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Breaking my promise...
What you want to prove is that Russia long time ago had an eye on Chechens and all that time was pursuing the goal to harm them. Questionable assumption.
Astrakhan hardly can be called a Cuacasian city. With all due respect to your sources, it still 400 kilometers away from Grozny (which is in the northern part of Chechnya, i.e. Northern Caucasses).
I know how it feels. From London it looks like Chicago and San Francisco are quite close to each other. Or Moscow is nearly at the foothills of Ural mountains.
:)
In the middle of 16th century Russian Empire was fighting with Turks and Persians on the South, Swedes on the North-West, Tatars on the South-West and East. It was "do or die" situation. Daghestani warroiors (sure, they were warriors, Russians were just barbarious intruders :) were in fact armed and sponsored by Persians, being a mere tool in the war.
So, according to the rules of fuzzy logic, Kazan was the key to Caucasses, in the very same way as Narva (building Ivan-gorod fortress) layed a way for conquering Cacasses.
Still not accepting your point (Kazan-Caucasses connection).

Let us just put our hands on our hearts... The same can be said about Poland - how it tried to invade Russia in 1612, 1812, 1918-1924. (Which would put "rightful" suspicion - why exactly there were trying to do so?). However I am sane enough NOT to put it that way, since I believe that these artificial historical parallels are taken out of context. I.e. I DO NOT believe that Poland and Poles are enemies and want to harm my country. What I do believe, that there is a huge amount of old prejudices and cliches which are cleared off of mothballs and put up into use to serve current political agendas.

Mr. Smirnov - glad to see you broke your promise. Never say never, as they say.

1) Russian military presence in Northern Caucausus as the result of conquer of khanates (Kazan was only the first to fall) is a historical fact. No fuzziness intended or not. If you dont't agree with facts described by historians (I am not one of them so I assume they would know better than me), well it's not my problem anyway.

2) You are right to say that Dagestani/Ingush/Chechen tribes were in fact Persian tools in Russian-Persian matters then. Just like Russians were Terek Cossacks, or Polish were Ukrainian ones.

3) If you want to go into deeper analysis on Polish military presence in Russia's history let's move this discussion into private forum. These are very interesting subjects and I'd be happy to discuss them with you but not really related to the thread in any way. I hope we can exchange our ideas about it freely and without any prejudices.

4) Definitely history can be treated as a tool serving for present purposes. But somehow I can understand Russian grief over 2WW common citizens sacrifice in years 1941-1945. I can understand their joy when they put an end to Polish rule in Kremlin. I wonder why Russians can't understand Polish view that for them end of 2WW meant independence lost for another 45 years and torrment of Polish patriots who fought the Nazis and leaders of patriotic underground, emigration of elites, lies about our common history (Katyn) and so on. For us 2WW ended in 1989, for Russians unfortunately lies go on. Can you please explain that?