Second Chechen War

The Second Chechen War began in August and September 1999, after Chechnya-based militants launched an incursion into neighboring Dagestan and a series of apartment bombings in Russian cities, blamed on Chechen separatists, hardened Russian public opinion for a renewed campaign under newly appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Russian forces recaptured the Chechen capital Grozny by February 2000 after intense fighting, after which the conflict shifted into a long and brutal counterinsurgency against Chechen rebel and Islamist fighters. Russia formally declared its "counter-terrorist operation" in Chechnya over in 2009 and installed a Moscow-aligned government under Ramzan Kadyrov, though scattered insurgent violence in the North Caucasus continued for years afterward.