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October 27, 1991

Dzhokhar Dudayev, the only ethnic Chechen general in the Soviet army and a man who has the wide support of the growing nationalist movement, is elected President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Following his victory, he declares Ichkeria to be independent. 
December 11, 1994

Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who never recognised the secession of Chechnya from the Russian Federation, orders Federal Forces to advance into Chechen territory and regain control. This is the start of the first Chechen war. It will last about 20 months and claim the lives of around 100,000 civilians, rebels and Russian soldiers. 
April 7-8, 1995

The Samashki massacre, called by Human Rights Watch the most notorious civilian massacre of the first war, takes place. ICRC estimates that about 250 residents were killed by Russian forces after they could not provide 264 machine guns as demanded by the generals. 
June 14-19, 1995

The hostage crisis in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk (110 km from the Chechen border) forces the Russians to sign a ceasefire with the rebels. Up to 200 men led by the radical warlord Shamil Basayev seize 1,500 people inside a hospital. 166 hostages are killed during the storming of the building by Russian forces. Basayev is given safe passage back to Chechnya once he releases the survivors. 
April 21, 1996

Dzhokhar Dudayev is killed by a laser-guided missile while on a satellite phone outside of the village of Gekhi-Chu, 35 km south-west of Grozny. Zelimkhan Yandabiyev, who succeeds him, signs a treaty with Yeltsin, who announces "victory over the rebellious regime" during his pre-election visit to Chechnya. 
August 6 - 22, 1996

Rebels launch an operation to retake Grozny. The attack is successful, forcing the beginning of negotiations in order to end the conflict.  
August 31, 1996

The Khasavyurt accord leads to the withdrawal of Russian troops. The first war is over.  
February 12, 1997

Rebel general Aslan Maskhadov is elected president of the breakaway republic. Amid growing chaos, kidnappings of foreigners and Russian envoys, and the rise of the influence of radical Islam (Wahhabism or Salafism) in Chechnya, Maskhadov first imposes a state of emergency and then imposes Sharia law for a period of three years. 
August 5 - September 28, 1999

In an attempt to start an Islamic Emirate in the Caucasus, Shamil Basayev and his fellow warlord Khattab, a Saudi who has become prominent in Chechnya, invade the neighboring republic of Dagestan. Throughout 1999, suspected Chechen separatists carry out a series of terrorist attacks in Russia leading to the deaths of more than 300 people.
September 30, 1999

The Second Chechen war begins. Russian president Vladimir Putin sends Russian troops back to Chechnya, explaining to the Russian people that it is an answer to the events in Dagestan and the terrorist attacks. The battle lasts for nine months. As Grozny is turned into rubble over the course of its seizure by Russian troops, Putin announces direct rule from Moscow. 
June, 12, 2000

Muslim cleric Akhmad Kadyrov is appointed by Putin as head of Chechnya's provisional administration. Rebel forces brand this former Ichkerian mufti as a traitor.  
October 23-26, 2002

Chechen rebels take 700 people hostage for three days in a Moscow theatre (this is known as the Nord-Ost hostage crisis after the play being performed). Russian special forces release gas inside the building and then storm it, killing all 50 rebels but also 120 hostages.  
December 27, 2002

Around 80 people are killed as rebel suicide bombers attack the Russian-backed Chechen government building in Grozny.
May 12, 2003

Over 50 people are killed and more than 300 injured in the suicide bombing of a government building in the settlement of Znamenskoe in the north of Chechnya. Two days later, Kadyrov himself narrowly escapes another suicide attack that leaves more than a dozen dead. 
May 9, 2004

Akhmad Kadyrov, by this time the president of Chechnya, is killed in a bombing during a WWII anniversary ceremony in a stadium in Grozny. His son Ramzan's visit to Vladimir Putin initiates his rise to power. 
September 1-3, 2004

The Beslan school siege, the hostage crisis in the small town in North Ossetia that claims the lives of 380 of the 1,100 hostages, takes place. Whilst according to witnesses most of the deaths are a consequence of the Russian forces storming the school, Vladimir Putin blames international terrorists for the death toll. 
March 8, 2005

Chechen rebel president Aslan Maskhadov is killed in a special operation by Russian forces days after he calls for a ceasefire and urges Russians to participate in peace talks.  
March 4, 2006

Ramzan Kadyrov becomes the Prime Minister of Chechnya. His appointment to the post is soon followed by the killing of two of the most prominent rebel leaders, Abdul-Khalim Saydullayev and Shamil Basayev. Doku Umarov succeeds them and remains to this day the face of the resistance.  In Moscow, Kadyrov's critic, the prominent journalist Anna Politkovskaya, is shot dead later in 2006. 
April 5, 2007

Ramzan Kadyrov is inaugurated as the president of Chechnya. 
October 7, 2007

Following the death of Basaev and Sadullayev, the veteran fighter Doku Umarov announces a historic shift in the Chechen-led rebel movement, renaming the Ichkerian independence-focused struggle. He announces the formation of a new region-wide rebel organisation, the Caucasus Emirate, which is more avowedly Islamist in character.
March 30, 2009

Sulim Yamadayev, a major opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov and a former commander of the Vostok Battalion, Kadyrov's private militia, is shot dead in Dubai. His powerful clan has a long-running feud with Kadyrov and his older brother, an MP, was assassinated in Moscow months before. 
April 16, 2009

The Kremlin announces that the so-called "regime of the counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya, active since the start of the second war, is over, putting an official end to the second war. 
July 15, 2009

Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova of the organisation Memorial, is found dead. Memorial's Oleg Orlov accused Ramzan Kadyrov of ordering the killing of Estemirova, but subsequently loses a libel case filed against him by the head of Chechnya. Memorial, the final human rights organisation to work in Chechnya on a permanent basis, minimises its activities in the republic and since then nobody has been able to provide trustworthy statistics about abductions, tortures and extrajudicial killings. 
November 30, 2009

The first shift of the Joint Mobile Group arrives in Chechnya. Under the initiative of the Committee Against Torture, an NGO from Nizhny Novgorod, lawyers from different Russian regions start to come to Chechnya for a month at a time to investigate cases of kidnapping and torture. They only deal with people who agree to make their cases public. Joint Mobile Group is the first to present evidence from survivors of torture.  
August 29, 2010

Up to 60 rebels attack Kadyrov's home village of Tsentoroi. According to the authorities, 12 of them are killed in the clash. 5 civilian casualties are also reported, as well as two guards. 
October 19, 2010

Suicide bombers attack the Parliament of Chechnya, killing four people before being killed themselves.
June 10, 2011

Yuri Budanov, a former tank commander who kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed a Chechen, 18-year-old Elza Kungayeva, in 2000, is shot dead in Moscow. Budanov was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 but was released on parole in 2009. Surveys in Russia showed that he enjoyed wide public support. In May 2013 a Chechen, Yusup Temerkhanov, is found guilty of the colonel’s murder and gets 15 years in prison.    
April 15, 2013

Three people are killed and 264 injured in the Boston Marathon bombing. The attack is attributed to the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, who are half-Chechen and half-Avar and who immigrated to the US in 2002 as refugees. 
April 18, 2013

About 300 Chechen militia from Kadyrov’s regiments arrive in the settlement of Arshty in neighboring Ingushetia under the pretext of hunting for Doku Umarov. They withdraw after a clash with Ingush law enforcement authorities, but the border between the two Russian regions has been heavily guarded ever since.  Kadyrov earlier denounced Ingush president Yunus-bek Yevkurov for incorrectly handing the war on terror, but also voiced claims to a large piece of Ingush territory, which from his point of view historically belongs to Chechnya. 
July 3, 2013

Doku Umarov lifts the moratorium on attacks inside Russia and calls on the rebels to disrupt the Sochi Winter Olympics. Umarov has already claimed responsibility for the 2011 bombing of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow that killed 36 people, the 2010 bombing of the Moscow subway that killed 40 people and the 2009 bombing of the high-speed Nevsky Express train in which 28 people died. He did not claim responsibility for the first bombings (those in Volgograd) to take place after he made the speech. On January 16, 2013, Ramzan Kadyrov posted on his Instagram that he had indisputable proof that Doku Umarov was dead. No other sources, however, confirmed this information. 

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