GROZNY, Russia — Since he was chased out of this capital by Russian artillery a year ago, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov has been a hunted man, hiding out in the southern mountains of his rebellious republic.
To Moscow, which deposed his government and imposed federal control over most of Chechnya, he is a bandit and a terrorist. But tens of thousands of Russian troops in the republic have been unable to extinguish his much smaller band of determined fighters. And Maskhadov, a former Soviet military officer who was elected president in 1997, remains defiant.
In a rare communication to a Western newspaper from his mountain hide-out, Maskhadov--responding on audiotape to written questions from The Times--predicted this month that his forces will deal Moscow a humiliating defeat in Chechnya.
Saying his loyalists were fighting with "extreme hatred" against "barbarism," Maskhadov asserted that Russian forces will suffer the same fate in Chechnya as the Soviet Red Army did in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. "Their army will leave this place in shame," he said.
But Maskhadov said he was also interested in negotiating with Russia for the sake of the Chechen people.
Referring to a resolution by the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly for an immediate cessation of combat and talks without conditions, Maskhadov said: "We are ready. . . . We are not rejecting contacts. The ball is in the Russian court."
By the last official figures, about 2,500 Russian troops had been killed in Chechnya as of October, and the government has acknowledged that on average 20 soldiers die each week in hit-and-run attacks, shelling and mine explosions.
In Grozny, Russian checkpoints are shot at nightly and gun battles between the rebels and army and Interior Ministry troops are commonplace. In a daytime incident earlier this month, Russian soldiers fired on a Chechen car whose occupants had shot at a checkpoint. All four men inside the vehicle were killed and a bystander was injured. Yet rebel fighters were seen brazenly driving near the same spot in suburban Staraya Sunzha three days later.
Despite such occurrences, the official Russian position is that the war is over, the rebels are desperate and all that is needed now is to mop up the last "ringleaders"--specifically Maskhadov, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev and the Arab warlord who goes by the name Khattab.
