43 Killed as Russians Shell 2 Villages in Chechnya

Russian artillery and warplanes pounded two villages in Chechnya on Wednesday, leaving at least 43 people dead in a renewed offensive against separatist rebels.

The assaults, which began Tuesday, ended a six-week lull that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin had arranged to help ensure his reelection, and they put the war back on the list of troubles for his second term.

Lt. Gen. Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the Russian commander in the southern republic, described the raids as “pinpoint strikes” on rebel positions in Gekhi, in Chechnya’s central foothills, and Maskhety, in the southern Caucasus Mountains.

But Russian news agencies and television reports from Chechnya said at least 35 of the dead were civilians.

“The shells are coming in from four directions,” Vakha Eldarkhanov, the mayor of Gekhi, told Itar-Tass news service. “Half the buildings have been ruined or burned down.”

He said 8,000 civilians were trapped in the village.

Russia’s Independent Television said the aim of the Russian attack on Maskhety was to flush out and arrest rebel leader Zelimkhan A. Yandarbiyev, who is believed to have set up a headquarters there.

Yandarbiyev and Yeltsin signed a May 27 cease-fire agreement that helped defuse the unpopular war--which has claimed about 30,000 lives since December 1994--as an issue in Russia’s presidential election.

But since Yeltsin’s reelection July 3, each side has accused the other of violating the agreement--the Chechens by continuing to hold Russian war prisoners, the Russians by maintaining roadblocks and both sides by shooting sporadically at each other.

Tikhomirov preceded the Russian assault with an ultimatum Monday to “Mr. Bandit Yandarbiyev” to free POWs by the next day. He also described Yeltsin’s reelection as a mandate to block Chechnya’s secession--the main issue left unsettled in preelection peace talks.

The offensive, accompanied by an overnight curfew and closure of Chechnya’s civilian airport, appears to have the Kremlin’s consent.

Tikhomirov issued his ultimatum after meeting with retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, Yeltsin’s new national security chief.

Lebed said through a spokesman Wednesday that the rebels are to blame for the latest fighting.

Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin agreed but insisted that the peace process had not been disrupted.

“Someone has been acting more and more impudently, I mean some of the fighters and their leaders,” Chernomyrdin said. “But everything there is under control now. We will sort it out, and there will be no war.”

Although Yeltsin’s aides say he and Lebed talk about Chechnya every day, the president made no mention of the war in a five-minute televised address Wednesday on priorities for his new four-year term. Yeltsin confirmed that Chernomyrdin will remain in his post and form a new Cabinet.

The president also promised to fight crime and corruption and to make “serious adjustments” in his free-market economic reforms, but outlined no new policies.

A presidential spokesman said Yeltsin will be inaugurated Aug. 9 in the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, where Russia’s czars were once crowned.