Russia wins the First Chechen War: aftermath

What sorts of effects do you think the Russian victory in the First Chechen War would have had?

One thing which comes to my mind is that the prestige of the Russian army would be probably higher as the war was a major embarrassment for them. You would probably still have stories about tanks without fuel and rusting nuclear submarines in Western press but the army would be still seen able to maintain at least internal conflicts.

Somewhat related to that, there might be less fears about the balkanization of Russia which used to be quite common in the 1990’s. Yeltsin also might take a harder line towards regional leaders. Events in Chechnya did shock him and later led him to make rather favorable deals with local leaders.

It's important to point out though that even if Russia wins in Chechnya, it doesn’t mean that either the state or the army are necessarily in any better shape, it just might look like that to Russian leaders and outsiders. This might have significant effects on events later on.

Yeltsin’s support will still drop but maybe it would be just slightly higher. Not sure would this amount to anything though as economic and other problems would still mean that he is highly unpopular.

What about Chechnya itself? Would there still be an insurgency or potential for a new civil war?

Here’s a (rather old) thread where Mr.Bluenote and Aktarian point out in their posts some things which might have led to a better performance of the Russian army during the conflict for those interested:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/1994-russia-wins-in-chechnya.460/
 
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