Kremlin Power Struggle Erupts Over Campaign to Defeat Chechens

In a bitter struggle at the top of Russia’s military establishment, security chief Alexander I. Lebed on Friday demanded the ouster of the hawkish interior minister, blaming him for the Kremlin’s humiliation by separatist rebels in Chechnya.

Returning from his second trip to the war zone this week, Lebed called the minister, Gen. Anatoly S. Kulikov, “one of the main culprits in the Chechen tragedy.”

Lebed said he had given President Boris N. Yeltsin an ultimatum: “You have a hard choice--either Lebed or Kulikov.”

Kulikov rejected the criticism as “slander and insults” and appealed to Yeltsin to defend him.

He accused Lebed, a retired paratroop general who became Security Council secretary two months ago, of ignorance about the rebellious southern republic and “a maniacal desire for power.”

The showdown between two military men with opposing views on how to end the 20-month-old war threatens to undermine the shaky truce Lebed achieved earlier this week to halt the bloodiest rebel offensive yet. The assault has left 247 Russian troops dead and the rebels, for now, in control of the regional capital, Grozny.

Lebed branded Kulikov’s men inept for letting the rebels overrun Grozny on Aug. 6 and called it a “crime” that federal troops are ill fed and badly equipped. And he said that Kulikov, in insisting on settling the conflict by force, was insubordinate and “beset by a Napoleon complex.”

The security chief also accused his rival of sending agents to spy on him.

“I enjoyed observing them for three days,” Lebed quipped, “but then I got tired of it and ordered the sleuths be caught. And they were caught.”

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Unaccustomed to such open high-level feuding in the military, Kremlin watchers said they were uncertain how it will play out.

Even if the brash security chief remains in his post, they said, Kulikov probably will not be the last general to resist Lebed’s mandate from the ailing Yeltsin to take charge of the Chechen crisis.

“There is a suspicion in the top ranks that Lebed is not so much interested in Chechnya as in grabbing more power in Moscow” and strengthening his bid to succeed the 65-year-old president, said Pavel Felgenhauer, defense correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Sevodnya.

Aides say Yeltsin is exhausted from his successful reelection campaign and will soon start a two-month vacation.

This week he gave Lebed authority to “coordinate” the military branches and other federal agencies dealing with Chechnya. He also named a new Cabinet, retaining the pugnacious Kulikov.

Yeltsin is loath to act under the kind of public pressure Lebed exerted Friday by announcing his ultimatum at a news conference. Yet the president is aware of Lebed’s popularity--he finished third in the first round of presidential elections--and would not want to push him into opposition.

Questioned by reporters, Lebed stopped short of threatening to resign his Security Council post. But he made it clear that he might walk away from Chechnya--a mission he accepted with reservations--unless he enjoys full authority.

“I voluntarily assumed this task, and I am ready to accomplish it,” he said. “Anyone who will interfere with its implementation will be removed. They will go fishing and grow strawberries.”

Still, Lebed’s authority in Chechnya is not clearly spelled out. He can issue orders but not, apparently, fire those who disobey. Yeltsin and the army have balked at his proposal that Interior Ministry forces in Chechnya answer to the army general staff in Moscow and that the general staff be subordinated to Lebed.

The Interior Ministry, a paramilitary police force, fights in Chechnya alongside the troops from the army and the Federal Security Service. About 6,000 ministry troops are supposed to defend Grozny, a sprawling city with a prewar population of 400,000, and its pro-Moscow puppet regime.

Ministry officials admitted Friday that the defenders were helpless to stop the estimated 1,500 rebels who swarmed in this week and seized government buildings--despite intelligence that a raid was coming.

“Grozny can be reliably protected only if it is turned into a fortress,” Lt. Gen. Stanislav Kaun, a senior ministry commander, said Friday, adding that Interior Ministry troops controlled just 30 of the 130 roads into the city. He said funds the ministry was promised to double its Grozny garrison had been held up.

In an interview with Russia’s Interfax news agency, Kulikov said he had proposed other forceful measures, including a state of emergency, and been rebuffed.

He said Chechnya was being lost “not as a result of blunders but of weakness.”

A former troop commander and peace negotiator in Chechnya, Kulikov criticized Lebed for resuming peace talks, saying the rebels “use cease-fires to increase their own combat potential.”

He said there should be no talks until they drop their demand for independence.

Furious at Kulikov’s balking at the cease-fire, Lebed huffed: “I don’t need him to obey me. I just want everyone to fulfill their duties.

“A pauper country with a doddering economy and army cannot afford the luxury of fighting a war,” Lebed declared, hammering his message that the Chechen war is senseless.

He said he has a “very radical plan” to settle the conflict but sees no point in pursuing it until Kulikov is out of the way.