Russia fought two counterinsurgency wars into their own Islamic state of Chechnya during the mid 1990s in an attempt to quell separatist movements. Russia feared that if Chechnya was successful in their aspirations for independence, the rest of the Caucus states would fall like dominoes.

What the conscript-laden Russian Army faced was a textbook insurgency that used improvised explosive devices as a primary weapon. Their IEDs were mostly fashioned from surplus anti personnel and anti armor mines, and they inflicted severe casualties and catastrophic damage to the ill prepared fleet of Russian vehicles.