TIME EUROPE
JANUARY 17, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 2
Warpath To Power
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For the Chechens, Grozny is a meat grinder: a place where they hope to kill as many Russian troops as possible, thus shaking the still firm support for the war in Russia, before moving to guerrilla warfare in the southern hills and mountains. This is what the Chechens did last time, before descending into the lowlands in August 1996 and retaking Grozny in a sudden demoralizing strike. For the Russians, Grozny is the hell they had hoped to avoid. Defense analysts in Moscow now say that Putin, in his rush to meet his political deadline for victory, may have to rely on the more brutal weapons in Russia's armory to take the capital. Such "trump cards," says Viktor Baranets, a retired colonel and military affairs columnist for Komsomolskaya Pravda, are fixed long-range flamethrowers, and even two of Russia's largest strategic bombers--Tu-95s and Tu-160s--that could bury Grozny in minutes. The Russian media say the air force has already used fuel-air explosives which release an inflammable gas that can damage or destroy people and buildings within hundreds of meters. Similar to bombs used against the North Vietnamese advance on Saigon in 1975, the weapons are highly effective, terrifying and indiscriminate.
Putin may simply order that the Russian tricolor be raised over Grozny and proclaim the city "liberated." His predecessors did just that in January 1995, declaring Grozny had fallen even as corpses of Russian soldiers littered its streets and Chechen fighters controlled the night. But even the robust popular enthusiasm for Putin's war cannot mute dissenting voices. "All the sources who report from the war zone, except the official federal press center of course, admitted that the Chechens had retaken Alkhan-Kala and Alkhan-Yurt--two villages southeast of Grozny," Izvestia wrote last week. "It has become clear," the daily added, "that declarations of victory by the Russian forces in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny ... were not true." General Shamanov reluctantly conceded on the private ntv channel that the federal forces would have to "repeat military operations in Alkhan-Yurt"--an admission that Chechen rebels still operated in the village. As the Chechen fighters continue to step up their nocturnal ambushes, the Russian forces will be forced to repeat their sweep of the so-called cleansed zones. One Interior Ministry staffer, fresh from visiting Chechnya, is blunt: "Those villages were virtually empty when the troops cleansed them. Then, several days later, they suddenly became full of able-bodied men."
At the same time, strains are emerging in the purported Russian-Chechen fraternal partnership that Putin and his generals have made a central theme of the war. "Putin is counting on the theory of the Good Chechen," says Zhilin. "But if he's expecting the pro-Moscow Chechens to rise up and overthrow the bandits, good luck to him." Leading the way, in more of a crawl than a charge, is a hastily assembled pro-Moscow Chechen militia of 400 men under the command of Beslan Gantamirov, a former mayor of Grozny. Gantamirov, who until recently was serving a sentence for embezzling reconstruction funds during the last war, is not off to an auspicious start. First he failed to deliver on a promise that Grozny would fall by Dec. 20. Now reports from Grozny claim his men have suffered heavy losses.
Another leader of the pro-Russian Chechen camp has also been causing trouble. Malik Saidullayev, a wealthy Chechen who ran a Moscow lottery before being named head of the pro-Russian Chechen State Council, recently predicted it could take months for Moscow to "cleanse" Grozny. He also charged that Russian soldiers ran amok in his native village of Alkhan-Yurt, looting and, as Western human rights groups allege, killing civilians. Last week, the General Staff curtly disowned Saidullayev, denouncing him for disseminating "disinformation."
Even as the two sides battle for Grozny, the thoughts of both Chechen and Russian commanders are moving south, to the mountains that have always been the safest haven for Chechen fighters. The two top Chechen commanders, Shamil Basayev and the Saudi-born Khattab, have fortified bases there with, Moscow claims, some 8,000 men. Putin has tried to cut Basayev and Khattab's lifeline--for weeks, his generals have claimed that high in the southern mountains a brigade of Russian paratroopers had blocked the Argun gorge, eliminating a key supply route from neighboring Georgia. Last week, the generals announced they had intercepted eight trucks of weapons destined for the Chechens. Still, Basayev and Khattab's men have managed to hold their craggy perches and the Chechen trail through the Argun gorge remains open for traffic.
As the war took a familiar turn, Putin was careful to keep the core of the old Yeltsin clique on the payroll. In a sign of the lack of change at the top, Putin announced that Nikolai Aksyonenko, a cabinet member who is widely seen as a proxy for the tycoon Boris Berezovsky, would stand in as Prime Minister when Putin's presidential duties became too burdensome.
As the economists tally the cost of what the Kremlin calls a "victorious little war"--$148 million a month, according to former premier Yegor Gaidar--ugly reports from Chechnya are cropping up even in the Moscow media most loyal to the Kremlin. This has not altered Putin's sunny mood--in public, at least. But as Russian soldiers crawl further into the fire of Grozny, and even the most heartily pro-Russian Chechens disappoint him, Putin may find himself in a discomforting paradox. He could sail to victory at the polls in March, only to face an ugly war in the south still unfinished.
With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow
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