MONITOR - A DAILY BRIEFING ON THE POST-SOVIET STATES
FOR THE RECORD:
WASHINGTON DISTURBED BY CHECHNYA DEVELOPMENTS. The Clinton administration yesterday expressed concern over what a State Department spokesman described as "frightening" Russian threats to level Grozny, the capital of war-torn Chechnya, and over the accompanying appearance of confusion in the Kremlin. Conflicting signals from Moscow on Chechnya are said to have added a new urgency to already existing concerns in Washington over President Boris Yeltsin's suspect health. (UPI, August 20)
MVD DRAFTEES GO AWOL. In another sign of mounting discontent among troops serving in Russia's various "power" ministries, thirty soldiers from an Interior Ministry unit in the Perm region reportedly sent AWOL on August 19. The first-year draftees had complained of atrocious living conditions and brutal hazing in the barracks. The servicemen claim that they will not return to their unit until order is restored there. (Radio Russia, August 19)
THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SPECULATION OVER YELTSIN'S ABILITY TO GOVERN. There is increasing evidence that Yeltsin may be too sick to rule and that he has relinquished control of the government. As Grozny prepared to face another bloodbath yesterday and thousands of terrified civilians fled the city, Yeltsin was not conferring with his ministers and military commanders but, if his spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky was to be believed, had left Moscow by helicopter in search of a suitable vacation spot. Yastrzhembsky tried to convince journalists that the fact that Yeltsin had made the 2 hour 20 minute helicopter journey was itself proof that the president was in good health. (NTV, August 20) But Yeltsin has been seen in public only once in the past eight weeks (at his August 9 inauguration) and there are serious grounds for doubting whether he is able to control developments. According to newspaper reports, Yeltsin did not meet with his security adviser Aleksandr Lebed after the general's second visit to Chechnya on August 15 and did not even talk to Lebed on the telephone -- though Yeltsin is reported to have telephoned Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov during the evening of August 16, following Lebed's extraordinary "him or me" ultimatum, to instruct Kulikov to remain in his post. (Segodnya, Kommersant-daily, August 20)
KREMLIN LEADERS CONTINUE TO SPAR OVER CHECHNYA POLICY. Top Russian military and political leaders continued yesterday to devote their tactical planning skills at least as much to winning political skirmishes in the Kremlin as to resolving hostilities on the ground in Chechnya. The most aggressive sally on the Kremlin battlefield came, not surprisingly, from Aleksandr Lebed's Russian Security Council, which issued a statement expressing skepticism about the authenticity of Boris Yeltsin's latest orders on Chechnya. (See Monitor, August 20) The statement declared that the "contents of the documents provide solid ground to doubt that [Yeltsin] took direct part in finalizing the text of the order." It also charged that Yeltsin's orders were accompanied by only a facsimile of the president's signature, and insisted on an explanation "from the appropriate officials" for this alleged discrepancy. The presidential press service responded with a volley of its own later in the day, saying that the order was indeed consistent with Yeltsin's wishes and, in essence, telling the Security Council to drop its objections. (Reuter, Itar-Tass, August 20)
Some Russian commentators warned against making too much of the Kremlin in-fighting. Segodnya defense analyst Pavel Felgengauer, for example, called the apparent intrigue a "high-stakes poker game" in which Lebed and army hard-liners are deliberately playing "good cop and bad cop" in an effort to break the Chechen resistance. Felgengauer and others also suggested that Yeltsin, as he has done in the past, was absenting himself from the Moscow proceedings in order to avoid responsibility for what are likely to be unpopular policies in Chechnya. (Reuter, August 20)
Felgengauer's last observation has the ring of truth. But if, more broadly, this is a game primarily of intrigue that Kremlin insiders are playing, then it is indeed a dangerous one. Even aside from mounting displeasure with Moscow's military operations in Chechnya, there has been intense concern in foreign capitals since before Russia's run-off election over Yeltsin's health and the possibility that there is, in fact, a leadership vacuum in the Kremlin. The latest developments are turning that concern into consternation. At the same time, one newspaper reports that the personal confrontation between Lebed and Internal Affairs Minister Anatoly Kulikov has been transformed on the ground into a virtual "Cold War," in which MVD commanders in Chechnya check with their superiors before carrying out orders from the Security Council secretary. (Kommersant-daily, August 20) That observation hints at the corrosive effects that the public bickering among Kremlin leaders over Chechnya could have on Russia's already demoralized and -- according to several recent reports -- increasingly disgruntled military forces.
LEBED NOT YET IN CHECHNYA AS RUSSIAN COMMAND LOOKS POISED TOSTORM GROZNY. Contrary to yesterday's premature reports, Russia's chief security official and presidential plenipotentiary for Chechnya, Aleksandr Lebed, is not yet in Chechnya and may fly there today at the earliest. Lebed's spokesmen yesterday reaffirmed that he opposed the planned military storming of Grozny as militarily unsound, politically counterproductive, and bound to result in mass casualties and the final destruction of the city.
Russian forces yesterday began closing in on the Chechen capital held by the insurgents since August 6, engaging Chechen forces in heavy fighting on the city's outskirts. Lt. General Konstantin Pulikovsky, acting commander of combined Russian forces in Chechnya, in an interview yesterday confirmed his intention to begin the general assault on Grozny tomorrow morning, and predicted that it would take at least one month of fighting to recapture the city. He refused to resume negotiations with Chechen chief of staff Aslan Maskhadov on the grounds that Maskhadov "regards Russia as an enemy of Chechnya."
Maskhadov for his part ordered his forces to stop allowing food deliveries to the few remaining Russian positions in Grozny, but otherwise to refrain from attacking Russian units except in self-defense. In the last two days Chechen forces have allowed several Russian units, including one of the Federal Security Service, to vacate their besieged positions and withdraw unmolested from Grozny. Correspondents at the scene report that fresh Chechen recruits are rushing in from the countryside to defend the city. (Russian and Western agencies, August 20)
CHECHEN CIVILIANS ARE NOT PULIKOVSKY'S PROBLEM. "Not my problem," snapped Pulikovsky when asked yesterday by Chechen collaborationist regime officials to avoid casualties among Grozny's remaining civilian population in the planned assault on the city. Pulikovsky's remark was quoted to Russian media by representatives of Doku Zavgaev's pro-Moscow administration.
The political leadership of the Chechen resistance appealed to the outside world yesterday to abandon double standards in promoting human rights and use its influence to prevent the final destruction of Grozny and its population. According to Russian government and Zavgaev administration officials, between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians including many Russians are trapped in the city. The Russian command however put the figure at 50,000 to 75,000 in a clear attempt to justify an early start of the assault. (Russian and Western agencies, August 20)
GROZNY SITUATION: ASSAULT PLAN ON TRACK, TIMING SEEMS FLEXIBLE. The titular commander in chief of Russian forces in Chechnya, Lt. General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, returning from leave to his post, threatened today to make good on his deputy Konstantin Pulikovsky's ultimatum and storm Grozny without further warning. Tikhomirov did not specify the date of the ultimatum's expiration; the omission may presage a postponement of the general assault in view of the Russian side's loss of the advantage of surprise. Tikhmirov's intent to go ahead with the assault puts him in conflict with his former superior, Aleksandr Lebed, under whom Tikhomirov served as chief of staff of the 14th Army in Moldova.
The OSCE's Chechnya mission announced today that its chief, Tim Guldimann, left Russia, and that the mission staff left Grozny ahead of the planned Russian assault. Guldimann had mediated the armistice talks aborted by the Kremlin. Mission staff considers continuing its work out of Ingushetia.
Russian democrats including Sergei Kovalev, Yelena Bonner, and "Russia's Democratic Choice" yesterday and today appealed to Yeltsin to live up to his electoral campaign promises and stop what their respective statements termed a planned "genocide" in Chechnya. (Russian and Western agencies, August 21)
THE WESTERN REGION
KIEV REJECTS RUSSIAN ALLEGATIONS OVER CHECHNYA. Ukrainian oreign Ministry chief spokesman Yuri Serhiev rejected as "slander" the allegations by senior Russian officials that Ukrainian "mercenaries" are fighting against Russian forces in Chechnya. In the latest case, Russia's first deputy internal affairs minister and commander of internal troops, Col. General Anatoly Shkirko, charged that "a gang of western Ukrainian mercenaries is committing atrocities" in Chechnya. Serhiev commented that "Russian official structures, including the Federal Security Service," spread such allegations to manipulate public opinion. He said that Kiev has repeatedly challenged Moscow to substantiate the charges but the Russian side was never able to do so. (Interfax-Ukraine, August 19)