This sounds like something that could have been written in the last month “a slouching stumble through mud and snow by frightened, ill-fed Russian conscripts… The Russian attack, initially in staggering disarray but then increasingly organized and brutal…a merciless conflict that killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians — but also the end of Russia’s liberal dream”.
In fact it is from a NY Times article by Andrew Higgins writing in 2019 looking back on the First Chechen War; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/world/europe/photos-chechen-war-russia.html