By Jason Fields The Week

Wars aren’t civilized. The very definition of war includes death and cruelty, and everyone who dies has loved ones who mourn them.

But some wars are more brutal than others, more deadly to civilians, and Russia’s recent wars in Chechnya and Syria stand out. Can those fights offer a preview of what the world can expect in Ukraine?

The Russian Federation fought its first war against Chechnya in 1994. It went on until 1996, was hugely unpopular at home, and showed that what had been a Soviet bear of a military was now a toothless Russian tiger. Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin had to settle for a ceasefire over a definitive victory.

The second Chechen war began in 1999. It was then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s war, and it was to the death. A “they make a desert and call it peace” kind of war. The Chechen capital of Grozny — already damaged by the first war — was left as a hole in a map, called the most destroyed city on the planet by the United Nations. Almost nothing was left standing, nearly no one spared.

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