Russian Soldiers

MOSCOW -- As Russian troops completed their encirclement of Chechnya's capital yesterday, new accounts from survivors bolstered charges that Russian soldiers had killed about 40 civilians Friday in an attack on a convoy of refugees.Russian military officials continued to deny the reports, which first appeared on the semiofficial Itar-Tass news service, calling them disinformation.Radio Liberty, the U.S. broadcast service, quoted witnesses who said the soldiers opened fire on the white-flagged convoy of seven automobiles and a bus Friday morning as the vehicles paused at a military checkpoint south of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

WASHINGTON -- Russia's sudden and supposedly brief entry into Kosovo last night alarmed and baffled Western capitals. The White House, after urgently reaching Moscow for an explanation, tried to put the best face on the sudden crisis.Upon hearing Russia's foreign minister call the entry a mistake, the Clinton administration decided to take him at his word."As Foreign Minister [Igor] Ivanov has said, it was an unfortunate mistake, and the Russian troops will be withdrawn immediately," said Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman.

MOSCOW -- The heaviest bombardment of the war rained onto Grozny yesterday, as a Russian general said his forces were about to open a new and presumably final phase of the fighting in Chechnya.Gen. Valery Manilov talked of pursuing Chechen rebels into the mountains and wrapping up the war before New Year's.Until now Russian tactics have met with success and federal forces have penetrated deep into the breakaway republic without having to fight a pitched battle. There's a full-speed-ahead mood in Moscow.

MOSCOW -- The women, babies in their arms, children at their sides, stand against the coils of barbed wire, shouting at the Russian soldiers before them in anger and desperation, crying in helplessness and fear or simply shocked into miserable silence.Behind them, perhaps 10,000 other refugees press forward, straining to escape the destruction of war-torn Chechnya. The women at the front struggle to stand up. The barbed wire tears at their skirts. The soldiers let only a few stumble through.

MOSCOW -- In a secret foray into Chechnya, national security chief Alexander I. Lebed brought new life to hopes for a serious cease-fire in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.At the same time, he launched a scathing assault of his own on the Russian handling of the 20-month-old war.The tough-talking retired army general said he and Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist military leader, agreed on negotiations for a cease-fire and for the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Grozny, the Chechen capital, which they overran last week.

TERECHNOYE, Russia -- Shopkeeper Vakhid Umarov was watching the aerial bombardment of Pervomayskoye from the bird's-eye view of this adjacent village last week when two Russian soldiers scampered out of their frozen foxhole to propose a deal."

MOSCOW -- Powerless to hasten a Russian victory in Chechnya or do anything else that might affect the fighting there, the lower house of parliament lashed out yesterday at the war's most prominent critic, Sergei Kovalyov, by stripping him of his post as Russia's human rights commissioner.Mr. Kovalyov had spent the early weeks of the war in the Chechen capital, Grozny, interposing himself between the Russian military and the president of the breakaway republic, Dzhokhar M. Dudayev. Mr. Kovalyov called on Russian soldiers not to attack; after the assault began, he began documenting human rights abuses and calling them to the world's attention.

ACHKOI-MARTAN, Russia -- If Russian forces have suffered heavy casualties in their three-month war with secessionist Chechnya, they can start by looking at themselves. Across the breakaway republic, Russian troops are selling weapons to the very rebels they are fighting."It's nonsense. They sell us weapons that are used to kill them," said Lom-Ali Shamayev, a 34-year-old Chechen businessman with a New York address who bankrolls his own band of 116 guerrillas.Mr. Shamayev is one of the Russians' best customers, but there are reportedly many others.

MOSCOW -- Russian soldiers taken prisoner by the Chechens and later released are now being told they have to compensate the government for the loss of their Kalashnikov automatic rifles.The military says the soldiers must pay $693.52 for a weapon, even though a typical draftee makes $2 a month. Refusal to pay, the soldiers have been warned, will result in criminal prosecution.In response to an inquiry from The Sun, an Interior Ministry spokesman said yesterday the officer who sent out the demand was "overzealous."

GROZNY, Russia -- Warplanes fired rockets into the capital of the rebellious republic of Chechnya early today as Russian troops fought their way toward the city, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.There were no immediate reports of casualties in the early morning attack, which came after Russian planes bombed the outskirts of Grozny yesterday and attempts to start peace talks failed.In today's attack, at least two rockets reportedly exploded in Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev's neighborhood, ITAR-Tass reported from Grozny.

Russian soldiers killed by rebels near Chechnya ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia : At least two Russian soldiers were killed and 10 others were wounded yesterday when rebels ambushed a military convoy in a volatile Russian province near Chechnya, officials said. The Russian Interior Ministry in the southern province of Ingushetia said about a dozen militants ambushed a military convoy on a forest road in the Sunzha region yesterday. It said in a statement that the attackers fired automatic weapons and grenades at military trucks, killing two soldiers and wounding others.

GROZNY, Chechnya - With an election for choosing the next president of Chechnya only days away, officials in this broken, pulverized city are gripped by an almost surreal optimism. Everything is secure, they cheerfully say, despite frequent attacks on Russian troops by Chechen rebels and the nightly crackle of gunfire. Civilians feel increasingly safe, the officials boast, though Chechens themselves say they fear both the rebels fighting for independence and the Russian soldiers. And voters feel confident that the election Sunday will be fair, organizers insist, even though human rights groups allege that the vote is rigged to favor the Kremlin's favored presidential candidate, Akhmad Kadyrov.

MOSCOW - A top official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government said yesterday that Russian soldiers there may be responsible for as many as 300 kidnappings of civilians last year - but that he saw nothing unusual in that. "Yes, there are crimes, there are kidnappings, and some of them involve servicemen," Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov said at a Moscow news conference, citing statistics from a report by Chechen prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko. "This is not a classified report, but the results of the prosecutors' work in 2002.

MOSCOW - Two suicide bombers in trucks rammed through security gates at the headquarters for Chechnya's Kremlin-backed government yesterday and detonated powerful blasts, killing at least 46 people in an attack Moscow linked to Chechen separatists. Many of the victims were in the building's first-floor dining hall. Dozens of dazed survivors staggered from the rubble, some with faces covered in blood. Bodies were found hundreds of yards from the building. Emergency rescue officials estimated the number injured at 70, though they said that count would probably rise.

MOSCOW - A prominent human rights group says Russian authorities are pressuring tens of thousands of Chechen refugees living in camps to return to their homes, where they risk being kidnapped and murdered by Russian troops. "The situation in Chechnya is really desperate," said Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. "The population of Chechnya is terrorized by the Russian forces, and these people in the camps are terrified of returning there."

GROZNY, Russia - Zura Uzuyeva was cleaning the dishes in the courtyard of her small brick home in the Oktyabrsky district of the Chechen capital last week when the staccato drone of a Russian attack helicopter permeated the neighborhood, the volume rising as it approached. "My wife had called us to dinner, and we had been sitting at the table, all four of us," said her husband, Shamsudin Uzuyev, a former high school principal and teacher of chemistry and biology. "My sons and I then went inside, and she stayed there in the courtyard to wash.

DR. HASAN Baiyev opened a small war hospital in the village of Alkhan-Kala, his hometown in Chechnya, at the first clash between Chechen insurgents and the Russian army in 1994. The one-story cement block building contained few medical supplies and a staff of just eight nurses and a handful of volunteers. Baiyev was the sole physician. Refusing to side with either, he treated soldier and civilian, Chechen or Russian. "My plan was to stay despite the bombs and the shelling, to stay until the last minute," he said.

MOSCOW -- As Russian troops completed their encirclement of Chechnya's capital yesterday, new accounts from survivors bolstered charges that Russian soldiers had killed about 40 civilians Friday in an attack on a convoy of refugees.Russian military officials continued to deny the reports, which first appeared on the semiofficial Itar-Tass news service, calling them disinformation.Radio Liberty, the U.S. broadcast service, quoted witnesses who said the soldiers opened fire on the white-flagged convoy of seven automobiles and a bus Friday morning as the vehicles paused at a military checkpoint south of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

MOSCOW -- The heaviest bombardment of the war rained onto Grozny yesterday, as a Russian general said his forces were about to open a new and presumably final phase of the fighting in Chechnya.Gen. Valery Manilov talked of pursuing Chechen rebels into the mountains and wrapping up the war before New Year's.Until now Russian tactics have met with success and federal forces have penetrated deep into the breakaway republic without having to fight a pitched battle. There's a full-speed-ahead mood in Moscow.

MOSCOW -- The women, babies in their arms, children at their sides, stand against the coils of barbed wire, shouting at the Russian soldiers before them in anger and desperation, crying in helplessness and fear or simply shocked into miserable silence.Behind them, perhaps 10,000 other refugees press forward, straining to escape the destruction of war-torn Chechnya. The women at the front struggle to stand up. The barbed wire tears at their skirts. The soldiers let only a few stumble through.