Both Chechen campaigns could make a huge contribution to military affairs - the analysis and generalization of the rich experience of our troops in the Caucasus should have led to the creation of new charters and military instructions. However, as after Afghanistan, the brutal lessons of Chechnya have not been fully learned, as recent events in South Ossetia prove, where our command made the same mistakes as at the beginning of the first Chechen war, once again "stepping on the same rake."