Chechen President Survives Bombing

The acting president of war-torn Chechnya survived a bomb attack on his motorcade Tuesday that killed a bodyguard and wounded three other people, including a top advisor, authorities said.

The apparent assassination attempt on Sergei Abramov in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen republic, came two months after his predecessor, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed along with five other people when a bomb blasted the VIP section of bleachers at a military parade there.

An artillery shell attached to a tree was used in Tuesday’s attack, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. The explosive was probably triggered by a radio device, the report said.

An election to replace Kadyrov is set for Aug. 29, with Chechnya’s strongly pro-Russian interior minister seen as a heavy favorite because he is backed by the Kremlin and the slain president’s supporters and relatives. Abramov, a 32-year-old former prime minister, is not running.

The continuing violence adds to the perception of critics that free and fair elections are impossible, but Abramov promised that balloting would go ahead. “This situation will not influence the course of the election campaign in any way,” he said in comments broadcast on television.

The attack on Abramov’s motorcade came after a night of deadly fighting between Chechen Interior Ministry commandos and separatist rebels. Eighteen commandos and 20 rebels were killed, said Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, son of the late president, in comments reported by Itar-Tass. Government losses in the overnight battle in a rugged area of southern Chechnya were the worst in a single operation in the last year, he said.

“Things were looking very much down for Chechen fighters last fall and this winter,” said Anna Politkovskaya, a Chechnya expert and political analyst who writes for the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Many field commanders had been killed, and there was practically no one capable of fighting left in Chechnya. But today’s reality has shown that Chechen resistance forces are far from being exhausted and depleted.

“Some analysts had predicted such a turn of events when it became obvious that many young Chechen men took to the mountains in the spring and early summer,” she said.

There is “not even a trace of doubt” that Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov, who heads the region’s police, will win next month’s election, Politkovskaya said.

“True elections are impossible in Chechnya today,” she said. “The only purpose of holding such elections will be to dull the vigilance of the West, set public opinion in the West at ease and pretend that what people are doing in Chechnya is real civilized politics and not a political farce.”

Chechen Deputy Interior Minister Akhmed Dokayev said in a telephone interview from Grozny that authorities there believed that “the fighters must have received a new batch of money and material assistance from their sponsors, and want to convince both their bosses and us that they are still very much alive, that it is too early to write them off yet.”

“We are sure that law and order will be restored in Chechnya one day,” Dokayev said. “We are doing everything possible to make it happen. Only so far, it has been pretty tough going.”

The fresh violence cast further doubt on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts to localize the conflict by having pro-Moscow Chechens bear the brunt of fighting against the separatists. The latest troubles in Chechnya come at a time when his once-sky-high popularity ratings have sharply fallen.

A poll conducted early this month by the Public Opinion Foundation showed 49% support for Putin, his lowest rating since he first won election in 2000. In the year before his reelection in March, his support was generally in the 70% range.

“The war in Chechnya is like a bitter piece of hard taffy that President Putin has to keep chewing even if he does not want to anymore,” Politkovskaya said. “And this war keeps dragging on as Putin’s popularity rating shows signs of serious decline.”

Analysts have predicted a drop in Putin’s popularity as he pushes forward with unpopular reforms aimed at introducing more market forces to Russia’s economy. But Politkovskaya said the drop in Putin’s ratings can’t be attributed solely to his economic reforms or the ongoing bloodshed in Chechnya.

“It is everything taken together -- a totality of reasons -- that caused the decline,” she said. “As the patience of the people wears thin, Putin is likely to see a situation where no matter what he does, everything will be viewed as his shortcomings and flaws.”

That raises the possibility that authorities will respond with a new military offensive in Chechnya or some other dramatic action, she said. “This is a very dangerous situation.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.