Mora Reynolds remembers talking to Chechen war survivors from the 1990s to the early 2000s.

And as she talked to them about surviving Russian attacks on Chechnya, one word kept coming up.

The word they would use over an overgun was Kush-Mod, you know, nightmare.

But that's trivial compared to what they really experienced.

More than two decades before the current war in Ukraine, Russia launched its second war in Chechnya,

a majority Muslim Republic that is now part of Russia.

Reynolds was the Ellie Times Moscow correspondent back then.

At the time, Boris Yeltsin was Russia's president, and Vladimir Putin was Prime Minister.

She remembers them characterizing the mission in Chechnya as a campaign to stamp out, quote,

bandits and terrorists.

It was a chorus, bandits and terrorists, just like you hear Russian officials, including Putin now,

talk about, you know, Nazis.

David Philippov covered the Chechen wars for the Boston Globe.

He was in Grozny, the Chechen capital when Russia's offensive began in 1999.

And he remembers that in both Chechen wars, there were widespread, apparently targeted attacks on civilians.

Everybody in the area is now part of the war.

There is no safe zone, and then it's anything goes.

More Reynolds says after the fighting ended, very little was left of Grozny.

The ground was literally charred.

There were very few buildings in the center of Grozny still standing.

The remains of a wall here and there, and not much else.

All the trees were burned, you know, had lost all their branches and leaves, even though it was spring.

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