This is indeed a Russian - and Chechens were also typically wearing uniforms derived from Soviet ones (and had prior service in Soviet armed forces). But most of them were better equipped than this.

A little video about the initial battle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85yhpA0giQ

It's been 16 years and I still hate that bastard, happy birthday motherfucker indeed.

The entire thing was a colossal miscalculation on behalf of the Russian military - or perhaps an indication of pervasive corruption of the time, and Chechen influence in the Russian underworld. It was handled extremely badly, and the resulting savagery set the pace for the rest of the conflict. Some of the least experienced and poorly equipped formations of the Russian military were sent, with a criminal lack of planning.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gall-chechnya.html

The Russian soldiers were so poorly trained that when the fighting erupted they were incapable of defending themselves. None of the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old conscript soldiers had any training for urban warfare and had no idea of the dangers. `We only practised shooting lying flat in a field,' Zarovny said bitterly as two years later he watched documentary film of Chechen fighters firing from multi-storey buildings. They were also totally unprepared for the grenade attacks on their tanks. For all their heavy weaponry, their communications and back-up were abysmal, and isolated units blundered around without orders, even clashing with each other.

...

All the dead men were in tank fatigues. It was clear from the scene that no infantry had accompanied this column, something which every soldier knows is essential to protect a convoy from attack. Even Russia's Defence Minister, Pavel Grachev, who had taken over personal command of the operation, had said so when he laughed at the failure of an earlier attack on Grozny by Chechen forces opposed to Dudayev. Where were the infantry?' he asked.You must not send tanks in without infantry.' He called the use of tanks in a city `wild ignorance' and said a single parachute regiment could have sorted out the affair in two hours. But he had sent tanks in and the Chechen fighters had blasted the columns easily at close range.

...

There was every indication that in fact this was not a storm at all but a big show to push the Chechens to capitulate. Survivors of the Maikop Brigade said they had no idea they were driving towards such a big battle. Their orders were vague and unrealistic. Kim remembers they were ordered to go into the city without arms, and no shooting'. Later, when the fighting started,The order was to annihilate those who had weapons,' he said.

The Russian parliamentarian Anatoly Shabad, who spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in Grozny, believes that there was never actually a plan to storm the city. The bombing in the morning had little military purpose, but was more a frightening tactic, he argues. Then the tanks rolled in, as they had in Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring in 1968, and again into Moscow in the attempted coup of 1991. When the tanks came into the centre of the town, it was clear that they were not storming anyone. It was a Prague-type operation. Or like that in Moscow in August 1991. They suggested they go and park in the town, and that way create political pressure so the government would not be able to survive any longer,' Shabad said.It was a kind of military-cum-political act, a demonstration.

Grachev later appeared before the State Duma, Russia's Parliament, in a closed session and admitted he had never intended to storm the city as such. `He became indignant and said there was no plan to storm Grozny. As he told the Duma, they were ordered to occupy specified positions in the town and they occupied them,' Shabad recalled. It was a catastrophically short-sighted order.

Well at least round #2 played out much differently.