SOAKED IN BLOOD

The capital of Grozny is no more, but the war to subdue the Chechen secession carries on. Russian forces fought retreating rebel fighters last week in a battle that has brought no victory, only fierce determination on each side to prevail. There was no reliable way to gauge the success of the government offensive among the wrecked structures, the constant rain of shells, or the hundreds of corpses lying unburied. On Saturday rebels shot down their first Russian fighter plane.

After almost two months of combat, there was no human compassion left. Government forces accused the Chechens of mutilating Russian prisoners, while stories reached Moscow of a Russian-run internment camp where Chechens were tortured. A government soldier told a journalist, ``I felt sorry for the Chechens, but they made a bad mistake when they tortured our prisoners. '' The U.S. accused Moscow of human-rights abuses.

The strain of the struggle was beginning to tell on the Kremlin. Embattled Defense Minister Pavel Grachev was reportedly hospitalized, with what many diagnosed as a ``political illness,'' caused more by accusations he was involved in financial corruption than by the rigors of war.