How to travel to Chechnya in 2024

Chechnya is a republic from the North Caucasus that belongs to the Russian Federation.

Infamous for its agitated past, little is known about its gorgeous mountains, hospitality, and that it has become one of the most modern regions in the Caucasus.

This guide will cover everything you need to know about traveling to Chechnya, including cultural etiquette, permits, how to get in, where to stay, things to do, and more.

Don’t forget also to check our travel tips for Russia.

In this Chechnya travel guide, you will find:

Chechnya today: what is it like to travel there

Chechens had always been a proud and fierce group of people living in remote mountain areas of today’s South Chechnya, feared by the Tsars who conquered them in the 19th century, but also Stalin, and modern Russians.

During WWII, Stalin began an ethnic cleansing that consisted of massive, forced deportations of Chechens into Kazakhstan, who weren’t allowed to return until 1957, with Stalin’s death. However, their social exclusion continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Unlike other Caucasian countries such as Georgia, Armenia or Azerbaijan, Chechnya could not become an independent country because they were already part of the Russian Federation before the creation of the Soviet Union.

Decades of being excluded from the rest of Russia, fueled by their strong identity led to self-declaring independence from Russia, which led to the first Chechen war, from 1994 to 1996.

The war ended with Russia’s victory, but they were never able to fully control the ongoing rebellion, so a second war began in 1999 until 2009.

Those two wars came with a toll of 250,000 deaths but after 2009, a peace agreement allowed Chechnya to enter a new era under the rule of a controversial but pragmatic leader named Kadyrov, initially a pro-independence revolutionary but later a close ally to Putin.

Kadyrov is the man chosen by Putin to control Chechnya by keeping it free of any separatist movement. In exchange, they receive big chunks of…