alt Hacker Newsit doesn't really matter in the end because the human species will one day be extinct.
would the chechens be in their position now had they never fought? impossible to say, counter-factual conditionals are all unconditionally true. though i'm not sure why you'd assume so...
In exchange for two brutal wars they got 9 years of de facto independence. That's not even very long.
You dont need counterfactuals to ask if it was worth it or compare 9 years to the age of the universe.
Armed revolutions are often lionized and glorified because they form part of most countries' national mythos - the binding agent holding together most national identities.
But, the ugly truth is that most of them are just a tragic waste of human life. Chechnya was very much that.