Looking for the Next Step

By Bruce W. Nelan

RUSSIAN TROOPS FINALLY HAD TO do the job the only way that works in the center of a city. They blasted their way through Grozny building by building. Backed by tanks and artillery, infantrymen probed the deserted streets for bands of Chechen rebels hiding out in basements and rubble-strewn upper stories. After pounding each block with high-explosive shells and rockets, rifle-toting Russian soldiers moved up, closing in on the presidential palace, which had become the symbol of Chechnya's effort to secede from the Russian Federation. On Saturday they had captured the Council of Ministers building, just a few hundred yards from the palace. It was a brutal, terrifying style of warfare, as the Chechens learned to their sorrow.

If the urban battle was at last going the Russians' way, little else was. Televised images of the death and devastation in Grozny continued to flicker around the world, increasing the cries of revulsion. Complaints about errant bombing became accusations of massive human-rights violations.

Russians were horrified at the ineptitude of their armed forces, the carnage to soldiers and civilians alike and the realization of how much damage the war was doing to Russia's internal reforms and its international reputation. Mothers of boys at the front staged demonstrations in Moscow and Vladivostok; on Friday mothers in Yekaterinburg lay down in front of army vehicles transporting their sons to Chechnya. Russians everywhere spoke out angrily against the war. "Yeltsin has betrayed our democracy," declared former dissident Gleb Yakunin, a liberal member of parliament. Even when Chechnya's presidential palace is in Russian hands, President Boris Yeltsin will not have won the war or restored his own political prestige.

Already the implications are being felt as far away as Washington. With Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill, top officials know that further reversals might inspire the G.O.P. to unleash a "Who Lost Russia?" debate. They wonder if the fond hopes the U.S. expressed for democracy, reform and Yeltsin might be going up in Grozny's smoke. The officials have conducted several secret reviews of their Russia policy since last spring, asking if Yeltsin would survive and whether the U.S. was too close to him. When Secretary of State Warren Christopher meets Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in Geneva this week, he cannot appear supine in the face of the Chechnya slaughter. But how tough can he get without further straining ties with Russia?

There were negative reverberations from Washington, where politicians were speaking out, criticizing the Kremlin. The new chairman of the Senate's foreign appropriations subcommittee, Senator Mitch McConnell, said Clinton should tell Moscow that the U.S. will not "continue to give tax dollars to them if they're going to treat their citizens this way."

The State Department also took a sterner tone. Spokeswoman Christine Shelly charged that Moscow had violated two commitments to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: failing to notify its partners of large- scale movements of troops, armor and artillery, as required; and violating the organization's code of conduct, which calls on members to respect civilian populations and work for peaceful solutions to disputes.

On Friday Bill Clinton stepped into the debate at a trade conference in Cleveland. He called on the combatants "to stop spilling blood and start making peace." At the same time, he cautioned against using the war as an excuse to stop backing the reform effort in Russia. "It would be a terrible mistake," Clinton said, "to react reflexively to the ups and downs that Russia is experiencing and was bound to experience."

But Chechnya is far worse than a dip in the Russian road to democracy, and the Administration is well aware of it. The war is a colossal blunder. The Russians managed to lurch out of two years of dithering, during which they ignored the republic's secession, into a sudden overreaction and a total military and political disaster.

The Administration is reluctant to dwell on the fact because it believes U.S. interests still lie in helping Yeltsin out of the mess, not in righteous preaching against it. As Christopher explained it last week, U.S. policy is based on two points: Russia has a right to defend its territory against insurrection and secession, and Russia must live up to its agreements to respect human rights. The idea is to reconcile the two points through "a peaceful solution." While until now the Administration has been reluctant to talk about human rights in public, officials say they have repeatedly raised the issue with the Russians privately. Clinton sent Yeltsin a letter asking him to find ways to hold down civilian casualties in Chechnya. But there is no inclination to denounce Yeltsin and withdraw U.S. support. The Administration believes that would only push him further into the arms of the Kremlin's hard- line generals and security men, who distrust the West anyway.

Washington's long-term goal is a stable Russian democracy. Chechnya, says a senior U.S. official, "is the first test of Russia's ability to hold together as a multiethnic democracy," and the outcome is in doubt.

For all the talk about peaceful solutions, it is not clear what kind of compromise can be negotiated. Last week Chechnya's president Jokhar Dudayev, decked out in camouflage fatigues, held a press conference on the southern outskirts of Grozny to call for a halt to the fighting. There was no military solution to the crisis, he said, and peace could be agreed on "in a day, in an hour, at the stroke of a pen." But Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, waffled when asked if he would drop his demand for independence and settle for autonomy inside the Russian Federation. First put out the fire, he advised, then decide how to rebuild the house. His plea seemed more a public relations effort to put the onus for the continued bloodshed on Russia than a serious offer of negotiations.

As Grozny seemed on the verge of falling last week, Chechen fighters and thousands of refugees from the capital trekked south into redoubts in the Caucasus Mountains. If the conflict descends into guerrilla warfare, it may move off the world's front pages, but it will continue to drain Moscow's resources and weaken Yeltsin -- if, of course, he survives in power at all.

The Russian President must be aware that Chechnya has been a political catastrophe for him. The question is what lessons he will draw from the experience. Will he conclude that restive provinces across Russia can be held in check only with an iron fist? He could be feeling so isolated and friendless that he will throw in with hard-line loyalists in the Defense Ministry and the intelligence services.

Or will he conclude that he has been led into the debacle by those same uniformed loyalists? If so, he will be looking for scapegoats. He may have begun the search last week in the Defense Ministry, which is led by his old comrade General Pavel Grachev. Yeltsin met with Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and parliamentary leaders who had just been added to the top-level Russian Security Council. Afterward, upper-house leader Vladimir Shumeiko reported that they had decided to yank control of the armed forces general staff out of the Defense Ministry and place it directly under the President. This would make Yeltsin commander in chief of the armed forces and leave to the ministry basic but poorly handled tasks such as training and supplying them. Such a move could only be a slap at the military leadership's demonstrated incompetence in Chechnya and an indicator that Grachev was about to be eased out. But the confusion increased a few hours later when Yeltsin's press secretary said no decision had been made.

Meanwhile, more capable Russian military reinforcements were streaming into Chechnya to join the 40,000 draftees struggling to take the capital. Crack marine units and front-line troops arrived from the North Sea Fleet and Kaliningrad -- the slice of Russia between Poland and Lithuania -- while soldiers and even sailors were flown in from Vladivostok in the far east.

On hand to meet some of them on the Russian border of Chechnya was Grachev. In a meeting with reporters, he seemed on the defensive, denying he was in a panic to take Grozny. "Have I been telling you about a blitzkrieg?" he asked. "This I certainly never did." On the contrary, said Grachev, rushing the campaign in Chechnya "would only lead to heavy personnel losses." Besides, he said, the President had decreed that an effort be made to limit civilian casualties, so the army was refraining from "using indiscriminately all the firepower we have."

Grachev has been feuding with some of the army's top commanders and is trying to fire three of his deputy ministers, including General Boris Gromov, a popular hero of the war in Afghanistan. Gromov in turn has called on Grachev to resign. Such moves, like the plan to shift command of the army to the President, have been left hanging for now. But if Yeltsin is still in the market for scapegoats, that whole group of squabbling generals might fill the bill.

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly and Ann M. Simmons/Moscow and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington