So Russia, now we know that you don't care it's Christmas; Troops

Russia ignored the condemnation of the world yesterday by launching a ferocious Christmas Day ground troop attack on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

It was an ominous reminder of another Christmas Day 20 years ago when world attention was diverted and Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, a conflict which many now compare with Russia's latest military adventure.

Plumes of black and grey smoke rose over the devastated city while Chechen fighters, in bunkers amid the ruins, fired back at the Russians.

"Nothing terrible is happening in Grozny," said Colonel General Viktor Kazantsev, commander of Russia's forces in Chechnya. "This is just a continuation of an operation to liberate the city from bandits." He denied the attacks marked the start of an all-out frontal assault.

The Russian plan apparently calls for ground troops to probe until they hit major resistance and then pull back to let artillery and air strikes clear the area. Russia wants to avoid the kind of heavy losses they suffered in street fighting in Grozny during the 1994-96 war, using their superiority in artillery and air power to offset the army's lack of trained infantry.

Despite the presence of up to 20,000 civilians hiding out in cellars and makeshift shelters in the city, Moscow has clearly decided it can wait no longer for a victory in Chechnya and is prepared to weather a further storm of international criticism for its conduct.

We watched columns of trucks carrying ammunition and fresh recruits pour along the road towards Grozny in the build-up to this offensive. But Chechen fighters believe they will be able to inflict the maximum damage on the Russian forces and casualties are already mounting.

Outside Grozny, the earth shook with the constant bombardment from artillery placed all around the city and from the aerial bombing which has now been going on almost without a break for three months. Conditions are dreadful and those few refugees escaping from the bombing emerge like sleepwalkers, their deadly pallor evidence of weeks living underground, hardly ever daring to emerge.

Yet we have also uncovered evidence of the brutal nature of the Chechen fighters' regime during the three years they were in charge following the end of the first Chechen war in 1996.

Travelling to the town of Urus-Martan, the kidnap capital of Chechnya, we found barracks where hundreds of hostages were taken before either being ransomed off or killed. In the dingy corridor of the main building, there are a series of small, airless, windowless rooms and underground cellars in which the hostages were held, sometimes for months.

Worst of all are the two cages constructed where many foreign hostages were kept, including the three Britons and the New Zealand engineer who were subsequently decapitated by Chechen fighters in mysterious circumstances. For those held in the cages there would have been no privacy. One of them has a rudimentary concrete lavatory in a corner and all the windows have been blocked off so the hostages would have lived in a world of permanent night.

Local people returning to their homes, many of them shattered by Russian bombing, told us they knew the place has a frightening reputation. Rather like the KGB headquarters in Moscow during the days of the Cold War, people would cross the road to avoid walking past the barracks. One told of screams coming from inside but no-one wanted to ask any questions because of the reputation of the Chechen warlords in charge. Even now, they said, they were reluctant to go inside.

Hostage-taking became almost the biggest industry in Chechnya under the Islamic militants. Hundreds of Russians were snatched from across the border and held for money, along with journalists, foreign aid workers and even local people. Irma told me her brother was taken hostage when he was 17 in a long-running blood feud between her family and one of the groups of Chechen fighters.

Initially the kidnappers demanded $2 million (around #1.25m), but settled for $20,000 (#12,500). Her brother is now being educated in Britain and Irma will be joining him there soon.

So bad was the area's reputation for kidnapping that at one stage it was almost impossible for foreign media to work in the area. There were well substantiated reports that Chechens were alerted as soon as foreigners boarded a plane in Moscow which was heading for Grozny and the passengers were taken prisoner on arrival.

But now fighting has intensified the Chechen bands clearly have more pressing matters to attend to. The new Chechen leadership, set up by Moscow in the areas now under Russian control, insist they have stamped out the kidnapping for good and, as a measure of their determination to root out "banditry and terrorism", they have established a heavily armed militia.

A rag-taggle collection of ex- fighters and raw recruits, they parade in the central square of Urus-Martan among the blackened and charred remnants of buildings blown to bits by the Russian shelling.

Their leader is Bislan Gantamirov, the charismatic convicted fraudster and former mayor of Grozny, who was specially released from jail by the Russians to take up his new post. Standing in the headquarters, Gantamirov told me he was determined this would be a new era for Chechnya. Yet he starts in the most unpromising circumstances. The building has no windows, no furniture and precious little money.

There is only one commodity not in short supply in Chechnya right now - guns. Every member of the militia carries a brand new Russian- made AK-47 or a rocket-propelled grenade. These are the people who, Gantamirov told me confidently, will restore law and order to the benighted Chechen republic. That's if the Chechen militant fighters can indeed be defeated.

Either way, it comes too late for the one body still lying in the barracks. Valentin was a Russian engineer who was taken, like so many others, to raise a ransom. His rotting remains lie in a trench near the edge of the barracks. One of the locals had made an effort to throw some soil over the body - but only to try to hide the smell, which he said had begun to bother the children.

There is little pity for any of the victims of this vicious war, and there will be plenty more to bury before it is over.

Russia appears to hope to take the city methodically, sector by sector, in a strategy that could take days or weeks. If their plan works, the rebels would eventually be trapped in a small pocket and wiped out.

"There will be no storming of the city in the traditional sense of the word," said Russian military spokesman Major Alexander Diordiyev. "Everything will be done to avoid unnecessary losses among Russian troops and civilians."

Russian officials stressed the ground operations were being spearheaded by pro-Moscow Chechen forces led by Gantamirov, followed by Russian special forces and interior ministry troops. Regular army units were hanging back on the outskirts of Grozny, shelling the capital to help the advance of the special forces.

But some Russian officers, who did not want to be named, complained that the pro-Moscow Chechen forces were almost useless and were being used for propaganda purposes.

The militants have built fortifications throughout the city and are putting up heavy resistance. The Chechen command wants to retain Grozny to keep alive its drive for independence.

Trying to play down Western concern about civilians trapped in Grozny, Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Koshman, Russia's representative in Chechnya, suggested residents have "understood they can survive where they are and that we are trying to avoid hitting the areas where they are located".

Grozny remains the last rebel stronghold in Chechnya's northern lowlands. But thousands of militants still roam the country's rugged southern mountains.

Mark Webster is ITN's Moscow correspondent. Additional reporting by Miguel Gil Moreno, Associated Press

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