Moscow immediately attacked both de facto secessions, and the Tatar case is pending appeal before the new Russian Constitutional Court. In Chechnya two years of Russian threats, bluster and empty negotiations ended with invasion in late 1994. .
According to The Year in Review 1996 at CNN.com, the conflict raged on for a year and a half before, in the beginning of 1996, President Boris Yeltsin agreed to end it, fearing it was about to claim yet another casualty, his political career. Yeltsin who had dispatched the troops in 1994 to crush the revolt was up for re-election in 1996, and feared the war might cost him a victory. One of his first campaign promises was to end the war in Chechnya. The next month he declared a unilateral cease-fire, but Russian troops ignored it. In May, barely two weeks before the voting started, his government signed a cease-fire, agreeing to exchange prisoners and negotiate a permanent peace later. The cease-fire held long enough for Yeltsin to survive the run-off election in July, but just a few days" later Russian troops started bombing again. The rebels fought back, and re-took the capital, Grozny, timing it to coincide with Yeltsin's inauguration on August 9. .
Then in 1997 a deal was signed to turn the 1996 cease-fire into a lasting peace. The truce had halted a 21-month war in which tens of thousands of people died in an ill-fated Russian military operation to crush Chechnya's independence drive. The deal included the withdrawal of Russian troops and the deferral of any decision on Chechnya's status until 2001. Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov said after the signing of the deal that the absence of a more formal peace agreement had encouraged terrorist attacks on Russia. The deal did not last long and in 1999 the Russian Army returned and has occupied almost all of Chechnya ever since.
The conflict has taken a large toll on the residence of the Chechnya region.
