And about. in a minefield
Vladimir Putin made a name for himself in the war in the North Caucasus. But the real fighting in Chechnya, in fact, began only at the end of December. The troops were stuck in Grozny and in the foothills of the republic. Now every day of the war brings greater losses. The experience of the past Chechen campaign shows that people quickly get tired of war, and its initiators turn from heroes into political corpses. Putin needs to hurry, and postponing the elections to the spring came in handy.

Grozny will be destroyed
The main events are now unfolding in Grozny and the southern, mountainous part of the republic. The generals promised to take the Chechen capital at the end of December, but there was no quick victory: most of the city is still under the control of militants. Special forces soldiers who returned from Chechnya say that almost every house in Grozny has been turned into an impregnable fortress, and many streets have become traps for the attackers. The militants, unable to withstand massive shelling, retreat, and at night penetrate the rear of the federals through underground communications, forcing them to abandon the captured neighborhoods. The matter is complicated by the fact that the command does not have detailed communication plans. Just as they were not there during the first war. It was the communications that the federals were unable to block in time that the militants used during the capture of Grozny in 1996.
Chechens also create so-called fire bags. They brick and board the windows and doors of the first floors. And on the upper floors there are groups of snipers, who have literally every centimeter targeted. When troops appear on the streets, the militants cut off the accompanying armored vehicles with grenade launcher fire. Reconnaissance, left without fire support, cannot find shelter from sniper bullets in houses. They say that several reconnaissance groups died this way. Moreover, in Grozny, the federal troops are opposed not by elite Chechen units (the people of Maskhadov, Basayev, Khattab have long left the city and moved to the Vedeno district), but by local militias. There are one and a half to two thousand of them, and only 20-30% of them have combat experience. Their main trump card is knowledge of the area. And despite all the statements of the federal command about the complete blockade of Grozny, the city’s defenders continue to receive not only food, medicine and ammunition, but also the latest weapons. Thus, according to intelligence information, militants recently acquired sniper rifles that can penetrate not only bulletproof vests, but even the frontal armor of armored personnel carriers at a great distance. There are several groups operating in the city with such weapons. To neutralize them, snipers from special units of the FSB and the Ministry of Defense are being transferred to Grozny from all over Russia.
During the fighting in the Chechen capital, according to Movladi Udugov, the federals lost about two thousand killed and twice as many wounded. The Russian command, naturally, refutes these data, stating that the losses do not exceed “two to three dozen people.” At the same time, combatants who recently returned from Chechnya say that 20-30 people die every day in assault groups. So the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Moreover, the generals claim that so far everything is going according to plan: the militants are being destroyed by aircraft and artillery and will soon be completely defeated. And all their attempts to escape from the besieged city and go to the mountains are stopped. By the way, the troops are tasked with minimizing the destruction in Grozny; they will have to rebuild it themselves. But it is obvious that in the current situation it cannot be accomplished. Yesterday the Chechens spread information that the city center had been fired at with Scud missiles and bombed with napalm.

War in Basayev’s small homeland
No less bloody battles, according to Chechen sources, took place yesterday around the villages of Alkhan-Yurt, Alkhan-Kala and Kulary. In the morning, militants from the famous Urus-Martan bandit Arbi Baraev (he has hundreds of murders and hostage kidnappings to his name.--Kommersant) captured these settlements. At the same time, the headquarters of the Western Group of Federal Forces, located in Alkhan-Yurt, was allegedly destroyed, and its commander Vladimir Shamanov managed to avoid capture at the last moment.
In turn, the Russian command claims that there were no military operations at the indicated points yesterday, and Barayev, who was ambushed with his supporters by the marines near Urus-Martan, was killed on January 1.
By the way, yesterday in Urus-Martan FSB officers discovered a school for training saboteurs and bombers, as well as a training ground for their practical training.
The terrorist school was located on the territory of a former mineral fertilizer plant. Here, in one of the workshops, five tons of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, an installation for mixing explosive components, detonators, and timers made on the basis of Casio watches were found.
The examination showed that these explosives, detonators and timers are similar to those used by terrorists in the explosions of residential buildings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk, which killed 305 people and injured about 500.
And yet, the main events of this Chechen campaign are still ahead, and they will unfold in the mountainous part of the republic. Here, in the regional center of Vedeno, where Shamil Basayev was born and raised, the militants’ command headquarters is now located.
Yesterday, after an operation that lasted more than a day and a half, federal troops managed to take the Turtle height, covering the road to Vedeno. They are separated from the outskirts of Basayev’s native village by several kilometers.

CRIME DEPARTMENT

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 1 dated 01/05/2000, page 3

And about. in a minefield