to destroy evidence of summary executions and other civilian killings. There were several cases of rape. In one incident, Russian soldiers gang raped several women before strangling them to death. Pillage on a massive scale took place in the village, with Russian soldiers stripping the houses of civilians in broad daylight. Any attempt to make the Russian authorities take responsibilities for the massacre resulted in indignant denial. Human Rights Watch described the Russian authorities' response as "typical". A spokesperson from the Russian Ministry of Defence declared that "these assertions are nothing but a concoction not supported by fact or any proof... should be seen as a provocation whose goal is to discredit the federal forces' operation against the terrorists in Chechnya". An eye-witness also said that investigators from the Federal Security Service told her the massacre was probably committed by Chechen fighters "disguised as federal troops".
During the Staropromyslovsky massacre between December 1999 and January 2000, Russian soldiers went on an apparent spree, rounding up civilians and summarily executing them. The crimes included widespread looting and arson. Victims included the entire nine-member family of the Zubayevs, which had reportedly been shot dead in the street by a heavy submachine gun. In one incident, Russian soldiers fired at civilians hiding in a cellar. According to a survivor of the incident, upon having yelled out to the soldiers, "Please don't shoot us, we are local civilians", the soldiers ordered them to come out of the cellar with their hands up. After coming out of the cellar, the Russian soldiers ordered them back down, after which they threw down several hand grenades at the civilians. The survivors were then again ordered back out of the cellar, after which the Russian soldiers shot the survivors with machine gun fire at close range. The massacre went unpunished and unacknowledged by the Russian authorities.
The 1999–2000 siege and bombardments of Grozny caused tens of thousands of civilians to perish. The Russian army issued an ultimatum during the siege urging Chechens to leave the city or be destroyed without mercy. Around 300 people were killed while trying to escape in October 1999 and subsequently buried in a mass grave. The Russian president Putin vowed that the military would not stop bombing Grozny until Russian troops "fulfilled their task to the end". In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth. The bombing of Grozny included banned Buratino thermobaric and fuel-air bombs, igniting the air of civilians hiding in basements. There were also reports of the use of chemical weapons, banned by the Geneva Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
International humanitarian workers are reported to have been killed by Russian soldiers during the war in Chechnya. On 17 December 1996, six delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross were killed in an attack by masked gunmen at the ICRC hospital in Novye Atagi, near Grozny. In 2010, Russian special forces officer Major Aleksi Potyomkin claimed that the murders were perpetrated by FSB agents. A 2004 report identified Russian soldiers using rape as means of torture against the Chechens. Out of 428 villages in Chechnya, 380 were bombed in the conflicts, leaving a 70% destruction of households behind.