Editing First Chechen War (section)

===Casualties and material damage===
[[File:Рисунок Жеребцовой Полины, 1995 год (автору 10 лет).jpg|thumb|Drawing by 10 year old [[Polina Zherebtsova]] from her [[Polina Zherebtsova's Journal|diary]] showing the battle of Grozny.]]
[[File:Evstafiev-chechnya-killed-in-truck.jpg|thumb|Dead bodies on a truck in Grozny.]]
According to the [[General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation|General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces]], 3,826 troops were killed, 17,892 troops were wounded, and 1,906 troops are [[missing in action]].<ref name="The War in Chechnya"/> According to Krivosheev, the authoritative Russian military historian, 5,042 Russian soldiers died during the war and 510 missing, 16,098 Russian soldiers were wounded and 35,289 became diseased.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Кривошеев |editor1-first=Г. Ф. |title=Россия и СССР в войнах XX века. Потери вооруженных сил |date=2001 |publisher=Олма-Пресс |isbn=5-224-01515-4 |pages=582-584 |language=ru}}</ref> Later, independent researcher Pavel Milyukov estimated the losses at 5,391 dead.{{sfn|Norin|2025|p=309}} According to the independent [[Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre|Memorial]] agency, the Russians lost 4,379 dead in Chechnya, 703 missing and 705 deserters.<ref name=Memorial23/> However, the [[Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia]] estimated that the total number of Russian military deaths was 14,000,<ref name="jamestown">[http://www.cdi.org/russia/245-14.cfm Casualty Figures] Jamestown Foundation {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140814003203/http://www.cdi.org/russia/245-14.cfm |date=August 14, 2014 }}</ref> based on information which it collected from wounded troops and soldiers' relatives (only counting regular troops, i.e. not the ''kontraktniki'' (contract soldiers, not conscripts) and members of the special service forces).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021228053504/http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm |archive-date=2002-12-28 |title=hrvc.net }}</ref> In 2009, the official number of Russian troops who fought in the two wars and were still missing in Chechnya and presumed dead was some 700, while about 400 remains of the missing servicemen were said to have been recovered up to that point.<ref>{{cite web |title=700 Russian servicemen missing in Chechnya – officer |website=[[Interfax]] |url=https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/chechnya-sl/conversations/topics/56847 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20150410094647/https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/chechnya-sl/conversations/topics/56847 |archive-date=April 10, 2015}}</ref> The Russian military was notorious for hiding casualties.
{{Blockquote|text=Let me tell you about one specific case. I knew for sure that on this day – it was the end of February or the beginning of March 1995 – forty servicemen of the Joint Group were killed. And they bring me information about fifteen. I ask: "Why don't you take into account the rest?" They hesitated: "Well, you see, 40 is a lot. We'd better spread those losses over a few days." Of course, I was outraged by these manipulations.|author=[[Anatoly Kulikov]]<ref>{{Cite web|date=3 March 2022|title=So 500 people or 9 thousand? We tell you how many people Russia lost in past wars and what numbers they called|url=https://news.zerkalo.io/cellar/10754.html|access-date=6 June 2022|website=Zerkalo|language=ru|archive-date=27 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220527193444/https://news.zerkalo.io/cellar/10754.html|url-status=live}}</ref>}} It is impossible to determine the exact losses of the militants, the first figure was given by [[Aslan Maskhadov]], who claimed the death of 2,800 Chechen fighters.{{sfn|Norin|2025|p=309}} Subsequently, this figure migrated to the work of Grigory Krivosheev, his data was accepted as the official Russian side.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Кривошеев |editor1-first=Г. Ф. |title=Россия и СССР в войнах XX века. Потери вооруженных сил |date=2001 |publisher=Олма-Пресс |isbn=5-224-01515-4 |page=584|language=ru}}</ref>The Russian military has privately claimed the deaths of 4,000–4,500 Chechens.{{sfn|Norin|2025|p=309}} Evgeny Norin notes, these figures are clearly inaccurate. He also suggested that it was impossible to determine the losses of the Chechen side, but expressed the theory that they were hardly much less than those of the Russians.{{sfn|Norin|2025|p=310}} 

According to the [[World Peace Foundation]] at [[Tufts University]], 
<blockquote>Estimates of the number of civilians killed range widely from 20,000 to 100,000, with the latter figure commonly referenced by Chechen sources. Most scholars and human rights organizations generally estimate the number of civilian casualties to be 40,000; this figure is attributed to the research and scholarship of Chechnya expert [[John B. Dunlop|John Dunlop]], who estimates that the total number of civilian casualties is at least 35,000. This range is also consistent with post-war publications by the Russian statistics office estimating 30,000 to 40,000 civilians killed. The Moscow-based human rights organization, [[Memorial (society)|Memorial]], which actively documented human rights abuses throughout the war, estimates the number of civilian casualties to be a slightly higher at 50,000.<ref name="sites.tufts.edu 2015">{{cite web | title=Russia: Chechen war – Mass Atrocity Endings | website=sites.tufts.edu | date=2015-08-07 | url=https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/russia-1st-chechen-war/#Fatalities | access-date=2020-09-08 | archive-date=2020-09-08 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200908013220/https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/russia-1st-chechen-war/#Fatalities | url-status=live }}</ref></blockquote>
Russian Interior Minister [[Anatoly Kulikov]] claimed that fewer than 20,000 civilians were killed.<ref name="casualties" /> [[Médecins Sans Frontières]] estimated a death toll of 50,000 people out of a population of 1,000,000.<ref>{{cite book|last=Binet|year=2014|first=Laurence|title=War crimes and politics of terror in Chechnya 1994–2004|publisher=[[Médecins Sans Frontières]]|url=https://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/pdf_inter_tchetchenie_va.pdf|page=83|access-date=2019-01-02|archive-date=2015-04-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406215338/https://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/pdf_inter_tchetchenie_va.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Sergey Kovalyov]]'s team could offer their conservative, documented estimate of more than 50,000 civilian deaths. [[Alexander Lebed]] asserted that 80,000 to 100,000 had been killed and 240,000 had been injured. The number given by the ChRI authorities was about 100,000 killed.<ref name="casualties" />

According to claims made by [[Sergey Govorukhin]] which were published in the Russian newspaper ''[[Gazeta.ru|Gazeta]]'', approximately 35,000 ethnic Russian civilians were killed by Russian forces which operated in Chechnya, most of them were killed during the bombardment of Grozny.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://jamestown.org/chechnya_weekly/article.php?articleid=2371378 |title=Do Ethnic Russians Support Putin's War in Chechnya? |publisher=[[The Jamestown Foundation]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080303175832/http://jamestown.org/chechnya_weekly/article.php?articleid=2371378 |last=Dunlop |first=John B.|date=January 26, 2005 |archive-date=March 3, 2008}}</ref>

According to various estimates, the number of Chechens who are dead or missing is between 50,000 and 100,000.<ref name="casualties">{{cite web |url=http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021228053504/http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm |archive-date=December 28, 2002 |title=Civil and military casualties of the wars in Chechnya |access-date=June 1, 2016 }} [[Russian-Chechen Friendship Society]]</ref>

Approximately 40,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed by July 1996.{{sfn|Cottam|Mastors|Preston|2022|p=392}}