War In Chechnya

IN MARCH 1995, a correspondent for The Sun walked along the streets that demarcated the rubble that had once been the center of Grozny, capital of Chechnya. Whatever had not been pulverized was riddled with bullet holes. One old truck near the Presidential Palace had been remade into fine filigree. The Russian soldiers at their posts wore black bandanas over the lower halves of their faces, like cattle rustlers. In front of one checkpoint, they had left a body out on the street, a warning to others.

THE AFFLICTION that has disfigured Viktor A. Yushchenko, the Ukrainian presidential candidate, calls to mind a similar malady that befell a crusading member of the Russian parliament, Yuri Shchekochikhin, last year. The one significant difference is that Mr. Yushchenko got to a hospital in Vienna, and lived; Mr. Shchekochikhin went into one in Moscow, and died. Supporters of both men believe they were poisoned by the authorities. Mr. Yushchenko fell ill after having dinner with the head of the Ukrainian KGB; he went through enormous pain, and today his face is bloated and cratered with what Austrian doctors have determined is chloracne, from dioxin ingestion.

MOSCOW - After three grim days in a nasty prison, media magnate Vladimir A. Gusinsky woke up in his own bed yesterday, a new martyr prepared to fight the Kremlin until the end for freedom of the press in Russia. Andrei Babitsky, martyred earlier this year in the same cause, naturally sympathizes. But he fears the end is near, he said yesterday, and the media are on the losing side. "Today, the words of a journalist no longer have any significance," said Babitsky, a Radio Liberty correspondent who was arrested in January while covering the war in Chechnya.

The World Rebel forces loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr left the city of Najaf under a a deal forged by Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, ending their fight with U.S. troops. The crisis had gripped Iraq since Aug. 5, reduced much of central Najaf to ruins and challenged the authority of the nation's fledgling government. Russian investigators said that the destruction of at least one of two airliners that crashed simultaneously was a terrorist act after finding traces of explosives in its wreckage.

Atlanta. -- Napoleon declared that ''Victory goes to the big battalions.''To be sure, numerical superiority, especially if pronounced, has propelled many an army to victory. Beginning with the introduction of compulsory military service by revolutionary France two centuries ago, European, and later non-European, states adopted mass conscription as a means of maximizing the size of their armed forces.Indeed, conscription played a major role in the creation and preservation of the modern nation-state.

Paris. -- The 50th anniversary last week of Auschwitz's liberation coincided with a peculiarly horrible act of terrorism in Israel, the metaphorical sowing of salt by Russian troops in Grozny as war in Chechnya spreads, and a drift toward renewed war and atrocity in Yugoslavia. This is to speak only of Europe, Russia -- and the Mediterranean basin, where Western civilization began.Auschwitz is, of course, the unique item on the list because what happened there was the product of an abstract theory.

TO REACH A durable cease-fire with rebels in Chechnya, Russia should end offensive operations and pull its troops out of that constituent republic of the Russian Federation.Then, it should attempt to negotiate a permanent end to the war by offering autonomy to the Chechens.If those efforts should fail, Russia would retain the recourse of instituting a blockade to punish and pressure the rebels for as long as necessary -- without having to bomb the region back into the Stone Age in the process.

MOSCOW -- Through all the surprises and contradictions of Russia's crazy-quilt parliamentary election, one thread runs true: The deep yearning for a strong hand translates into votes, and the right friends can turn a 90-pound weakling into a muscleman overnight.This explains how the Unity party, created less than three months ago, captured nearly a quarter of the vote for the State Duma, challenging the carefully organized and well-entrenched Communists, who stood their ground but were unable to capitalize on public anger over corruption and economic stagnation.

WASHINGTON -- After veering from being enemies to being friends, the United States and Russia have settled uncomfortably in between.And the political weakness of Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris N. Yeltsin threatens to make the relationship worse.Four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union all but buried the threat of mutual nuclear incineration, the two countries are chafing over such post-Cold War problems as Bosnia, Iraq and the expansion of NATO. And with Russia still struggling to create durable democratic institutions, the former rival states face new strains as a result of Republican pressure in Congress to cut U.S. aid to Russia.

SAMARA, Russia -- Surviving officers of Russia's most crippled regiment believe they know what went wrong when their men took horrendous casualties in Chechnya: They contend that Russia's liberal politicians stabbed them in the back.It's a time-honored complaint among losing soldiers, but it could be a harbinger of dangerous unrest in the military in the months to come.The officers of the 81st Motorized Infantry Regiment, based in this Volga River city, say they were ordered into Grozny, the capital of rebellious Chechnya, on New Year's Eve and then were abandoned when the government withdrew air and artillery support because of protests over the killing of Chechen civilians.