Russia Takes Page From NATO Playbook

It all seems familiar: Warplanes deliver airstrikes that pound enemy forces entrenched in war-torn Eastern Europe. So-called smart bombs destroy oil refineries, munitions dumps and communications installations.

Tens of thousands of refugees flee into neighboring republics as local leaders warn of a humanitarian catastrophe. Thousands of troops mass at the border even as officials say they do not plan to launch a ground invasion. Generals stand before the media with video footage of a falling bomb and photographs of targets and explain how the war is being won with air power.

But this is not Kosovo in the spring. It is Chechnya in autumn.

Borrowing a page from NATO’s playbook, Russian forces are carrying out a punishing air offensive against the separatist rebels who defeated them in a bloody war three years ago and who are now blamed by authorities here for deadly terrorist attacks in Moscow and southern Russia.

Russian warplanes bombed Chechnya on Tuesday for the sixth straight day--and there is no end in sight. “We have a plan and we are following it,” said air force spokesman Col. Alexander B. Drobyshevsky.

While public support for Russia’s second war in Chechnya remains high, some military experts doubt that a Kosovo-style strategy can work against the fierce Islamic rebels.

Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia, was the rare case in which air power alone was enough to secure victory. Surrender came after 78 days of North Atlantic Treaty Organization attacks against regular military forces answerable to a single leader: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In Chechnya, a Russian republic that has been virtually independent since the 1994-96 war, rebel units are commanded by a dozen or more autonomous warlords who control their own territories and can fade into the rugged Caucasus Mountains. Since the war, Chechnya has descended into anarchy, and the republic’s political leaders have little influence over the guerrillas.

NATO’s successful strategy called for driving Milosevic to the bargaining table by devastating Yugoslavia’s industry and infrastructure. Chechnya’s economy is still in ruins from the previous war.

Furthermore, the Chechens have proved they are tougher fighters than the underpaid and underfed draftees who make up the bulk of the Russian army. Russian generals insist that their financially strapped forces have much better weapons and armor than they did three years ago. But if Moscow decides to send in ground troops, its demoralized soldiers probably will not fare any better than they did during the previous war, which claimed an estimated 80,000 lives.

“The Russian generals and political leaders are trying to copy NATO’s strategy in Kosovo,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst with Moscow’s Sevodnya newspaper. “They are making a big mistake. By destroying the remains of the Chechen economy--all these dwarf-sized oil refineries--Russia is finally turning Chechnya into a country of just warlords and fighters who will live for the sake of fighting.”

The aerial pounding of Grozny, the republic’s capital, has unleashed a flood of refugees pouring into the adjacent Russian republic of Ingushetia. Border guards have not allowed refugees to drive their cars into Ingushetia, so thousands of people have abandoned their vehicles and walked across carrying what belongings they could.

Residents of villages near Grozny are slaughtering cattle, rather than let the animals fall into the hands of looters. The roads between Grozny and the border with Ingushetia are clogged with people and vehicles.

Ingush President Ruslan S. Aushev said his small republic is on the verge of crisis with the arrival of what he estimated to be more than 50,000 refugees.

“We urgently need humanitarian aid--temporary housing, warm clothes and blankets--because we are on the doorstep of winter,” he said. “The republic is unable to cope with this problem alone.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin declined to seek help from the United Nations or other international groups, saying Russia will take care of the refugees.

Sergei K. Shoigu, Putin’s minister of emergency situations, estimated that there are fewer than 15,000 refugees but acknowledged that the situation in Ingushetia was “rather serious.” Only one refugee camp, which can accommodate 800 people, has been set up since the airstrikes began. Shoigu pledged that more aid will arrive soon.

The second Chechen war began this summer when rebels based in Chechnya invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan in a bid to create an independent Islamic state. The rebels were driven back by the Russian army, only to cross into Dagestan a second time.

Soon after, a series of terrorist bombings destroyed apartment buildings in Moscow and southern Russia, killing more than 300 people. Although Russian authorities have yet to offer hard evidence linking the bombings to the rebels, the horrific attacks produced widespread support for a renewed assault on Chechnya.

Islam Abuyev, an aide to rebel leader Shamil Basayev, said by phone from Chechnya that the fighters had nothing to do with the terrorist bombings--and noted that Russian warplanes were killing Chechen civilians every day.

“We have always had the option of organizing acts of terror in Russia,” he said. “We could target military or economic facilities. But we would never bomb residential buildings with sleeping women and children. It’s not our style. It’s not our goal.”

Nevertheless, some analysts said the apartment bombings had galvanized public opinion to such an extent that the Russian military has now been given a chance to show what it can do--and what it has learned from the first Chechen war.

“We are witnessing how a new Russia is finally asserting itself, showing all its might and resolution to destroy the terrorists and preserve its borders,” said Anatoly I. Utkin, a foreign policy expert with the Moscow-based USA-Canada Institute. “Russia is demonstrating to the world--and to its own army and generals--that it has a powerful army and powerful weapons and knows how to use them.”

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Special correspondent Mayerbek Nunnayev in Grozny contributed to this report.