Russia’s Lebed Seeks to Avert Blitz on Chechens

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. Pulikovsky issued an ultimatum Tuesday to the rebels who have held the capital since Aug. 6 to get out of Grozny in 48 hours or face a deadly assault.

The latest Chechen crisis also has revealed a paralyzed, leaderless Russia, with ailing President Boris N. Yeltsin absent from duty, political leaders--apart from Lebed--apparently unable or unwilling to stop the army bosses and no one quite sure who is running this vast nuclear superpower.

But Lebed sounded certain his peace moves were still on track. “We will no longer speak the language of ultimatums,” he told reporters in the southern Chechen village of Noviye Atagi, where he met Chechen chief of staff Aslan Maskhadov after holding brief talks with the Russian generals at their base, Khankala, on the eastern edge of Grozny.

“We will resolve this problem by the morning. . . . We will be guided by humaneness and reason,” added Lebed, a popular former general with a mandate from the Russian president to negotiate an end to the 20-month-old war.

Mashkadov made clear his support of Lebed’s peace move by agreeing to a new cease-fire.

“Lebed gave a guarantee that there would be no storming of Grozny tomorrow nor in the future,” Maskhadov told Reuters after the late-night talks with Lebed.

But it remained unclear whose orders the 40,000 troops from the Russian army and Interior Ministry based in Chechnya would obey today: those of Lebed or their own generals.

Lebed, who said confusing command structures had been clarified at a Moscow military meeting earlier Wednesday, was confident:

“Everyone finally realized who is who, who is responsible for what and who is subordinate to whom,” he said.

Confusion reigned in Grozny, where terrified elderly refugees stumbled out of their cellars and ruined homes to risk an afternoon of Russian shelling and airstrikes. They tried to save themselves from the threat of even more deadly bombing in the morning.

Political chaos has also come to Moscow since Pulikovsky started his 48-hour countdown. Despite a storm of protests, threats and pleas, no one in a position of authority has clearly reversed him and ordered him to stand down from his plans. His boss, Lt. Gen. Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, rushed back from vacation Wednesday night. But he quickly made clear he backed Pulikovsky.

Defense Minister Igor N. Rodionov, a Lebed ally, said Wednesday that Pulikovsky had been acting on his own initiative when he issued his ultimatum and had been “reprimanded.” But Rodionov did not cancel the order.

Boris V. Gromov, the respected general who led the Soviet army home in the late 1980s after years of disastrous war in Afghanistan, said only Yeltsin had the power to stop the “mindless and gruesome bloodshed.”

But Yeltsin was nowhere to be seen. His office first said he was out of town inspecting a possible vacation site at Valday, about 230 miles northwest of Moscow, then said he would be back at work in the Kremlin today.

Meanwhile, Yuri Belenkov, director of Russia’s top cardiology institute, denied new rumors circulating here that the president, who suffers from heart disease, had been admitted for treatment.

“The inactivity of the organs of power and the highest political figures is giving the military complete freedom of maneuver,” commented the authoritative newspaper Izvestia.

Pavel Shumyatsky, a senior official of the liberal Democratic Russia party, observed that “there are early symptoms that the army, or at least the forces concentrated in Chechnya, are becoming an independent political force.” Sergei N. Yushenkov, a liberal lawmaker, observed that “the situation is favorable for a new coup; we are on the brink of military dictatorship.”

Pulikovsky’s ultimatum came after Yeltsin’s staff issued confusingly worded instructions--which members said came from the president himself--to restore the situation in the Chechen capital to what it had been before Aug. 6. “Either this means the military is trying to carry out the impossible order of the president--to restore order in Chechnya as it was before Aug. 6--or it means the military has stopped obeying orders. In either case, the authorities are paralyzed,” Izvestia added.

Pulikovsky, who was visibly resentful at being forced to negotiate cease-fire details with Maskhadov last week, may indeed have interpreted the confusing instructions from the presidential office as a go-ahead to attack.

But Lebed’s office suggested Wednesday that Yeltsin had not written the instructions at all, pointing out that the presidential signature at the bottom was a facsimile. Yeltsin’s office, in an unsigned statement published by Itar-Tass news agency, said Lebed was wrong.

Lebed, seen as a strong candidate for the presidency next time around--if he masters the rapier thrusts of Kremlin politics--has put his political life on the line with his high-risk peace bid for Chechnya. His blunt approach has already alienated courtiers from many camps and earned him a host of powerful new enemies.

Returning from a first round of talks in Chechnya, he offended the military by heaping scorn on the Russian soldiers he had seen guarding checkpoints in the breakaway republic as underpaid, unmotivated, “lice-ridden weaklings,” and said “pauper” Russia could not afford the luxury of war.

Worse, he provoked strong resentment by demanding the resignation of hawkish Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov, whom he blamed for letting the separatists recapture Grozny in the first place. Yeltsin slapped him down on the issue and kept Kulikov on.

Lebed also accused Russia’s military and political establishments of harboring figures--as yet unnamed--who, he said, were covertly prolonging what he called a “commercial” war to line their pockets.