Furious street battles flared for a fifth day in the Chechen capital, Grozny, yesterday as the Russian media cast fresh doubt on the army's more optimistic reports.
Less was known about the fighting on the ground than in the previous few days as the army kept Russian and Western reporters away from its positions in the city.
Russian television showed clips of soldiers firing in the crumbling ruins, with buildings licked by flame spewing black smoke, but provided no fresh reports from correspondents at the front in afternoon and early-evening newscasts.
Grozny, which once held more than 400,000 people, has been reduced to a wasteland. Between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians are still trapped, and about 2,500 rebels are dug in, working in small groups of snipers, machine-gunners and mortar-grenadiers.
The flow of refugees also appeared to have increased dramatically.
RTR state television quoted the military as saying aircraft had flown more than 160 sorties to strike rebel targets, among the highest daily totals since the fighting began in September.
But rebels said they still had control of most of Grozny. They also repeated the claim that they had captured Gen Mikhail Malofeyev, vice-commander of one of three fronts in Chechnya. Russia has confirmed he went missing and said he might have been killed.
Some Russian media suggested the army's delay in reporting the general's disappearance - it did so two days after he went missing and only after the rebels said they had seized him - showed commanders could be understating other losses too.
A public perception that the war is going wrong could hurt Acting President Vladimir Putin, who owes his popularity mainly to the campaign's early successes. Mr Putin is the overwhelming favourite to win a presidential election on March 26th.
His new top aide for overseeing information from Chechnya, former Kremlin spin doctor Sergei Yastrzhembsky, made clear the government would take a tough line on media coverage.
"The media should take into account the challenges the nation is facing now," Mr Yastrzhembsky told Kommersant newspaper. "When the nation mobilises its forces to solve some task, that imposes obligations on everyone, including the media."
EU foreign ministers are due to discuss Chechnya on Monday, but diplomats in Brussels said sanctions were not on the table.
"In Putin we have a leader who looks like he'll be around for the foreseeable future. We don't want to take any measures that would force him to respond in any way that would affect relations, to please the public mood," an EU diplomat said.
Russian intelligence sources said yesterday they believed the West had put pressure on Poland to expel nine Russian diplomats as a way to "test" Mr Putin.
In comments quoted by Interfax news agency, the sources also made clear Moscow planned to expel a "significant" number of Polish diplomats in a tit-for-tat retaliation.