Russia Military Assaults

Russia's new security chief, returning from a secret visit to Chechnya during some of the heaviest fighting there, announced an initiative Monday to end the separatist war and said he expects to gain more power to try to carry it out. "There is no more important question in Russia than that of Chechnya," retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed declared after talks Sunday night and early Monday with the separatist rebel commander. "Chechnya is an open, bleeding wound.

Residents of the battered Chechen capital had one of the quietest days in nearly two weeks Sunday, as Russian and rebel forces tried to avoid fighting as their commanders resumed cease-fire talks. However, outside Grozny, the rebels downed a helicopter transporting food. Two crew members were killed and two were wounded, the Russian command said. Brief firefights also erupted in Grozny during the day, and earlier in the morning Russian artillery shells pounded the city.

Chechen rebels who seized their shattered capital in a surprise attack fended off a feeble counteroffensive by Russian federal forces Wednesday in Grozny, shooting down helicopter gunships trying to drive them out and blocking the airport and an armored column of reinforcements.

Federal troops struggled to retake the Chechen capital Sunday as their prime minister promised reinforcements to end the confrontation in Grozny that has embarrassed President Boris N. Yeltsin. At an emergency session of the government's Chechnya commission in Moscow, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin said "radical measures" are needed to resolve the situation in the secessionist republic.

In August 1991, when a failed coup d'etat plunged the Soviet Union into its terminal crisis, Boris N. Yeltsin stepped boldly into the power vacuum and, by year's end, into the Kremlin.

When Russian troops look down their gun sights at Chechnya, they see only the ghetto home of criminally minded, primitive "darkies" of popular Russian legend. In Chechnya, they see only impenetrable hills, dusty roads and ruins of villages that Moscow's tanks and aviation have destroyed. But Chechens examining the same sites see a landscape of defiance of the Russians who have ruled them by the sword for two centuries of almost continual battle; the Chechens draw strength from this.

Separatists in Chechnya stormed the region's Russian-controlled capital and two nearby towns at dawn Tuesday, dealing Boris N. Yeltsin a stinging blow as he prepared for his inauguration this week after winning a second term as Russia's president. Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers scuttled out of the scorched ruins of Grozny as Chechen fighters swept back into the town they lost last year, seizing administrative buildings in most of the capital's districts.

Alexander I. Lebed, Russia's audacious security chief, flew to the breakaway region of Chechnya on Wednesday to try to avert the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the Chechen capital, which Russian generals have threatened to bomb into submission this morning. Lt. Gen. Konstantin B. Pulikovsky, acting commander of the Russian forces who are fighting separatists in the southern republic, disrupted a peace process started by Lebed last week.

She hid for eight days in a cellar to escape the shells and bombs exploding outside in the hell that Russian troops and Chechen rebels were making of her hometown, Grozny. But when her transistor radio told her a cease-fire would start at midday Wednesday, Lala Eldarova ventured out in a convoy of hundreds of civilians escaping the Chechen capital for the relative safety of the southern hills. Disaster struck minutes after the truce was supposed to begin.

Federal military commanders agreed Tuesday to resume withdrawing troops from Chechnya, propping up a shaky truce in the 20-month war that had been threatened by a dispute over missing guns. Truckloads of gloomy Russian soldiers poured out of the shattered capital, Grozny, and the nearby region of Vedeno. Tired but jubilant Chechen rebels celebrated in the streets. A bearded rebel fighter wearing blue fatigues was barely able to contain his joy.