Attack on Chechnya Reportedly Planned in March

Raising questions about the Kremlin’s justification for the war in Chechnya, former Prime Minister Sergei V. Stepashin said Thursday that Russia planned its invasion of the separatist republic in March--months before a Chechen attack in southern Russia that the government cited in sending in troops.

After an August attack by Chechen rebels on Dagestan, a neighboring southern republic, and bomb attacks on a mall and apartment buildings in Moscow and southern Russia in August and September, anti-Chechen sentiment was at an all-time high. Russian leaders, blaming Chechens for the bombings, launched an offensive in the republic soon after.

But concrete evidence that Chechens were behind the apartment bombings, which killed about 300 people, has never emerged, and there has been speculation that Russian authorities may have been involved in the attacks.

Stepashin’s comments, which Russian authorities have denied, are fuel for the conspiracy theories. They come as Russian troops continue their struggle to gain control of a strategic square in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and as the government takes steps to try to limit the negative information seeping out about mounting Russian casualties.

His remarks also suggest how far the Russian military has diverged from what he says was its original plan: to occupy only the northern sector of Chechnya. The Russians have thrust farther south, taking key towns and villages before being inevitably drawn into an attack on Grozny, which is heavily fortified by rebels.

Stepashin was interior minister in March and in a position to know of plans then to invade Chechnya. He later served a brief term as prime minister before being replaced by Vladimir V. Putin, now acting president, in early August. He says Putin, who was head of Russia’s security service in March, knew about the plans to invade Chechnya.

After becoming prime minister, Putin reaped political benefits from his tough handling of the war; his popularity soared, and he is favored to win the presidential election in March.

Some military analysts now suggest that the Kremlin had planned the Chechen operation with popular opinion in mind.

“I am absolutely convinced that from the very beginning the war was planned as a powerful and extremely cynical Kremlin PR campaign,” said retired Col. Alexander I. Zhilin, military analyst with the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti. “It became clear to everybody quite a while ago that notorious [Chechen] terrorists [Shamil] Basayev and Khattab were puppets used by their masters in Moscow to make this war as popular as possible with the Russian public.”

Basayev and Khattab, who goes by one name, led the August attack on Dagestan and later were surrounded by Russian troops but managed to escape into Chechnya with the bulk of their forces.

“I am also sure that the real reason why Stepashin was fired was that he was not prepared to play the Kremlin game eagerly enough, and the Kremlin decided they could not quite trust him to conduct this PR war raging now in Chechnya with such tragic results,” Zhilin said.

Stepashin told Interfax news agency Thursday that the Chechen invasion was planned in March after the kidnapping of a Russian general by Chechen bandits, but he said it was never envisioned as a full-scale war.

“Terrorist camps throughout Chechnya were to be discovered and destroyed. But there were not supposed to be full-scale hostilities,” Stepashin said Thursday, repeating earlier comments made to the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

“There were plans to form security zones in Chechnya and reach the Terek River,” he said, referring to the river separating the northern third of Chechnya from the southern section.

In the earlier interview he said: “The plan of action in [Chechnya] was being elaborated starting in March. We were planning to reach the Terek in August to September. This would have happened even if there had been no explosions in Moscow.”

Stepashin is a member of the liberal Yabloko opposition faction, but he recently made supportive remarks about Putin.

According to Russian officials, 93,000 troops are fighting in Chechnya. Russian military leaders remain upbeat about the war despite the difficulties faced in Grozny.

Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev said Thursday that the battle is reaching a turning point and that rebels in Grozny will soon be wiped out.

With military leaders eager for progress and the presidential election approaching, one military analyst charged Thursday that the Russians are using fuel-air bombs in Grozny, where thousands of civilians are trapped in basements. The use of such bombs in a city would be highly controversial because they target large areas and can kill people hiding underground.

Pavel Felgenhauer, an analyst with the daily newspaper Sevodnya, said Russian forces had used the TOS-1 in Grozny. The TOS-1, which Russia showed for the first time last year at a military fair, is a multiple launcher that fires 30 unguided rockets armed with fuel-air explosives.

Russia has been under Western pressure over the civilian cost of its Chechen campaign, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who flew to Moscow on Thursday, is expected to renew calls for peace talks when he meets with Putin today.

Russia avoided embarrassment Thursday when Europe’s supreme human rights body, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly, voted against a proposal to expel the Russian delegation or suspend its voting rights. Instead, the body gave Russia until April to show progress toward peace in Chechnya.