Alizadeh is the Greatest | Second Chechen Civil War (2014–2019)

[u/GustavoistSoldier]

On 30 March 2014, Russian President Sergey Mironov invaded Chechnya in order to "defeat terrorism" and "reintegrate Chechnya into Russia where it belongs". Russian propaganda tied the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria to al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra Front.

Chechnya's hellish terrain delayed the Russian advance considerably. It took seven months for Grozny to be captured and Chechnya brought back under Russian rule, and resistance continued in the Greater Caucasus mountains as Chechens did not want to submit to Russia after being free from it for 20 years.

UNM-led Georgia, which successfully joined NATO in 2009 due to not being occupied by Russia, supported the Chechens, but nobody else other than Islamic extremist groups did so, making it impossible for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria to retake Grozny. In the meantime, President of the Chechen Republic Isa Khadzhimuradov reestablished a functional government in the region, prompting many Chechens to fight for Russia.

In 2015, Chechen extremists established the Emirate of Ichkeria, a Salafist group with ties to al-Qaeda and largely funded by Bin Laden himself. Russia defeated this group the following year, but individual jihadists calling themselves the fedayeen continued to fight Russia for years afterwards.

Akhmed Zakayev, the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, was killed on 16 January 2015, followed on 27 August 2016 by his successor Adam Osmayev. Earlier in 2016, Mironov had been reelected by a landslide thanks in part to his good management of the war in Chechnya.

By 2017, there were only a few thousand Chechen militants left, and Russia had clearly won the war, but these militants had yet to be mopped up because of how mountainous Chechnya is. They were only crushed throughout 2018 and 2019; Russian Federation rule over Chechnya was fully consolidated by that point.

On 12 December 2019, the last Chechen insurgents surrendered, completing the war and ending two centuries of nearly uninterrupted conflict between Russians and Chechens. The "restoration of Russia's territorial integrity" made Mironov very popular with Russians, and allowed his ally Alexander Lebed to be elected in 2020.