Death Trap

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The pictures of bomb-gutted buildings and bloody-faced civilians could have come from Sarajevo. Footage of burned corpses protruding from tank hatches might have been taken along the Highway of Death leading out of Kuwait. But there was something unnervingly different about the war in Chechnya, as a government turned its military might upon its own people and attempted, at terrible cost to its own soldiers, to level their capital city. For all the destruction and death, there was no victory to be had. David was defying Goliath, a Goliath that had held the world in fear for a half-century. It bred a creepy sense of things coming unhinged, of supposed verities turned upside down, of heroes and villains switching roles, of future dangers that looked all the scarier because it was hard to tell which scenario to fear the most.

Take, to begin with, the debacle the Russian army suffered when it tried last week to storm the Chechen capital of Grozny, only to be driven back from the city center by greatly outnumbered and outgunned Chechen fighters. Yes, everyone knew the Russian military was no longer the tightly disciplined, overpowering army that a few years ago haunted the dreams of potential victims from Beijing to Bonn. It still came as a shock that the machine had deteriorated so badly -- and a greater shock that so much of it was riven by dissension and insubordination from teenage draftees who deserted, sometimes jumping off troop trains rather than going into battle, to senior generals who openly denounced the Kremlin's orders and local commanders who ignored them. Should the outside world be less worried about Russia's military prowess because the army seemed for the moment incapable of acting as an instrument of aggression? Or more worried that generals who still control nuclear weaponry scorn the commands of their civilian superiors?

Then, what was to be made of Boris Yeltsin? Clearly he could no longer be regarded as the democratic hero of Western myth. But had he become an old- style communist boss, turning his back on the democratic reformers he once championed and throwing in his lot with militarists and ultranationalists? Or was he a befuddled, out-of-touch chief being manipulated, knowingly or unwittingly, by -- well, by whom exactly? If there was to be a dictatorial coup, would Yeltsin be its victim or its leader?

Most disturbing of all was the sense that in this war there was no clearly defined right and wrong. Most outsiders felt instinctive sympathy for the Chechens as the victims of assault, of indiscriminate bombing of civilians -- but sympathy too for the hapless Russian recruits dying because of the ineptitude of their leaders and generals. But could anyone really cheer for Chechen secession? A few voices call for letting regions historically forced into the Russian Federation go free, like the other pieces of the Soviet Empire. But the U.S. and West European governments acknowledged without question Russia's right to hold the country together. Analogies are never exact, but the rough equivalent of siding with the Chechens would be defending the right of heavily Mexican areas of South Texas or the Basque region of northern Spain to declare themselves independent nations.

More pragmatically, a continuing military debacle in the northern Caucasus might not only push the core area of Russia back into a police state but also trigger additional declarations of independence throughout the ethnically and culturally varied Russian Federation. That could plunge the vast area stretching from the Arctic Ocean south to the Black Sea and from the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad clear across Eurasia to the North Pacific into chaos or civil war. At the most extreme, some Western analysts are whispering again a phrase last heard in 1991, when the Soviet Union was breaking up: "Yugoslavia with nukes."

It was a farfetched fear then, and may be again. But it is difficult to see any good resolution -- or even only a moderately bad resolution -- to the terrible mess that the war has become. Yeltsin has no good options, militarily or politically. He could call off the assault, withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya and begin political negotiations looking toward some expanded autonomy for the rebellious region. That is the implicit recommendation of Western governments, including the U.S., which, after weeks of embarrassed silence, are beginning to urge Yeltsin to stop the bloodbath.

But the time for Yeltsin to strike such a deal would have been before the invasion began on Dec. 11. Now it could be interpreted as a humiliating admission of defeat at the hands of rebel bands. And after the destruction of the past month, would the Chechens ever willingly rejoin Russia on any terms? Would Yeltsin dare settle for approximately the bargain he might have got without fighting? That would in effect mean confessing that hundreds, perhaps thousands of Russian soldiers had died, and the army had suffered a debacle for nothing. It is questionable whether Yeltsin could survive that.

The other option is to turn the full force of Russian firepower and numerical superiority on Chechnya, resume the assault on Grozny and persist in it until the city is conquered, however brutal and bloody. In fact, at week's end Russian shells had set the presidential palace in Grozny ablaze and troops were reportedly massing for a new offensive -- this time to be led by specially trained spetsnaz forces rather than the hastily assembled and ill- prepared conscript units.

There is no question that Grozny can be taken if Yeltsin is really willing to "go all the way to the end," as his personal secretary, Victor Ilyushin, predicts. But the price could be catastrophic, as Russians should know from the World War II battle of Stalingrad: taking a city in house-to-house fighting against a determined enemy is the most harrowing task in all warfare. And even after the Russian flag finally waved over a pile of smoking rubble, the killing might not stop. A Russian army of occupation would be subject to hit-and-run raids by Chechen guerrillas holed up in the Caucasus Mountains south of the city, as czarist armies were held off for no less than 47 years in the mid-19th century.

The economic and political price would also be crippling. An expensive, protracted war would doom any hope of holding the nation's budget deficit to 1% of gross domestic product, as the International Monetary Fund demands Russia do in order to receive pending loans. Potential trade partners and investors would shy away: the 15-nation European Union last week announced that it would hold up completion of an interim trade accord to express displeasure at the Chechnya war. In the U.S., Republicans in Congress are already muttering about withholding aid. Moscow would lose billions of dollars in oil revenues if war keeps disrupting the flow of petroleum via pipelines running through Chechnya to foreign markets. All told, the war could severely set back or possibly reverse Russia's economic recovery.

Even before the first batch of "death letters" goes out to the families of Russian soldiers killed in Chechnya -- the dead have yet to be accurately counted, let alone identified -- political opposition in Moscow to the war is ferocious. It is fed in part by a widespread belief that the government is systematically lying about the fighting. Russia is experiencing its first televised war, with the same results that Vietnam coverage produced in the U.S. While the official TV channels dutifully read out government press bulletins that Russian troops last week were successfully occupying central Grozny and bringing in food to nourish liberated Chechens, even they followed the lead of independent NTV in presenting viewers with graphic footage showing that the truth was the exact and horrifying opposite.

Criticism mounted from public figures as wide-ranging as Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, who stated that "no one can remain indifferent to the death of peaceful civilians," and former President Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the war a "disgraceful, bloody adventure." Some of the most furious assaults came from Yeltsin's democratic reformist allies. Economist Grigori Yavlinsky, once a prominent member of Yeltsin's planning team, advised his old boss, "Boris Nikolayevich, resign! Don't wash Russia with blood."

To what extent Yeltsin is in charge is uncertain. Power in Moscow has gravitated to such secretive and nonstatutory bodies as the Security Council, which makes more of the real decisions than parliament or the Cabinet; such shadowy figures as Ilyushin, Oleg Lobov, Yeltsin's friend for 20 years and secretary of the Security Council, and Alexander Korzhakov, head of the Kremlin security service, also reputedly wield great influence. Moscow gossips claim they can learn more by cultivating the chauffeurs and bodyguards of top officials than by attending press conferences or even sessions of the parliament.

As many Russian and foreign analysts see it, Yeltsin seems to have got lost in this Byzantine atmosphere: secluding himself in the Kremlin and listening to a narrowing circle of mostly militarist and nationalist advisers -- the "war party" of Defense, Interior and counterintelligence chiefs -- who tell him what he wants to hear. One popular theory about how the Chechnya invasion was launched is that Defense Minister Pavel Grachev convinced Yeltsin that a victorious little war would do wonders for his sagging popularity and that the secession could be crushed quickly and cheaply.

On Friday, Yeltsin took the unusual step of calling in TV and press photographers to record the opening few minutes of a Security Council session and put on a show to demonstrate that he was in command. It was not convincing. The President complained that his order of two days before "to end the bombardment of the capital of Chechnya was not fulfilled" and, looking straight at Grachev, rumbled: "I want to hear absolutely precise information from the Defense Minister." But Yeltsin also demanded that the Council set a date when police forces could take over from the army in Chechnya, as if the war could be ended by decree.

The day before, Yeltsin had met with his human-rights adviser, Sergei Kovalyov, and insisted, according to Kovalyov's account, that "I am receiving quite adequate information." Yeltsin denied the bombing of Grozny had continued after a Dec. 27 order that it stop -- until Kovalyov, who had just returned from Grozny, pointed out that he had eyewitnessed several subsequent air raids.

Small wonder, then, that more than a few analysts think Yeltsin is finished, whatever he does. Even in the Clinton Administration, which has clung to Yeltsin as the Bush Administration once stuck with Gorbachev, a muted debate is going on backstage as to whether that policy still makes sense. The official line is that it does: Yeltsin has bounced back many times before, and with all his faults he is still Russia's best hope for continued democratic $ reform -- at least in the sense that most potential successors would be worse.

But not all. According to an upbeat scenario, Yeltsin steps down and yields power to Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin. The new leader brings the war to an end by negotiating some sort of compromise, perhaps keeping Chechnya in the federation but giving it more autonomy under a new President and parliament to be chosen by internationally supervised free elections. Moscow has a reasonable claim that the Chechen government of President Jokhar Dudayev is illegal, having been installed three years ago by crooked elections. Chernomyrdin then calls new Russian presidential elections, and a grateful nation elects him on a platform of moderate reform.

Unfortunately, that sounds like a fanciful dream. A more likely prospect is a military-nationalist takeover. Moscow buzzes with rumors of plots and coups, nearly all by antidemocratic forces and nearly all casting Yeltsin as the victim, though a plausible alternative script calls for the President, despairing of any other way to stay in power, to dissolve parliament, cancel the 1996 elections and rule by decree. There is even a theory that a kind of creeping military plot is already well advanced. In this script, the army and its allies in the interior ministry and the intelligence services misled Yeltsin into launching a Chechnya war that they knew would backfire, and then deliberately botched the invasion besides -- all for the sake of discrediting the President so thoroughly as to make it easy for them to seize power in the name of restoring order. This idea seems very far-out, but the fact that it is put forward quite seriously by political gossips proves just how feverish and fearful the atmosphere in Moscow is.

The biggest threat facing any Russian government is that the war, launched to preserve the "territorial integrity" of the Russian Federation, will end by splintering it. The enormous territory designated on maps as Russia is a crazy quilt of no fewer than 89 ethnic republics and regions with some kind of pretension to autonomy. Many, even among those populated largely by ethnic Russians, have grievances of some sort against Moscow. A successful Chechen secession, or a long war making Moscow look increasingly like a dictatorial oppressor, could prompt more attempts to split off. Already the fighting in Chechnya has spilled over into the neighboring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. Tatarstan in February 1994 negotiated the kind of greater- , autonomy-within-the-federation deal that many analysts think Yeltsin should have offered Chechnya. But now Tatarstan is angry too: President Mintimer Shamiyev has not only denounced the Chechen war but also announced that he will not allow any Tatar youths drafted into the Russian army to be sent to fight in Chechnya.

The trouble is that once a disintegrating momentum set in, it would be difficult to stop, and even harder to contain peacefully. What they see as the Russian aggression in Chechnya is already frightening Ukraine and may well cause Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to ask for quick, outright inclusion in NATO as protection against Moscow. But the greater threat to world stability would seem to be a dictatorial Russia that is yet too weak to keep control of a vast territory riven by local and not-so-local wars.

All of which represents a severe challenge to Western statesmanship. The Clinton Administration is increasingly aware that far from claiming relations with Moscow to be its great triumph in diplomacy, it may be faced in a year or two with Republican demands to know "Who lost Russia?" But outsiders have little leverage. So far they have been reduced to an uneasy strategy of defending Yeltsin's attempts to keep Chechnya in the Russian Federation, expressing dismay at the violence and counseling Moscow to look for a peaceful solution that no one can quite envision. The Chechnya war is one of those terrible problems for which a happy outcome seems almost inconceivable, and a descent into more bloodshed, chaos and dictatorship all too likely.

With reporting by John Kohan and Ann M. Simmons/Moscow and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington