The troops at the checkpoint considered themselves lucky. At least they weren’t among the thousands of barely trained, poorly equipped Russian conscripts trapped inside the Chechen capital when it fell to the rebels last week. Even the separatists, who have battled without mercy to retake the city, say they pity the teenage Russian grunts. ““We are not fighting against the conscripts,’’ said Hassan Beybulatov, 45, commander of a Chechen-run checkpoint three miles down the road. ““They are beggars; they are hungry. When we capture them, we release them. We execute the professionals and the officers.''
Russia’s national-security chief returned from his first visit to Chechnya this week in a state of horror. ““I expected things were not good there, but I never imagined they were so bad,’’ Aleksandr Lebed told a press conference in Moscow. The retired general, a harsh critic of Russia’s war in Chechnya, described the Russian conscripts he had seen as ““hungry, lice-ridden and ill-clothed’’ and accused their superior officers of deploying them in the breakaway republic as ““cannon fodder.’’ After a second visit later in the week he declared that keep- ing such troops in Chechnya is a ““moral, ethical, human, official and every other kind of crime.’’ He promised to end the 20-month-old war and bring the young Russians home.
Can he do it? Last week President Boris Yeltsin, ailing and apparently out of patience with the war, signed a decree granting Lebed sweeping (but undisclosed) powers to negotiate a settlement with the separatists. But the rebels may be in no mood to compromise. In the past they have demanded nothing less than full independence from Russia. Moscow has flatly rejected any such concession, both for economic reasons and out of fear of further political disintegration. The Chechen revolt by itself seems to be more than the Russian military can handle.
The war has only deepened the Chechens’ hatred of the Russians. The fighting has killed more than 30,000 people, most of them noncombatants. Wednesday morning civiliansbegan streaming out of Grozny, expecting a ceasefire to begin at noon. A few minutes after 12, Russian jets and assault helicopters swooped down and began blasting away at the refugee convoy. ““It’s complete chaos,’’ cried Lyalya Eldarova, who was trying to escape the city in a bus. ““They say there’s a ceasefire and they shoot up civilians on the road.’’ No one was killed.
Other refugees say some Russian soldiers have been charging upwards of $100 per vehicle to pass their checkpoints. ““Their tactics have turned the population against the Russians,’’ said Bakhdin Bersarov, 40, fleeing Grozny with his children. Bersarov says he watched from his house while hundreds of Russian professional soldiers used doctors, nurses and patients from a local hospital as human shields to escape the separatist forces. ““We never trust the Russians,’’ says checkpoint commander Beybulatov, a former Soviet police chief. ““Churchill once said, “A treaty written in Russian isn’t worth the paper it is written on’.''
Despite the odds, Lebed is staking his political future on his ability to cut a deal with the separatists. If he succeeds, he’ll be a hero. His political rivals in the Kremlin are betting he’ll be a spectacular flop. For months they have been talking among themselves about saddling him with the seemingly insoluble problem of the war in Chechnya. As national-security chief he has tried to assert his influence in every sphere from religion to economics, and he makes no secret of his intention to become Russia’s next president. His ambition has put Lebed on a collision course with the prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Anatoly Chubais. ““Someone very much wants me to break my neck on this assignment,’’ Lebed warned last week. ““We shall see. I like tough assignments. They excite me.''
The excitement may have gone to his head. Late in the week Lebed claimed to have discovered a cabal of corrupt officers within the high command. ““Some people profit from the fighting,’’ he said. ““This is a commercial war.’’ He denounced Russia’s interior minister, Anatoly Kulikov, as ““one of the main culprits’’ and accused unnamed officials in Kulikov’s ministry of plotting to engulf the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan in a ““grand Caucasian war.’’ Kulikov threatened to resign unless Lebed withdrew the charges. He said Lebed was suffering from ““a maniacal desire for power.''
Even so, the Chechens like Lebed’s style. He displayed his nerve last week by touring the war zone by car, a trip few other Russian officers would dare to take. ““I think we trust each other,’’ said the separatists’ political leader, Zemlikhan Yandarbiyev, after meeting with Lebed. The admiration was mutual. Lebed described the separatists as ““fine soldiers’’ who ““deserve to be treated with respect.’’ At the weekend the Russians and the Chechens declared a formal ceasefire. That’s still a long way from bringing the Russian kids home. But it’s a step.
