Russia Again Claims to Hold Key Chechen Area

After 10 days of intense fighting, Russia claimed to control the Chechen village of Komsomolskoye on Wednesday and said it had a firm hold on the rebel republic’s territory.

But warplanes and artillery continued to batter half a dozen other communities in Chechnya, and military officials admitted that Russian forces still didn’t have command of many villages.

Even in Komsomolskoye--seized by rebels earlier this month in an assault that undermined Russian claims that the guerrillas faced imminent defeat--several small militant groups remained, said Konstantin Makeyev, a spokesman at the Russian regional military command in Mozdok.

Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev said that the area the rebels occupy in the town “is shrinking steadily” and that the Russian forces were performing a “mopping-up” operation. No fighting in Komsomolskoye could be seen Wednesday from the adjacent village of Alkhazurovo.

Col. Gen. Anatoly V. Kvashnin, chief of the Russian general staff, said Wednesday that the rebels’ hold on specific regions and villages had come to an end.

“We control all Chechen territory,” he said, according to the Interfax news agency. “We are of course unable to control all of the 400-some villages, but we can enter them at any moment if an armed confrontation breaks out.”

Russia on Wednesday bombed and shelled rebel groupings in half a dozen towns and villages, Makeyev said. All are in the republic’s rugged mountains, where rebels have been able to capitalize on their guerrilla skills to mount quick attacks.

The rebels’ capture of Komsomolskoye was a striking example of their ability to penetrate Russian lines and bloody the federal forces with sniper fire. After the surprise takeover, the rebels held out despite fierce shelling and air barrages that left the town in ruins.

Reclaiming control of Komsomolskoye would be an image boost for Russian acting President Vladimir V. Putin less than two weeks before the presidential election. Much of Putin’s strong popularity stems from his tough conduct of the 6-month-old Chechnya conflict.

Russia has previously defined its goal in Chechnya as wiping out the rebels. “This will take a long time,” said Kvashnin, the military chief of staff.

He said federal forces are moving into a new phase of fighting aimed at the elimination of the rebel leadership. Leaders will be arrested--like Chechen commander Salman Raduyev, who was seized this week and charged with murder--”or they will be killed,” Kvashnin said.

Russian ground troops entered Chechnya in late September, weeks after Chechen rebels invaded the nearby Russian republic of Dagestan. The government said it was time to restore order in Chechnya, which had sunk into lawlessness after rebel fighters drove out Russian troops at the end of the 1994-96 Chechen war.

Russian troops took most of Chechnya’s northern flatlands with dispatch. Rebels fled the capital, Grozny, in early February. Since then, the fighting has focused on the mountains.

But the rebels have occasionally shocked Russia with deadly ambushes, including one in Grozny that killed 20 troops and another in the mountains that killed 84. Funerals for victims of both attacks received wide coverage in the Russian media, but support for Putin does not appear to have been undermined by the images of thousands of weeping mourners.