RUSSIA-CHECHNYA: Russian Troops Win Control of Presidential Palace

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rajiv Tiwari

MOSCOW, Jan 19 1995 (IPS) - Russian troops Thursday hoisted their national flag over the presidential palace in Grozny, ending the first phase of the military intervention to squash Chechen separatism.

Shortly after the news broke, President Boris Yeltsin said that the armed action against the breakaway republic was virtually over, in a statement issued by the presidential press service.

However, there was some confusion over the interpretation of the statement which the official Russian Itar-Tass news agency rendered as: “The military stage of restoring power of the Russian Federation’s constitution in Chechnya has actually finished.”

Yeltsin also stated that in the transitional period which had begun, the priorities will be restoration of vital services and protection of human rights.

Independent reports from the Chechen capital of Grozny maintained that militants continued to resist Russian ground troops who were trying to take complete control of the city.

Chechen militants were believed to have retreated from the presidential building which they had held on to for 20 days as a symbol of their resistance despite coming under a sustained artillery barrage and several ground offensives by Russian troops.

The government press service told Tass that the national flag was raised by soldiers of the 276th motorised rifle regiment from the Urals commanded by Col. Sergei Bunin.

Earlier reports indicated that Russian jets had pounded the building since Thursday morning with some bombs finding the targetted underground bunker where Chechen fighters were holed up along with an unspecified number of Russian prisoners of war.

Tass reported that the fate of the Russian pows was not yet known and troops had begun clearing the basement hide-out of mines.

Thursday’s capture of the seat of the Chechen revolt came one day after U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher voiced concern to Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev at the conclusion of their talks in Geneva this week over the chances of Moscow getting bogged down in a military quagmire.

The capture of Grozny’s presidential palace could however prove to be a largely symbolic victory if Russian troops are ordered to flush out Chechen militants who have fled to the republic’s southern mountains which could become the next theatre of action.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin Thursday fell in line with Yeltsin’s earlier refusal to conduct talks with defiant Chechen leader Jokhar Dudayev, abandoning a previous peace initiative.

“We do not talk with bandits,” Chernomyrdin was quoted saying though he had earlier this week met with two of Dudayev’s emissaries in Moscow and discussed the possibility of a ceasefire which failed to take hold on Wednesday.

Despite Yeltsin’s reported statement putting an end to armed action, Chechen militants are unlikely to surrender easily and Russia faces the prospect of a guerrilla campaign which could take a heavy military, economic and political toll.

Russian lawmakers in the Federation Council, upper house of parliament, Thursday put to the vote two motions which were not adopted but signalled the mood of the powerful chamber which is representative of the country’s regions and republics.

A draft resolution calling for Yeltsin’s impeachment and a motion of no-confidence in the government by the lower house of parliament, mustered 61 votes while 54 lawmakers turned it down and nine abstained. To be carried, the motion would have required 90 votes.

Another resolution defining the use of armed forces in Chechnya as unlawful recorded 66 votes for, 55 against and seven abstentions.

In separate developments which underscored opposition to the military intervention, the president of the Russian republic of Chuvashia on the Volga River refused to back down from his earlier measure banning the deployment of soldiers drawn from his province in Chechnya, despite Yeltsin’s warning.

Nikolai Fyodorov, President of Chuvashia and a former Russian justice minister, has stuck to the constitutional position that armed forces can be used in internal conflicts only if a state of emergency has been clamped, which has not been done in Chechnya.

The defence ministry was also said to have “categorically banned” the use of conscripts in Chechnya with less than six months of service, after an uproar has been raised by mothers who have protested against the deployment of their teenaged sons.

Elsewhere, Tass reported that a group of special Russian anti- terrorist forces known as ‘Omon’ had in the Siberian city of Bratsk refused to accept a deployment order in Chechnya and were disarmed and disbanded.