[4] Alexander Kolchak emphasized that OMON is a combat unit for the protection and restoration of state order and public peace, serves as a reserve for the formation of militia in areas liberated from Soviet power to train experienced police officersThese militia units operated where open war gave way to partisan war.

OMON units were used as riot police to control and stop demonstrations and hooliganism, as well as to respond to emergency situations involving violent crime.

The force was active in the First Chechen War of 1994–1996 in which OMON was often used in various security and light infantry roles, notably for the notorious "cleansing" (zachistka) operations.

[33] Prior to the war, there was also an OMON formation belonging to the Interior Ministry (MVD) of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Chechnya's separatist government.

The independent Chechnya had an OMON battalion prior to the war, but it was not battle trained,[34] and did not play any significant role as an organized force before disintegrating.

In February 1996, a group of thirty-seven Russian OMON officers from Novosibirsk surrendered to Chechen militants of Salman Raduyev and Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov during the Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisis.

[38] Control and discipline continued to be questionable in Chechnya, where OMON members were known to have engaged in, or fallen victim to, several deadly incidents of friendly fire and fratricide.

[citation needed] OMON was often accused of severe human rights abuses during the course of the conflict,[42] including abducting, torturing, raping and killing civilians.

[43] Moscow region OMON took part in the April 1995 rampage in the village of Samashki, where up to 300 civilians were reportedly killed during a large-scale brutal cleansing operation by federal MVD forces.

[44] In December 1999, a group of unidentified OMON members manning a roadblock checkpoint shot dead around forty refugees fleeing the siege of Grozny.

[45] OMON from Saint Petersburg[46] are believed to have been behind the February 2000 Novye Aldi massacre in which at least sixty civilians were robbed and then killed by Russian forces entering Grozny after the fall of the city;[47] one officer, Sergei Babin, was to be prosecuted in relation to the case in 2005 but he vanished.

[48][49] In April 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of the forced disappearance of Shakhid Baysayev, a Chechen man who had gone missing after being detained in a March 2000 security sweep by Russian OMON in Grozny.

[52] In an event related to the conflict in Chechnya, several OMON officers were also accused of starting the May 2007 wave of ethnic violence in Stavropol by assisting in the racially motivated murder of a local Chechen man.

[54] Some OMON units participated in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine where they were intended to disperse riots and control civil unrest after Kyiv would be captured.