Dagestan

MOSCOW -- If you're a Russian soldier in the midst of a brutal, confusing, muddy war, your fantasy looks like this: She's blonde, 6 feet tall, probably comes from one of the small Baltic countries, generally wears makeup, and always -- always -- wears white tights. And she's pointing a sniper's rifle right at you. It's an image guaranteed to send a shiver up the spine of any raw recruit. The legendary Baltic woman sniper has reappeared on the field of battle, with a report out of Dagestan on the front page of the newspaper Sevodnya over the weekend providing the "shocking details."

MOSCOW -- Russia has lost two airplanes over Chechnya in three days, and if they were shot down by the portable Stinger surface-to-air missile, the war has escalated to an unexpectedly sophisticated level.During nearly two years of an earlier war, from the end of 1994 until mid-1996, the Chechens never managed to shoot down a Sukhoi-24 bomber, and during the entire war shot down only about five Sukhoi-25 attack planes, according to various reports.Chechen fighters, armed with a U.S.-made Stinger missile, shot down a Sukhoi-25 on Sunday, according to Col. Islam Khasukhanov, Chechnya's deputy chief of staff, who said the pilot was killed in the crash.

"Our son threw a rock at your child? Gosh, we're sorry, but, after all, he's just a child." "Your son threw a stone at our little boy? Why, that thug of yours is nothing more than a young criminal. We'll sue you." -- How many Russian journalists feel about Western coverage of the war in Chechnya. MOSCOW -- Those journalists in Russia today who still actually believe in and try to follow the principles associated with an "independent media" have become increasingly disappointed by what they view of the hypocritical coverage in the West of the war in Chechnya.

MOSCOW -- The dangerous strain of bird flu known as H5N1 has killed nearly half a million domestic fowl in southern Russia in the past month despite efforts to control the outbreak by culling poultry, the Emergency Situations Ministry said yesterday. About 495,000 birds near the Caspian and Black seas have died since Feb. 3 from the virulent strain of bird flu, which can also infect humans, said a ministry spokesman, Viktor Beltsov. Another 220,000 birds were killed in an attempt to stem the outbreak, he said.

MOSCOW -- Frightened Muscovites stood in the mud and cold rain yesterday, wondering when the next bomb would come and whom it would kill. They talked, cried and argued, agreeing on one terrible conclusion: A war of Islamic terrorism has begun here.The bomb that exploded early yesterday in an ordinary Moscow neighborhood killed more than 70 people and turned an eight-story, yellow-brick apartment building into a heap of smoldering rubble. It was the third Russian apartment building blown up in 10 days; more than 200 fathers, mothers and children were killed, and the number was certain to rise as rescuers picked through the latest tangle of lethal concrete slabs.

MOSCOW -- At least 10 rockets slammed into Grozny, the Chechen capital, last night, devastating an open-air market and a maternity hospital. A Chechen official said 118 people were killed and up to 400 wounded. News agency correspondents said they saw dozens of bodies.The Russian military denied responsibility for the barrage.The explosions caused panic in a city still in ruins from the Russian assaults of the 1994-1996 war. Roads were reported jammed with people trying to flee what they expect to be an imminent Russian invasion.

MOSCOW -- As Russians watched television coverage of government helicopter gunships mercilessly pounding a tiny southern village with rockets all day yesterday, suspicions grew about whether the assault was calculated to save hostages held by Chechen rebels, or to save beleaguered President Boris N. Yeltsin's reputation.And if the long and messy Chechen war has offered any lessons, yesterday's government assault on the Chechen rebels certainly will not be the end of the separatist movement.

MOSCOW - Russia's military forces bombed Chechen rebels yesterday, imposed a strict curfew in the rebellious province and made numerous arrests in the wake of truck bomb attacks that claimed dozens of lives. The new measures suggested that Russian leaders were taking seriously threats by Chechen rebels to launch more "kamikaze" attacks, as early as today, against Russian military targets and pro-Kremlin Chechens. Russian officials, meanwhile, revised downward the number of servicemen killed in Sunday night's suicide attacks in five Chechen cities.

SERNAVODSK, Chechnya -- Try to approach or leave this small town at the base of the towering Caucasus mountain range and nervous Russian troops fire automatic weapons in the air warning away all movement. Black scorch marks in the snow and burned-out cars near this place on the vast frozen plains that reach to the mountains show what happens to those who don't heed the warning.For four months, the Chechens of Sernavodsk have been besieged by Russian troops in an ordeal that helps to explain the underlying hatreds that exploded this week in the Dagestan deathtrap village of Pervomayskoye and aboard a pirated Black Sea ferry.

KAVKAZ CHECKPOINT, Russia -- A top commander of Russian forces in Chechnya said yesterday that the Russian military was determined to destroy the Islamic militants in Grozny by the end of the winter, signaling that while the Russians have backed off from threats to bombard the Chechen capital this weekend, they still seek an early and decisive victory over the rebels."