Chechens Who Escaped Siege Propose New Hostage Swap

Their bravado intact even after a brutal battle with Russian forces, Chechen separatists Monday prepared to once again match wills with the Kremlin strategists who have sworn to crush their rebellion.

Chechens who escaped last week’s fierce clash in the southern Russia town of Pervomayskaya claimed to have dragged dozens of hostages along with them. They promised to release 46 of the captives today in exchange for the bodies of their comrades who died during the fighting.

But the militants vowed to keep holding the 14 police officers they seized near Pervomayskaya. They are demanding a swap: The Russians must turn over three Chechen prisoners of war for each policeman they release. Authorities in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, have called that demand unacceptable.

Flaunting his success in slipping away from Russian military might, rebel leader Salman Raduyev showed off a few of his captives to reporters in Chechnya on Monday.

Russian authorities grimly pledged to beef up their efforts to crack down on Chechens fighting for an independent homeland.

“All federal units will be appropriately reinforced in order to defeat, rout and apprehend all members of the illegal armed formations in Chechnya,” Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov said.

“None of the terrorists will be able to escape responsibility,” added Mikhail I. Barsukov, who directed the attack on Pervomayskaya as head of the Federal Security Service.

For now, however, Raduyev and his fellow warriors have scampered out of reach of the Russian authorities to take refuge in their mountain hide-outs. Journalists have always been able to find them there, but Russian soldiers have not yet penetrated the strongholds.

Nor have Russian forces been able to stop the hostage-taking.

Even as Raduyev was daring the Russian military to attack him in Pervomayskaya, a separate group of Chechen fighters kidnapped 29 power-plant workers in their capital city, Grozny, last week. On Monday, that band offered to exchange its captives for Chechen prisoners of war, Russian media reported.

The Chechen elders negotiating with the group reported that the hostages have been scattered throughout Chechnya’s mountainous terrain, apparently to complicate rescue efforts.

The renewed hostage crises have played out quietly in Moscow, unlike the dramatic siege in Pervomayskaya, which grabbed top billing on Russian television for more than a week.

President Boris N. Yeltsin, like his Cabinet ministers, has sworn to destroy the “mad dogs” of the Chechen separatist movement. But he has not made any particular threats toward the groups still holding hostages. And no Chechen rebel has appeared on television to taunt him to action. Aside from Raduyev, it is unclear how many of the terrorists escaped Pervomayskaya to safety.

In tallying their victory over the weekend, Russian forces said they had freed 82 hostages after destroying Pervomayskaya with gunfire from helicopters, tanks and artillery. They listed about a dozen more captives as “unaccounted for.”

But it now appears that far more than a dozen survived the siege and were forced to flee with their captors. The Chechens have released a list of the 46 hostages they hope to swap for their comrades’ corpses. A Dagestani official told the Interfax news agency that he hopes to complete the exchange today “without any haggling.”

The haggling continued in Moscow, however, as political rivals kept up their criticism of Yeltsin’s decision to storm Pervomayskaya.

Retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed called a news conference to denounce the operation as a “national disgrace.” Lebed, who plans to run for president in June, made much of the failure to save--or at least account for--so many captives.

“By American standards, losing 20% of the hostages in an operation is considered unsatisfactory,” Lebed said. “By Israeli standards, the loss of one hostage is considered unsatisfactory. It’s interesting. What standards are operating here?”