frame|Location of Stavropol Krai territory on the map of Russia
The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis () took place from 14 to 19 June 1995. A group of Chechen separatists led by Shamil Basayev attacked the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk near the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, during the First Chechen War. After brief fighting in the city, Basayev and his men seized a local hospital complex where they gathered over 2,000 hostages, demanding a ceasefire in Chechnya and the resumption of Russian negotiations with Chechen leadership. Following several failed attempts by the Russian government to respond to the situation by force, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin personally agreed to Basayev's demands, securing the release of the hostages. The terrorist act in Budyonnovsk was the first hostage crisis in modern Russia.
Initial attack
Shamil Basayev's group of more than 100 Chechen separatist smertniki (ready to die) fighters crossed from the south of embattled Chechnya through the Russian republic of Dagestan into the Russian region of Stavropol Krai. They travelled in a column of three KamAZ military trucks led by a police VAZ-2106 car, their drivers dressed as Russian servicemen and pretending to be bringing a "Cargo 200" load of dead Russian troops from the war zone. They passed through more than 20 checkpoints unimpeded, paying small bribes to some of the Russian policemen and soldiers when this was demanded.
At about noon on 14 June 1995, the column was stopped by local police at Budyonnovsk (alternatively transliterated as Budennovsk), some 110 km (68 mi) north of Chechnya.) hostage, most of them civilians, including 150 children and several women with newborn infants. He also demanded that Russian authorities immediately bring reporters to the scene and allow them to enter the Chechen position in the hospital. Russian authorities, in turn, threatened to kill 2,000 Chechen prisoners if Basayev did not surrender. Over 300 hostages were released through low-level negotiations on 14 and 15 June. The following day, when the reporters did not arrive at the arranged time, five additional male hostages were shot to death on Basayev's order. The New York Times quoted the hospital's chief doctor that "several of the Chechens had just grabbed five hostages at random and shot them to show the world they were serious in their demands that Russian troops leave their land." The five men taken outside to a courtyard and shot were, according to conflicting reports, either five military helicopter pilots, or three pilots and two policemen. Basayev explained the choice of the pilots as a result of his personal "special relationship" with them, referring to the death of his wife, child, and sister in an airstrike two weeks earlier, which he had sworn to avenge.