China is busy doing business to make money and make a fortune, while Russia is still in chaos.

The troublemakers were again Chechnya, who, near the end of 1991, brazenly invaded the eastern Republic of Dagestan with their armed forces. No one was puzzled by the fact that the Chechens did not look good at their territory, but instead attacked Dagestan, which was dominated by the Avars. Some people simply interpret it as the national character of the Chechens, who were very clans, more primitive people, and proud of robbing others, and the more they robbed, the more they were heroes, so sending troops to attack Dagestan did not seem to be an incomprehensible thing.

In fact, Dudayev waved his army to attack Dagestan, mainly for the Caspian port on the Dagestan side, Makhachkala. The city was called the port of Petrovsk until 1922 and was the capital of Dagestan. Most importantly, Makhachkala has a well-developed port facility that facilitates the loading and unloading of weapons and equipment from the other side of the Caspian Sea.

Even if Chechnya declared independence, the Russian army did not deploy a large army here to deter the Chechens, in fact, it has something to do with the fact that the Russian army is busy with its own reorganization and reconstruction. Although a lot of equipment and troops were brought back from the republics, it was not easy to regroup these scattered troops and weapons into a full-fledged and combat-ready force.

The Russians have even just snatched the USS Kuznetsov from Ukraine, and a large number of Russian troops have been assessed to be incapable of fighting now, which also gives separatists like Dudayev an opportunity to take advantage of it.

Dagestan actually has not a lot of Russian troops stationed, but because the salary has not yet arrived, and Russia is in the throes of its establishment, it has no morale and no intention of fighting. When three battalions of Chechen troops marched into Dagestan, the Russians put up only limited resistance, were routed and retreated. In fact, the Russian army did not suffer much losses, but it had no intention of fighting, which eventually led to the loss of Chechen forces, and in one day they entered Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, along the road from the border.

The day after the capture of Makhachkala, several transport ships from Kazakhstan carried dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, a large number of light weapons, and even anti-tank missiles and individual anti-aircraft missiles. Naturally, the matter of arms shipments was kept strictly secret, and for a while Russia did not know what was really going on in Makhachkala.

Furious when Yeltsin learned that the Chechens had the audacity to invade other neighboring Russian republics, Yeltsin approached the new Defense Minister Grachev, whom he believed in, and asked: "Do you think it is feasible to launch an attack on Chechnya now?" ”

Grachev was a little confused, because the Kremlin's timetable for the recovery of Chechnya was not like this, and they could not launch an offensive until the spring of 1992 at the earliest, but Grachev was also a very good man who liked to slap horses, he said: "The contrast between us and Chechnya is significant, although the army is experiencing some setbacks, but I still believe that with only a small amount of elite strength, it will be enough to pull Dudayev and his hypocritical regime down." ”

Yeltsin listened to Grachev's answer, was very satisfied, and nodded.

It's just that Grachev knows that the Russian army does not even have the ability to launch a small local war now, and if the battle ends relatively quickly, it will naturally not be a big problem, but once it is protracted, all kinds of hidden dangers will be exposed. And once this war is not fought well, then as the new Minister of Defense, he will naturally have to be responsible, Grachev is only in his early forties now, and he has a bright future, and he absolutely does not want to discredit his career.

So, Grachev said to Yeltsin: "Mr. President, although we have a chance of victory, it is difficult to guarantee that a local war may bring more collateral effects, and if there are twists and turns in the process, it is very likely that some people with ill intentions will use this to attack you, and it will cause political instability in the country." ”

Yeltsin is not unaware of this, he also understands that he is not in the right position, although he has gathered a large number of supporters around him, but many of these people are opportunists, once Yeltsin is in decline, they will not hesitate to join new political figures, politics is worse than prostitutes and bitches, and the lurking people do not want to bring down Yeltsin, who is now in the limelight.

However, this is also a war that cannot be left unfought, and Chechnya is not only independent, but has also extended its claws to other neighboring republics, and if Chechnya is connived, it will definitely encourage some other separatist ambitions, and the largest separatist bloc, Siberia and the Far East, will look down on the Russian Federation even more.

At the end of November, Yeltsin finally signed the order "Disarming the "Illegal" and Restoring the Constitutional and Legal System in Chechnya", and the commander of the Russian Air Force, Deynegin, dispatched a number of Russian bombers and attack aircraft to launch air strikes on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. In addition, the Russian army also prepared a series of rocket artillery such as Buran and began to bombard Grozny.

Air and rocket attacks caused a large number of casualties in Grozny, mainly among civilians. Even at this time, many ethnic Russians remained in Grozny, causing the death of at least 100 non-ethnic Russian residents of Chechnya. However, the Russian Air Force is not completely without losses.

Because the Russian Air Force's night combat capability is still weaker than that of the Chinese and US Air Forces, which are multinational forces in the Gulf, the time selected for air strikes is generally during the day, and this gives ground air defense personnel a good field of vision. During the air raid on Grozny, a Su-25 attack aircraft was shot down by a Avantgarde-11 shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile launched by the Chechen army, and the pilot was killed on the spot, which was also the first casualty of the Russian army after the start of the battle.

Compared with China and the United States during the Gulf War, the gap between the Russian Air Force's organizational ability and planning level is already quite obvious, and the waves of air strikes are chaotic and tactically poor, sometimes resulting in a large interval between air strikes, and sometimes repeated strikes at targets, making the Russian Air Force's combat efficiency low.

During the air raid on the second day, the Russian Air Force had not learned its lesson, and a low-flying MiG-23 fighter and a Su-24 fighter-bomber were shot down by Chechen man-portable anti-aircraft missiles and antiaircraft artillery one after another. The military operation, which was originally a slap in the face of Chechnya, lost three military planes in a row in just two days, and although it caused heavy casualties to Chechnya, its military strength was absolutely not at the level of breaking its muscles and bones.

Deynegin, commander of the Russian Air Force, believes that if the air defense on the ground is not cleared, the Russian Air Force's continued sorties will cause more unnecessary losses, so he asked Defense Minister Grachev to send ground troops to attack Chechnya and occupy Grozny.

With no choice, Grachev had to send more than 20,000 soldiers of the Russian Army and the Internal Guard of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Grozny under the limited cover of rocket artillery and the Air Force. The northern part of the Chechen Republic is a flat and fertile plain area, where the Chechens mainly carry out farming, and now it has become a smooth road for Russian troops to enter Chechnya.

In fact, under the prompting of the military advisers sent by the Siberian Army, Dudayev had already begun the evacuation of Chechens in Grozny and other places in advance, and the Chechen army lacked armor strength and could not confront the Russian army head-on on flat terrain, so pulling the enemy into hard, bloody and ruthless street fighting and urban warfare was the only hope for Chechnya victory.

The Russian army is attacking Grozny mainly from two directions, one from the northwest, from North Ossetia, and the other from the north of Dagestan, an area not yet controlled by Chechnya, to the south. The main purpose of the Eastern Route Army was to cut off a part of the Chechen Army's forces already stationed in Makhachkala in Dagestan, and then join forces with the Northwest Route Army to attack Grozny, and when Grozny was pacified, they could turn back and fight the remnants of Chechnya on the eastern flank.

It's just that the Russian army is thinking too simply, the Russian army from the northwest has encountered a large number of minefields in the northern part of Chechnya, and the Russian army has done a lot of work carelessly because it is scattered, and even effective battlefield surveys have not been done, so that the vanguard of the Russian army has plunged into the minefield, causing certain casualties. This is nothing, because the need to clear mines and find a route that can be passed has greatly reduced the speed of the Russian army on the northwest road, while the Russian army on the east road has reached Grozny ahead of schedule.

Although Dudayev is determined to drag the Russian army to death through street fighting, he is definitely not waiting to sit still. Because he obtained a lot of artillery by obtaining assistance from Siberia and looting the equipment of the Russian army, he directly set up some artillery positions in the city after the evacuation of a large number of Grozny residents. When the Russian army was ready to enter the city, the Chechen army immediately launched a fierce artillery offensive against these Russian troops.

In order to allow Chechnya to hold back the Russian army, Qi Yiming specially got a lot of Red Police soldiers who can speak Chechen into the Chechen troops, and these hundreds of skilled Red Police soldiers have become the backbone and backbone of the Chechen army, especially technical arms such as artillery and armored troops, especially relying on the support of these Red Police soldiers.

Although the effect of the artillery bombardment was not particularly good, it also gave the Russian army a head-on attack, causing a great confusion in the Russian army's position, and actually retreated some distance before the siege of the city, and made adjustments, and even some commanders in the army thought that they should wait for the arrival of friendly troops on the northwest road before attacking Grozny.

As a last resort, the Russian Air Force once again took the risk to send out a strike on the artillery in the city, although some artillery positions were destroyed, but because the Chechens moved quickly, the air raid did not produce much results, but another Su-25 attack plane was bombarded down by the anti-aircraft artillery in the city.