RUSSIA-CHECHNYA: Lebed Asks – Who’s In Charge Here?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Aug 21 1996 (IPS) - Russian national security chief Alexander Lebed left Moscow Wednesday to talk peace with Chechen rebels just hours before a scheduled Russian military blitz on the breakaway region, highlighting the conflict of policy surrounding the crisis.

General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, who resumed command of the Russian forces in Chechnya on Tuesday, has reiterated his determination to take ‘decisive’ steps against the rebels and stage an all-out offensive Thursday to retake the capital, Grozny.

At least 200,000 civilians, mainly the elderly, are still trapped in cellars in Grozny, and another 70,000 refugees had fled to Staraya Sunzha, a north eastern district of the city.

The military’s determination to crush Chechen separatist rebels with overwhelming force sits in contrast to Lebed’s personal attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement in Chechnya.

Against the opposition of both hardline conservatives and liberals Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed a July decree that gave Lebed a clear mandate to resolve the 20-month old crisis. Yeltsin fired a number of hawks from his inner circle to clear the way for Lebed’s initiatives and his efforts won quick support from rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov and a fragile ceasefire.

But Yeltsin has not been seen since his inauguration on Aug. 9, when he appeared tired and ill. The sudden resurgence of the Russian army in Chechnya has fed suspicions that Yeltsin is now too ill to give orders, and that the military command has taking advantage of this fact to recover control of the operation.

On Monday the acting Russian military commander in Chechnya, general Konstantin Pulikovsky overturned Lebed’s policy of negotiation and gave civilians in Grozny 48 hours to leave before the army attacked. He claimed he had signed orders from Yeltsin to issue the ultimatum.

Lebed’s team, clearly sidestepped and angry, accused Kremlin aides of issuing presidential decrees with facsimiles of Yeltsin’s signatures. The order wrecked a fragile truce proposed by Lebed in face to face talks with Mashkadov last week.

The charge was furiously denied by the Kremlin, but if Yeltsin really is incapacitated — he suffered two heart attacks last year and was visibly drained by the summer’s election campaign — the way is open to a titanic struggle for power between the military, Lebed’s security council, Yeltsin’s aides and the cabinet led by prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin.

Lebed and Chernomyrdin have locked horns before; both are considered the most likely successors to Yeltsin. Lebed wants to be president and has taken on the ‘responsibility’ for finding a solution to the deeply unpopular Chechen crisis aware of the good that success will do for his political prospects.

However his grasp of Kremlin politics is not so sure. He made a foe for life out of Chernomyrdin with his clumsy efforts to claim a special ‘deputy president’ title and by condemning the State Commission on Chechen Settlement that he headed.

“(The Chechnya job) is really a big gamble for him,” analyst Andrei Kortunov of the Russian Science Federation told IPS. “If he fails a lot of people in the Kremlin will be happy to see him ‘break his neck’, as Lebed himself put it.”

Reportedly Chernomyrdin and his liberal ally, top presidential aide Anatoly Chubais, unsuccessfully tried to persuade Yeltsin not to sign the decree that transferred much of the responsibility and much of the power for settling the Chechen conflict to Lebed’s national Security Council.

Chubais tried to convince Yeltsin not to sign the decree, arguing that it would give the hardboiled ex-general too much power, which he could later use for what — according to the daily Izvestia — Chubais described as “unclear goals”.

Significantly the signed mandate from Yeltsin did not include actual command over the military in the field. A source close to Lebed told Moscow Echo radio that despite the fact that Yeltsin had personally charged the ex-paratroop general with resolving the crises, he did not give him direct authority over the troops, who are commanded by the interior ministry. According to the source Lebed “could only use persuasion”.

However Tikhomirov, who re-took control of the troops on Tuesday after what was described officially as a ‘period of leave’ has taken a less overtly aggressive stance than Pulikovsky, who had temporarily replaced Tikhomirov as commander of Russian forces in Chechnya.

And Tikhomirov, who served under Lebed in the 14th Russian Army in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, has not taken Pulikovsky’s line that force is the only option, instead declaring himself ready to consider political as well as military methods.

Lebed, who was scheduled to leave Moscow Wednesday morning, planned to follow new talks with Maskhadov and possibly separatist president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev with talks with Tikhomirov and Pulikovsky, who is staying on in Chechnya as his deputy.

Much now depends on the true motives of Lebed, whose high moral tone on the futility of the Chechen war has not prevented observers from questioning his commitment to a peaceful settlement.

“He has no conviction on any issue, and his statements are very contradictory,” analyst Andrei Piotkowsky of the Moscow Centre for Strategic Studies told IPS.

“He could use either war or peace to boost his political chances. After his first mediation it seems that he decided that the peace scenario would be more profitable, politically, for him.”

Lebed’s objectives in Chechnya Wednesday are no more clear. “Maybe he plans to deceive Maskhadov, just to get his agreement to withdraw his troops from Grozny.” said Anatoly Shabad, a Russian deputy with the Democratic Choice Party.

“It is also possible that he is being frank and has realised that it is senseless to have another round of fighting.”

On Wednesday Lebed’s spokesman Alexander Barkhatov told Interfax news agency that the security chief was “committed to a more complex solution to the Chechnya situation — a peaceful solution, rather than battling for one town after another.”

Tens of thousands of civilians declined to take the risk, and continue to struggle to escape the Chechen capital of Grozny before Thursday’s scheduled attack.

Fighting continued Wednesday with the Russian military command, quoted by the semi-official Itar-Tass news agency, claiming that the rebels in central Grozny were running out of food and ammunition and were surrounded by three rings of Russian soldiers

It said two Russian troops died and nine were wounded in night fighting but said the situation in Grozny was holding. Rebel spokesman Movladi Udugov told media that said Russian aircraft had attacked Grozny and separatist-held villages and city suburbs.

Udugov told Moscow Echo radio that the rebel leadership regarded Lebed’s visit as “a bid to stop the madness which the Russian generals are planning and trying to unleash.” He said the rebel side had “an understanding with Lebed on most of the issues, that took account of Russia’s national interests without fundamentally hurting them.”

“Evidently all this effort is opposed by some people in Moscow,” he added, “those for whom an end to the war in Chechnya would mean the end of their political careers — or a trial.”

The news has done nothing to restore confidence in the Russian military’s capability to resolve the crisis.

“We were told every time that peace is very near. And see what is going on now,” said Yuri Mamayev, a wounded Russian soldier now being treated in a hospital in Rostov.

Meanwhile the Chechen fighters are unbowed and demand concrete commitments on autonomy and a full withdrawal by the Russian army before they stand down themselves and open up the city, captured in a surprise offensive on Aug. 6.

“The war will not end till the troops leave,” a 21-year old fighter called Aslan told independent Russian TV Wednesday.