Russians dig deep for victory

As conditions deteriorate for the ordinary people of Chechnya, ITN's Moscow correspondent Mark Webster reports from a conflict which looks like dragging on for many months Here in the lush hills on the Chechen border, the thunderous roll of Russian heavy guns is relentless. Despite Moscow's de fact partition of one third of the territory, it's clear that there can be no end to the bloody conflict in this part of the Caucasus until one side emerges a clear victor. And that could be many months of bitter fighting away yet.

Arrayed along the hundreds of miles of Chechnya's border, Russia has now mustered some 50,000 soldiers, hundreds of tanks and heavy artillery pieces and millions of rounds of ammunition. For the cash strapped, demoralised armed forces it has meant digging deep into its reserves as well as deploying many of the country's elite battalions - the ones which until now have been kept back to protect those much closer to Moscow.

It's a measure of the importance to the current leadership in the Kremlin, with parliamentary and presidential elections only a few months away, that whatever happens to the federal forces it must be displayed to the world as a complete victory. They cannot afford to be seen to have lost as they did so humiliatingly only three years ago in the same arena. Yet the soldiers themselves are under no illusions.

With a friendly grin, the Russian major greeted us from the other side of a trench which his men had just completed five deep in the soft Caucasus soil. Also dug into the hillside facing the Chechen front line just a few hundred yards away were his two T-80 tanks and four armoured personnel carriers which were clearly doubling as night shelters for his men.

"If only I was allowed to talk to you," he said mischievously. "I could tell you a few things about what's going on down here." Instead, he is sworn to silence by his superiors who are still acutely aware of the price they paid in terms of their international reputation when images of their army in Chechnya were broadcast to the world.

Throughout the day and night, these units right along the frontier lob shells far into the heart of the breakaway republic. The Russians insist they are aiming at well located strongholds of the Chechen militant groups speedily arming in preparation for a second Russian invasion. The hundreds of refugees we met and talked to on the border crossing between Chechnya and the neighbouring republic of Dagestan tell a different story altogether.

Here, well within range of Chechen snipers on the other bank, desperate crowds of people press against the guns of the Russian military who have declared the borders closed. Publicly, they say they are afraid the militants will use the exodus of refugees to build up their forces in neutral areas like Dagestan. In practice, it is all designed to bring pressure on the Islamic groups controlling Chechnya to give up.

"I don't care anything about politics," one old lady screamed. "I don't care about any of these people who are said to be fighting Russia and I don't care about the people in Moscow either. They tell me I'm a citizen of this country and yet they won't even let me go through here to where it's safe. Where's the justice in that?"

AS they thrust their battered old red Soviet passports with USSR printed on the front, their frantic attempts to cross start to make the soldiers jumpy. Pushing them back with their rifles, old men and women, young women with children scream hysterically and call on God for help.

"These Russians are just bullies," a young woman told me between sobs. "They say they're bombing the guerrillas but they're not, they're just bombing us civilians. They bombed my village and many people were hurt so I have come here. Now what am I supposed to do? There's no food and no shelter over there," she said pointing back to the Chechen side of the border only 200 yards away.

It is certainly a sorry spectacle in a region which saw more than its share of bloodshed in the first Chechen civil war from 1994 to 1996. Then, Russian troops stormed into the capital Grozny in what military leaders said would be a simple and short campaign to defeat the rag-tag armies of Islamic militants who were determined to make the area into an independent, Islamic state.

After thousands of Russian soldiers and ten of thousands of civilians died, Moscow had to negotiate a peace with the man who is nominally in control of the area today - Aslan Maskhadov. He has put the territory on a state of alert, called up thousands of reservists to fight the Russians and at the same time offered talks with the Russian leadership to try and establish a political settlement.

Yet despite pressure from the United States and the European Community, Moscow is in no mood to do a deal. And given that Maskhadov's own position with the fractious militant armed bands within Chechnya is fragile, it is also possible that he couldn't negotiate any sort of lasting truce even if he wanted to. That's why this second battle of Chechnya cannot end in a murky compromise like the last one.

For the time being, it is clear from the massing of the troops that a policy of containment is all that Russia is pursuing. By advancing in the north to the River Terek, the Russian military has secured two objectives. First, it has established a natural defensive line deep inside Chechen territory. But it has also set up a zone to which refugees will be invited to settle and where Moscow says it will provide exemplary living conditions for anyone prepared to stay within Russian control.

However, the Russians have also made it clear there is nowhere for the rebels inside Chechnya to go. Many thousands of them, armed with weapons they either bought or took from the Russians during the last conflict, are prepared for the forthcoming battle. Aslan Maskhadov made it clear "from the military point of view the Republic of Chechnya is in a better situation than it was in 1994".

That must give the Russian military and political chiefs pause for thought. Units visited down on the Dagestan border showed little appetite for the fight ahead and had even less appearance of the well- equipped and highly motivated armed forces Moscow has been boasting about. Many of them were young conscripts.

In one border post, young men watched listlessly across the frontier, worried that they might meet the same fate as four of their colleagues did the previous week. According to the officer in charge, four of his men were taken during the night and by the time the alarm was raised and they set off in pursuit, they found all four with their throats slit.

"The fact is," he said on condition that he would not be identified, "that in order to defend this length of border I would need three regiments. I don't even have one complete regiment so it would be easy for a group of terrorists to push their way through here. And if they ask us to advance, well, to be honest I feel sorry for these youngsters. I don't know how they'll do."

He also complained about the pay. Though he'd been in the army for more than 10 years, he had come close to quitting recently because he could no longer keep his family. Only recently pay for the ordinary soldier had been raised from 24 roubles a day (about 60p) to 55 roubles (#1.25). The food is poor and the accommodation is whatever they can find.

The same is obvious further inland where local people have been volunteering in their hundreds to protect Dagestan from a return of the Islamic militants. There's little doubt that even among the ethnic Chechens in the border areas outside Chechnya itself there is no enthusiasm for the brand of militant Islam offered by the rebels. So they have joined forces with the Russians.

But they make an uninspiring spectacle. At roadblocks all along the road from the Dagestani capital Mahachkala to the Chechen border, shabbily dressed volunteers poke aged AK47s through the windows of passing cars. They have tales constantly repeated of finding wounded Chechen rebels but there is little evidence of military expertise or discipline.

Nonetheless, in the balmy late summer sunshine there is no evidence of any real hardship on the Dagestan side of the border. In Chechnya it is a very different story. Now that gas and electricity to the republic have been cut off, conditions are rapidly deteriorating for the remaining population. Food prices have skyrocketed and people are genuinely starting to suffer.

With a long and cold winter about to descend on the area, that leaves Moscow with two obvious possibilities. The first is to start a ground campaign now in the hope of overcoming the rebels with surprise and sheer force before the snows start to fall. The second is to starve the territory into submission. It's a brutal option which is bound to result in heavy civilian casualties.

But judging by the attitude of the Russian authorities to date, that won't come too high in their list of priorities.

Russian troops have seized the northern third of the breakaway republic this week in Moscow's first campaign to recapture Chechen territory since withdrawing after a humiliating defeat three years ago.

Russia has faced growing international protests over its bombing campaign, which is reported to have killed many civilians and turned 125,000 more into refugees.

Now Washington says the Russians are breaking the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty signed by Nato and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1990.

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