The majority of the Chechen Archive videos are reportage, interviews and war footage, but there are also witness testimonies, media monitoring and oral history interviews. The video footage originates from six sources:
Zainap GashaevaChechen Republic
Petra ProcházkováCzech Republic
Anonymous donorSwitzerland
Andrei BabitskyRussia
Anonymous donorRussia
Anonymous NGO
Chechen Republic
The war reportage videos record firsthand the devastation and brutality of the first and second Chechen wars (1994-1996; 1999-2006). The collection consists mainly of raw, unedited footage of the wars, including the attacks on Samashki and Sernovodsk in 1995 and 1996 and the infamous October 1999 Grozny market bombing. They also give an insight into how the war unfolded from Russian perspective. Video documentation of the lives of civilians in refugee camps and orphanages, and interviews with refugees in between the two wars also form part of the collection.
The Chechen Archive holds a unique collection of witness testimonies on video with details of abduction, beatings, deportation, disappearance, ethnic cleansing, killing, looting, mutilation, rape and torture committed by Russian military troops, often recorded shortly after the crimes were committed. The testimonies reveal not only the details of the events and the identity of the victims, but often the perpetrators as well.
The videos from the frontline shed light on the conditions and losses within the Russian troops, and the everyday life and suffering of the lower-ranking Russian soldiers in the Chechen Republic.
In addition to the explicit war footage, there are recordings of historical significance: conferences, meetings, national celebrations and peace talks with the participation of well-known Chechen personages, including General Ruslan Gelayev, Shamil Basayev, Akhmed Zakayev, Akhmad-Khaj Kadyrov and even a teenage Ramzan Kadyrov.