The capture of one of the most infamous Chechen warlords, Mr Salman Raduyev, while a major boost to Russian morale and to the presidential aspirations of the acting president, Mr Vladimir Putin, is not an important breakthrough in Russia's war against insurgents in Chechnya.
On the international scene the Council of Europe representative, Lord Judd, has accused both Russian forces and Chechen rebels of war crimes. After leading a two-day visit to the region by a team of council observers, Lord Judd said: "The delegation believes that serious human rights violations and war crimes have taken place in Chechnya on both sides."
This assessment is likely to be of far greater embarrassment to Russia, a member of the Council of Europe, than to the rebels who have no internationally recognised standing.
Mr Raduyev, while a ruthless opponent of Russia, has always been regarded as something of a maverick, especially by other Chechen commanders who have thought of him as a more effective exponent of braggadocio than of military prowess.
A relative by marriage of the former Chechen rebel leader, Mr Dzhokhar Dudayev, Mr Raduyev's main claim to fame in the previous war was a hostage-taking raid on a hospital in the Dagestani town of Kizlyar which caused short-term embarrassment to Moscow but in the longer term alienated Dagestanis from their Chechen Muslim brethren.
Following the electoral boost given to Mr Putin by the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, however, the capture of Mr Raduyev, who has been brought to Moscow to face trial, is likely to stop any electoral slippage away from the acting president caused by recent military losses.
A day of mourning will take place today in the western city of Pskov, the home base of more than 80 paratroopers killed in Chechnya last week in the bloodiest fighting since the war began. Last week the city of Sergiev Posad, spiritual headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church, was the scene of a mass funeral of local Interior Ministry forces.
While the announcement of Mr Raduyev's capture was being announced in Moscow the Interior Minister, Mr Vladimir Rushailo, was denying reports that another warlord, Mr Ruslan Gelayev, a Chechen field commander, and his forces had escaped from the encircled village of Komsomolskoye. But the local Russian commander, Gen Valery Gerasimov, told the official news agency ITAR-TASS that Mr Gelayev had indeed managed to elude the Russian forces.
At the weekend the two most dangerous field commanders, Mr Shamil Basayev and the Arab known as Khattab, broke out of the mountain region toward the Chechen plain. A spokesman for the Russian military staff in the region was quoted by ITARTASS as saying that Chechen rebels had broken up into groups of between 15 and 20 men and that it was "impossible to say how many gunmen were in the area of this or that populated locality."
All the indications are that the long-forecast guerrilla war is about to replace the set-piece battles in which Russian forces had the advantage of numbers and equipment. A series of bloody attacks could face Russian troops in the long term but not quickly enough to affect Mr Putin's support before the election on Sunday week.
