In a distinct return to Cold War hostility, Russian officials have launched a series of attacks and accusations against foreign journalists and media organisations.
The Soviet-style campaign followed accounts of a battle in Grozny on Wednesday night in which Russian forces were badly defeated.
More than 100 Russian soldiers were reported killed in the Minutka area of the city.
Newsagency journalists on the scene of the reported battle were accused of disseminating "lies and disinformation" by the deputy chief of staff of the Russian army, Col Gen Valery Manilov, who said there was no such battle.
In a more sinister remark the spokesman for the FSB, the internal security successor to the KGB, Mr Alexander Zdanovich, said: "Correspondents have been and are still being used by foreign special services."
They were, he said, involved in a "co-ordinated propaganda campaign against Russia".
The Emergencies Minister, Mr Sergei Shoigu, did a U-turn last night when he ruled out talks with the Chechens until Russia's military operation concluded.
He had earlier said he was prepared to "talk with the devil" in order to get hostages out of Grozny. There are only two newsagency reporters in Grozny. Both are Russian citizens who work for western organisations. Maria Eismont, who was a highly respected correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Vremya MN, has been reporting for Reuters and Ruslan Musayev has represented the US news agency Associated Press (AP).
Eismont reported that she had counted the bodies of more than 100 Russian soldiers on the scene of what was believed to have been a three-hour battle near Minutka Square, a little over 2 km from the centre of Grozny.
Musayev wrote that he saw 15 burned-out or badly damaged Russian armoured vehicles at the scene and counted 115 corpses of Russian troops on the ground. He described a battle in which up to 2,000 Chechen rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades surrounded a Russian reconnaissance convoy and destroyed it.
The reports were partially confirmed by the Russian military news agency, AVN, which has close informal links with the armed forces. The agency, quoting sources in military headquarters, said that Chechen insurgents had killed at least 50 soldiers near the centre of Grozny. Chechen sources have claimed that up to 300 Russians had been killed in the battle.
Reuters editor-in-chief, Mr Mark Wood, in a statement issued in London, said: "We stand by Maria Eismont's story and fully trust her journalistic integrity. We take strong exception to suggestions that she was involved in anything other than journalistic activity."
The Reuters bureau chief in Moscow, Mr Martin Nesirky, told The Irish Times that there had been no contact with Eismont up to early yesterday evening. "We are a bit worried about this," he said but added that there had been a history of interference with satellite phone communications from Chechnya in the course of the conflict.
AP was far less forthcoming in the defence of its correspondent and initially refused to comment before its Moscow bureau chief, Barry Renfrew, said, simply: "We stand by our story."
Gen Manilov was adamant at a conference on Chechnya that there had been no Russian armoured convoy in the area. Only two Russian soldiers had been killed in Chechnya on Wednesday and the bulk of the Chechen rebel forces would be routed by the end of the year, he said.
Seamus Martin can be contacted by e-mail at: seamus.martin@russia.com
