Requiem for a Heavyweight

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 21, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer

Only one nation refused to submit to the psychology of submission--the Chechens." Thus wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about Chechen resistance during the bestial Stalin-era deportations. "No Chechen ever tried to be of service or to please the authorities. Their attitude toward them was proud and hostile." As the Kremlin continues to try to subjugate the tiny breakaway Muslim state of Chechnya, it is relearning the truth of those words at considerable cost in the lives of Russian soldiers and Chechen civilians. In the process, the Kremlin also is revealing how weak the Russian military has become since the glory days of the Red Army in the Cold War.

As Insight went to press; ragtag bands of Muslim rebels remained defiantly unbowed in their defense of the Chechen capital of Grozny. In the third week of January it looked as if all might be over. Kremlin officials announced the breaching of rebel lines in the city. After almost a month of humiliating military setbacks, the cracking of the defenses appeared to open the way for Russian special-forces units to seize the capital. Upbeat Russian generals crowed that Grozny would fall in a handful of days; the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass echoed their confidence.

With Western journalists blocked from entering Chechnya, the foreign wire services had little choice but to follow this line.

Despite the rhetoric and disinformation from both sides, the battle for Grozny continues to rage. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 rebels in the capital are making a tremendous fight of it and are intent on forcing the demoralized Russians to pay as heavy a price as they did when they fought their way into the Chechen capital back in 1994. While rebel leaders concede they are suffering heavy casualties in bitter hand-to-hand fighting, they also are inflicting heavy losses on the huge Russian forces confronting them -- far higher than those admitted to by the authorities, who have been ferrying casualties out of the war zone aboard night trains. According to Russia's respected NTV television, as many as 5,000 Russian soldiers may have fallen-- 10 times the official Kremlin toll. The Russian dead include senior officers and at least one general. With each day that passes the rebels confirm the depths to which the Russian military has sunk.

Far from making up for the bungled 1994-96 war against the Chechens, the avowed aim of Russia's chief of staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the Russian army once again is advertising its sorry state-- its lack of morale, fighting ability and leadership. "It strains belief that such a formidable force could have eroded so precipitously," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis. He isn't the only military analyst to be surprised at the inability of Russian forces to overcome Chechen resistance.

Admittedly, as others have learned -- the United States in Vietnam and Britain in Northern Ireland -- subduing essentially guerrilla forces is no easy task. But this isn't the first time the Russians have confronted the Chechens. Nor is it their first modern counterinsurgency exercise -- that came with Afghanistan in the 1980s. In the fall when the Kremlin unleashed the current war against Chechnya, Russian generals and politicians alike insisted they had absorbed the mistakes of the first Chechen conflict. They would be more cautious this time 'round and not go storming into Grozny or rebel-held towns and villages. They would play to their own strengths and use aerial strikes and long-range bombardment to crush the rebels. When they eventually entered Grozny, it just would be a mop-up operation and then they would follow the retreating rebels into the mountains to the south and southwest of the capital and starve them out.

In fact, air strikes and artillery and rocket bombardment were the preferred Russian weapons back in the first Chechen war, but they didn't prove any more successful then. Unlike NATO forces, the Russians are unable to mount precision strikes; their attacks are wilder and inaccurate. In 1994, Russian foot soldiers complained of being hit by their own side. Reports suggest the same thing is happening now -- hardly surprising since Russian pilots are lucky to get more than 20 training hours per year But even if long-range bombing and air strikes had proved more effective this time, the Russians always were going to have to confront the rebels on the ground -- and there remains the major problem for Russia's generals.

The Chechens excel in guerrilla warfare; the Russians don't. The Chechens are fighting for their homeland; Russian soldiers would prefer to be back in their own homes. As with the last Chechen conflict, so with this one. Troops have had to be drawn from across the Russian military and they have had no time to train together to develop unit cohesiveness or refine tactics, something especially important when fighting in the cramped conditions of an urban terrain.

"The Russians are stalled," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow military analyst. "They're losing the war The Russian troops are not good enough. The commanders are making stupid tactical mistakes."