Hopes for Chechnya Peace Collapse as Military Commanders Skip Talks : Russia: A frequently violated cease-fire breaks down altogether. Fighting is expected to intensify outside Chechen capital.

Hopes for a negotiated end to Russia’s war in Chechnya collapsed Sunday when Russian and Chechen commanders failed to meet for peace talks on extending a much-violated cease-fire.

The war in the secessionist Muslim republic is now expected to enter a fierce new phase as the Russian military, which more or less controls the capital, Grozny, moves to break Chechen resistance in key outlying cities and towns.

“The Chechen forces are very much running down on heavy weapons,” Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst for Russia’s Sevodnya newspaper, said Sunday. “Now that they’re out of Grozny, having to fight in the open field, they are no match for the Russian forces with air power.”

Last week brought a relative lull in the savage fighting after Russian and Chechen ground commanders agreed Monday to a temporary ban on heavy-weapons fire and then extended the cease-fire twice more.

Shooting and shelling, however, continued. Each side blamed the other, and neither side seemed to believe that peace was at hand.

Senior Russian officials said the Chechens agreed to the cease-fire only to give themselves time to regroup. Chechens suggested with equal cynicism that Moscow agreed to peace talks the week that President Boris N. Yeltsin needed some good news to deliver in his annual address to Parliament. Besides, the Chechens said, front-line Russian troops were running out of ammunition.

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The final breakdown came Saturday night, Russians said, when Chechen rebels mounted a major assault with artillery and grenade launchers on a Grozny metallurgical factory held by Russian Interior Ministry forces.

Russian sources said one possible explanation for the attack was that the Chechens believed that offices of the Krasny Molot factory held maps of the city’s underground communications lines--and perhaps tunnels the guerrillas might be able to use to burrow under their occupied capital.

Moscow said the attack failed, and the Russians claimed to have killed as many as 80 rebels, a figure that was impossible to confirm.

As the broken truce expired at 6 p.m. local time Sunday, with the two sides having failed to agree even on a time and place for further talks, the Russian commander in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Anatoly Kulikov, said he would not extend the cease-fire.

“The joint command has exhausted all means of ending the armed confrontation and has to take adequate measures,” Kulikov said in a statement.

Russian Independent Television reported that a planned prisoner swap, one of the objectives of the truce, had not taken place. No details were available.

Russian and Chechen commanders met three times last week and were “on the threshold of peace,” Kulikov said. He insisted that the Russian terms for ending the war are acceptable to “the overwhelming majority of the population of the Chechen republic, except a small group of close supporters of (Chechen President Dzhokar M.) Dudayev, who are ready to destroy thousands of people and their homes in order to achieve their political ambitions.”

Many of the Russian demands, however, were rejected by Dudayev months ago: that Chechens surrender their heavy weapons, return to their homes and stop fighting.

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Meanwhile, Chechen rebels say they have no intention of surrendering--or even retreating to the mountains--while they can still force the Russians to fight for every city and town in Chechnya.

In an interview with The Times last week, Dudayev vowed to bring the war to Russian cities in the spring. The former Soviet air force general, who keeps in contact with the world via a portable satellite telephone, said he has had conversations with members of the U.S. Congress and American military officials.

The “Itogi” television program reported wryly Sunday that the rebel president, who is wanted by Russian authorities on treason and other charges, also had an hourlong conversation with students and a professor at Harvard University last week.

Dudayev’s refusal to flee Chechnya or stay quietly in hiding is clearly irking Russian authorities.

“One should listen less to him,” said Sergei V. Stepashin, director of the Federal Counterintelligence Service. Russian officials frequently complain that the Russian and Western media have shown a pro-Chechen bias in their reporting on the war. On Saturday, Stepashin compared Dudayev’s press and information minister, Movladi Udugov, to Adolf Hitler’s infamous propagandist, Joseph Goebbels.

“Dr. Goebbels does not hold a candle to Udugov,” Stepashin complained.

It is not clear when a renewed Russian military assault might begin. Russian officials have said they hope to persuade the leaders of outlying towns to avoid Grozny’s fate by denying rebels shelter.

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But as widespread reports by victims and witnesses of Russian beatings, looting, torture and death-squad execution of Chechens in areas under Russian control reach the unoccupied regions of Chechnya, it is unclear how successful that strategy will be.

The Russian government press service reported Sunday that in the village of Samashki, Chechen fighters beat a local Islamic mullah who had urged villagers not to resist the Russian advance. That report could not be confirmed.

A Russian lawmaker who recently returned from Chechnya warned against the belief that “the backbone of Chechen resistance has been broken, that the bulk of the work has been done.”

“They have failed to correctly assess the potential of a people’s war,” lawmaker Anatoly Y. Shabad told the Interfax news agency.

But analyst Felgenhauer argued that the Russian military has learned from its humiliating failures at the beginning of the war in December and is gradually improving its performance.

He predicted that the capture of Gudermes, Chechnya’s second-largest city, will be quicker and easier than the bloody and protracted battle for Grozny.

Although the Chechens are better fighters, Felgenhauer said, the Russian forces are adapting to the guerrilla tactics.

And the low-rise, open layout of Gudermes and the town of Shali will give the Russians more room to maneuver and the Chechens fewer places to hide.

“They can resist, but they can’t stop the onslaught of the Russian army,” he said.