Chechnya Russia

Separatists in Chechnya ambushed a column of Russian tanks and trucks, killing 26 soldiers and damaging President Boris N. Yeltsin's effort to wind down the war by election day, Russian news media reported Wednesday. The clash was the bloodiest since Yeltsin offered a peace plan for the unruly southern republic on March 31. It occurred as Russian troops were withdrawing late Tuesday from Shatoi, a mountain town in Chechnya abandoned earlier by separatist guerrillas.

More than 30 Russian soldiers were killed in a battle with Chechen rebels as the army pursued efforts Friday to cripple the separatists' fighting forces. Troops bombarded guerrilla positions across the region. Villagers from Shazhali in the southwest said more than 100 homes were destroyed in the second air raid this week, even though local elders signed a truce with the Russian military.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's much-trumpeted peace plan for Chechnya failed to spur any immediate easing of the conflict Monday, with federal authorities reporting a huge increase in casualties and signs that rebel fighters were poised for new attacks. A day after Yeltsin ordered a unilateral cease-fire and partial troop withdrawal, 28 deaths and 75 injuries from overnight skirmishes were reported by the federal army command in the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Eleven fruitless days after President Boris N. Yeltsin unveiled a peace plan for Chechnya, his strategy for ending the war was wedged Thursday between a Russian army commander who vowed to "smash" the rebels if they do not surrender and a political ally who urged the president to talk directly with Chechen separatist leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev.

Russian commanders insisted Tuesday that they were sticking to President Boris N. Yeltsin's plan to end the offensive in Chechnya despite deadly clashes between Russian troops and rebel fighters. Thirty separatist fighters reportedly died in one battle, but Russian commanders said their troops will keep their promise to shoot only in self-defense. Meanwhile, Chechen rebel leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev ridiculed Yeltsin's cease-fire decree.

Russian troops will begin withdrawing from stable areas of breakaway Chechnya today, their commander said Sunday, but persistent fighting and a protracted timetable for the pullout suggest that the announcement was aimed at creating an illusion of progress toward peace. A neutral emissary working to arrange negotiations between President Boris N. Yeltsin and Chechen rebel leader Gen. Dzhokar M.

The widow of Chechen rebel leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev said Saturday that she wants to travel to Moscow on a peace mission. "I'm asking you to guarantee me safe passage and to allow me to carry out a mission of peace," Alla Dudayev said, wearing black and choking back tears. Her appeal, on Russia's independent NTV, was directed at Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. NTV said there was no immediate response from the Kremlin, and no other details were released.

President Boris N. Yeltsin will take his campaign for reelection to the southern Russian city of Budennovsk this week, his office announced Saturday, in a high-stakes political gamble that will place him at the scene of one of his greatest humiliations.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered his troops Sunday to end all combat actions against rebel Chechnya and announced that a phased withdrawal of federal forces will begin from areas of the breakaway republic already bludgeoned into submission. But a simultaneous vow to continue fighting against "terrorist acts" suggested that Yeltsin's latest endeavor to stop the war he instigated 15 months ago is little more than a repackaging of failed initiatives from the past.

Gen. Dzhokar M. Dudayev's violent death in Chechnya has ended one of the bitter personal feuds that shaped Russia's early post-Soviet history. What does the victor, Boris N. Yeltsin, stand to gain? As with so many other questions in Russia nowadays, the answer will come, in large part, from voters.