title: " Like A Meat Grinder " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Colene Fletcher”
For months the bombs have fallen. Day after day, night after night, the full might of the Russian Army’s heavy artillery and Air Force has been concentrated in a massive attack on Grozny. The aim has been to annihilate the city’s Chechen defenders. Last week it was the infantry’s turn to try to make good on the Russian military’s boast that the recapture of Grozny was imminent. But a NEWSWEEK reporter’s trip into the city last Saturday shows just how slow, chaotic and bloody that assault has become for the Russians.
In north Grozny, Chechen irregular troops loyal to Moscow have succeeded in pushing back rebel fighters just 400 yards in the past week. Their commander, Beslan Gantemirov, says his reconnaissance groups are now scouting the center of the city, two and one-half kilometers from the federal front lines. “Compared to the last assault on Grozny [in 1994-95], this is much slower and much more messy,’’ says Gantemirov, the former mayor of Grozny and once an ally of the late Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev. Boris Yeltsin released Gantemirov from jail in September where he was serving a sentence for embezzlement so that he could head the pro-Moscow Chechen forces. “Our opponents are good fighters. Even though they are my enemies I can say as a Chechen that I am proud that they are fighting so bravely.''
Russian officials claim that there are only 700 fighters left in the burning ruins of the city. A more realistic figure seems to be around at least 1,500. But however few their numbers, the rebels who remain in networks of heavily fortified dugouts throughout the city are putting up a deadly fight. The Russian force in Chechnya is 100,000 strong, but its progress last week in the “final assault” on Grozny was punishingly slow. Like Gantemirov’s troops, some of Russia’s Interior Ministry troops managed to push the rebels into a retreat from some sections of Grozny, but in the process they took casualties far higher than the seven to 10 per day admitted to by Moscow’s Defense Ministry. And the rebels, even in retreat, managed to score a significant psychological victory when they wounded and captured (according to their account) one of the commanders of the Grozny assault: Maj. Gen. Mikhail Malofeyev, deputy commander of the Federal Forces’ Northern Group. His unit was ambushed in a nighttime rebel raid on Grozny, when a group of fighters crawled through sewer pipes to reach the Russian unit’s location, catching it completely unprepared for an assault.
The level of concern in Moscow with the increasingly deadly war in Chechnya is now obvious. Last Saturday acting president Vladimir Putin replaced the Interior Ministry commander in charge of troops in Chechnya, including those leading the assault on Grozny. He also again adopted the tough-guy pose that has boosted his popularity among Russian voters before the forthcoming presidential election. While insisting, as he has repeatedly, that the Grozny operation was going to plan, the acting president warned Russians to be prepared for further terrorist attacks on Russian soil. He reminded everyone of the bombs that went off in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk in late August and early September, which Moscow said were set by Chechen terrorists. Putin said the bombs went off because “we socked the bandits in the mug in Dagestan… when they found they were powerless in a straight battle with us.”
But the idea that the Chechens are “powerless” is sadly mocked by the mounting number of zinc coffins carrying Russian soldiers home every week. As even some Russian military officers admit, it is their infantry, composed mostly of teenage conscripts, that is unprepared for the war. Their enemies, for the most part, are hardened veterans of the last Chechen war who are once again demonstrating their skill as guerrilla fighters–both in the capital city and in the fighting that continues in the mountains to the south. Igor Ivanikov, a major commanding Interior Ministry forces for Moscow, concedes his troops are no match for their opponents. “I see these 18-year-old kids coming back from fighting in the hills and their eyes are dead,” says Ivanikov. “It’s as though they are already prepared to die. Like they are on death row.”
All too many are. In Grozny last Saturday, Said, one of the Chechen irregulars fighting for Gantemirov, told NEWSWEEK that “these kids just panic when a sniper opens fire.” One of their men was shot by a sniper and the driver of their armored personnel carrier reversed in panic. He backed into a house and crushed one of his own boys to death.
Such chaos among Russia’s forces is not uncommon. When Gantemirov’s men took a building on Kasiora Street after a lengthy battle last week, they found themselves under attack again–this time from “friendly’’ federal artillery. One of his men was killed in the shelling. “My radio battery gave out and I had to send a man back with a message that they were shelling their own people” says Omar Dagarov, one of Gantemirov’s commanders. Admits Gantemirov: “There is no coordination between different federal forces. Our radios don’t work, there is no unified command. We have to buy our own ammunition and my troops are not paid. Everyone is fighting separately–the Interior Ministry forces, the Army and us.’’ And the biggest problem of all, says Dagarov, is that the young, inexperienced federal forces “don’t know how to fight.''
That’s why the death toll for Moscow is mounting, even as their troops make incremental gains in the capital. According to Chechen reports, one Russian combat unit of 40 men was either killed or captured last week. “Out of our company of 75 men, only 25 are left,” one shellshocked Russian sergeant told Russian television. “It was like a meat grinder.''
One top commander, Gen. Gennady Troshev, flew into Grozny last week to buck up one unit that had refused to advance any farther after taking a brutal beating in a firefight on the northern outskirts of the city. Their commander had to call in more experienced Army troops to bail them out. At an impromptu medals ceremony the soldiers “stood with their heads down, their faces black with dirt and shook hands with Troshev as if they were zombies,” said one Russian journalist who witnessed the scene. “All they wanted to do was not go back to the front lines.”
But back they will go. At the weekend the Russian attempt to capture the capital was still in progress–though in slow motion. The weight of the sheer numbers meant that “victory” in Grozny is inevitable for Moscow. But as in the last Chechen war, victory could mean occupying a city the rebels consider theirs–and becoming targets for the deadly hit-and-run attacks that are sure to come.
