Zachistka

Zachistka (Russian: зачистка, lit. cleansing operation) is a Russian military term for "mopping-up" operations to cleanse a territory from enemy military forces. The term is also applied to mass force actions against civilian population in a certain area by military or other siloviks. They were frequently conducted in villages and included house to house searches. The term was widely used in the Second Chechen War. A number of zachistka operations became notorious for human rights violations by Russian forces, including ethnic cleansing and pillaging, and the term zachistka is used in English exclusively to refer to these violations, particularly in Chechnya and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[1]