RUSSIA/CHECHNYA: Grachev May Be Target After New Chechen Fiasco

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IPS Correspondents

MOSCOW, Jan 10 1996 (IPS) - Russian president Boris Yeltsin, infuriated by the start of another Chechen hostage crisis that promises him nothing but more military humiliation and political embarrassment, is blaming his armed forces for the latest fiasco.

Eight months after a nearly identical hospital siege crisis ended in disastrous bloodshed, Chechen rebels stormed another hospital Tuesday, this time in Kizlyar in Dagestan, southern Russia, taking some 2,000 people hostage.

Observers here speculate that the first political casualty of the new crisis will be defence minister Pavel Grachev. Grachev has survived several efforts to topple him over the military’s disastrous record in Chechnya.

The war in Chechnya remains unpopular — 70 percent quizzed in a recent Moscow poll opposed the use of force there — and sacking Grachev would be one way for Yeltsin to distance himself from the Chechen imbroglio before announcing his plan to run for a second presidential term in the June elections, as predicted.

On Grachev’s advice, among others, Yeltsin ordered troops into the tiny, thinly populated North Caucasus republic “to protect the territorial integrity of the country” and silence a three- year campaign for independence, in December 1994.

More than 20,000 have died since then and the military have proven powerless to crush Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudyaev. Despite a disarmament agreement in July, the military conflict has escalated, disrupting last months’ parliamentary elections and culminating in Tuesday’s daring raid.

Yeltsin has lashed out at ministers for “sleeping” while the raiders struck. After a similar hostage crisis in Budennovsk last June was bungled by the military, Yeltsin took advantage of the row to sack the head of the federal counter-intelligence service, Sergei Stepashin and minister of interior Viktor Yerin. The two were close allies to Grachev — the trio were dubbed the ‘Party of War’ for their hardline stance on Chechnya.

Grachev now claims he had his doubts all along . “Now, a year after, I can say that I never supported armed action, especially in the hurried way it was done,” he told the independent news agency Interfax in December. “However, as a soldier, I had to carry out my orders”. He also pledged army support for prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, chief advocate of a negotiated Chechen peace, in last month’s elections.

Yeltsin will pick his own man to replace Grachev, but he has a interest in maintaining personal control over the army and may insist on putting the General Staff under his own direct supervision instead of leaving it to another soldier or even a politically appointed civilian minister.

Informed sources say General Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s head of security, is a strong supporter of such a development, since it would bring the General Staff closer to the seat of power.

Korzhakov himself is a prime candidate for the defence minister’s post. Yeltsin has said that he and the former KGB secret police official have been “inseparable” since Yeltsin came to Moscow in 1985.

Korzhakov is chief of Yeltsin’s bodyguard and a top Kremlin player. He rarely gives interviews, but in his first appearance on national TV last month he took a swing at Grachev, asserting that he should have “either retired or shot himself” for leading Russia into the Chechen conflict. The comment was cut.

Grachev, 47, an Afghan war veteran and former Soviet air force commander, became Russian defence minister in May 1992. The Russian media have repeatedly accused him of corruption, but he has always denied the allegations.

Other possible successors are Andrei Kokoshin, a first deputy defence minister since 1992, General Alexander Lebed, former head of the Russian 14th Army in Trans-Dnestr, or General Boris Gromov, who joined Russia’s first presidential elections in 1991 on the ticket of then prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. Gromov was eventually appointed deputy foreign minister despite his previous stiff criticism of Yeltsin’s defence policies.

Yeltsin, conscious of the threat the Chechen war posed to Russian internal stability and for his future, wants it solved. He is acutely aware that the military option has failed to deliver the desired result: elimination of Chechen separatism and the securing of Chechnya within the Russian Federation.

Also the mounting cost of the war undermines hope of economic stabilisation, as important to Russia’s position in foreign debt and investment talks as it is as an electoral issue.

Whoever is put in charge will be tasked to either ensure the military does not get in the way of a political settlement — or end it by force. Given the military’s past record, the latter option does not seem likely.

New Russian offensives have restored Dudayev’s falling popularity in Chechnya by recreating him as a national resistance leader in the mould of historical Chechen leaders like Sheikh Mansur and Imam Shamil.

And despite a year of hunting, the Russian security forces are no nearer to catching him, even though he clearly remains within a hour’s drive of the capital and is able to happily give press conferences to Russian and foreign media.

In contrast morale in the Russian army is at a new low. More than 6,500 Russian soldiers have died and around 300 have been taken prisoner in the fighting so far, while more than 700 have deserted from the army during the campaign.

Over 40 percent of soldiers in the 80,000 strong Russian force question their presence in Chechnya and don’t see the objective of the operation, the daily Moscow News reported in December, quoting a leaked Russian defence ministry report.

The Russian army is underfunded and undermanned and, as a result, is poorly trained and generally not combat-ready. It has been outpaced by a resurgent NATO and humiliated in Afghanistan. Since the start of the Chechen debacle, the press has been full of accusations of its criminal brutality toward civilians.

General Yevgeny Podkolzin, commander in chief of Russia’s paratroops has blamed the government for “strategic” mistakes which led directly to heavy casualties. Yet the Army was an unhappy and disillusioned force even before Chechnya — and now the situation is much worse.

Officers returning to their garrisons from Chechnya are confronted with the same problems they left behind: low pay, bad housing and poor career prospects in the face of defence cuts.

Only a fraction of the Russian army is fighting in Chechnya. But units have been sent there from every military district of the country, from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. As they return to their bases they tell their stories to their comrades-in-arms.

“The most serious military problem facing Russia today is not Chechnya, but the crisis within the army itself,” wrote leading Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer in a commentary for IPS recently. “The crisis in the army presents a far more serious threat to the foundations of constitutional order and civil society in Russia than a localised war in the Caucasus.”