Chechen rebels fended off a Russian incursion into Grozny last night. About a dozen Russian armoured vehicles made it as far as the strategic Minutka Square about two kilometres from the city centre. The tanks and armoured personnel cars were surrounded by Chechens armed with rocket launchers. A Reuters news agency correspondent in the city reported more than 100 Russian soldiers killed. Other sources spoke of "high casualties" on the Russian side.
Earlier in the day Russia's deputy chief of staff, Col-Gen Valery Manilov told reporters in Moscow that there would be no all-out assault on Grozny as long as "a single civilian remained there." Last night's advancement into Grozny by Russian forces does not appear to have been a full-scale attempt to storm the city.
Meanwhile, the Chechen President's "broad proposals" to end the conflict peacefully appeared unlikely to succeed. In a briefing to military attaches in Moscow Russia's deputy chief of staff, Col-Gen Valery Manilov, said he expected the Chechen capital to fall "within days" and the war to end in a Russian victory in two months.
Initially, President Aslan Maskhadov's proposal received a cautiously optimistic welcome, with OSCE president Mr Kurt Vollebaek already in the region as a possible mediator. But Emergencies Minister Mr Sergei Shoigu said he was prepared to enter talks only on the evacuation of civilians from Grozny and not about ending the war, adding that he was not senior enough to do this. In a statement from Dagestan where his aircraft was fogbound, Mr Vollebaek said that, while he regarded Mr Maskhadov as the elected President of Chechnya, he doubted his ability to control Chechen militants.
Mr Shoigu was basking in the latest opinion poll which showed his Unity party as a possible winner in next Sunday's elections. Unity has no concrete programme, but TV exposure for Mr Shoigu in his role in Chechnya has boosted his image massively. A poll carried out for the English-language Moscow Times showed Unity in second place and gaining rapidly on the Communist Party (KPRF).
Good publicity and the support of the Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, have counterbalanced the negative aspect engendered by Mr Shoigu's links with the extremely unpopular President Yeltsin. Perhaps the biggest factor in Unity's success is a TV campaign against the non-communist opposition, which is reminiscent of propaganda broadcasts from Soviet times.
The Moscow Times poll put the KPRF on 19 per cent and Unity on 17.6 and the main non-communist opposition to Mr Yeltsin and his supporters, FatherlandAll Russia (OVR), trailing on a mere 9.2 per cent.
Half of the Duma's 450 seats will be decided on the party list system and the other half on the first-past-the-post system. To gain seats from the list-system vote parties must gain more than 5 per cent of the vote.
Only three other parties met this criterion in the Moscow Times poll. Yabloko, led by the liberal economist Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, gained 6.5 per cent, the Union of Right-wing Forces (PD) came in on 6.4 per cent, with the bloc of madcap right-winger Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky on 5.9 per cent.
Unity, PD and the Zhirinovsky bloc, all in the Yeltsin camp, have the support of almost 30 per cent of the electorate, according to the poll, and along with other parties who will win places in the single-seat constituencies they are likely to control well over one third of the parliament. Plans by OVR to push through a motion of no confidence in Mr Putin and his government seem unlikely under these circumstances, to succeed.
Security has been stepped up in Moscow ahead of this weekend's parliamentary elections amid fears of fresh terrorist attacks. The decision comes after the murder on Saturday of a senior industrialist.
Federal security spokesman, Mr Sergei Dyatlov, said that security had been stepped up at government buildings, including the Kremlin and the upper and lower parliamentary chambers.
Politicians and other leading figures who might be targeted by terrorists were also getting increased protection. On Saturday, Mr Andrei Nikolayev, president of construction firm RosIugStroi, was shot dead in Moscow. On Sunday evening, a leading Communist Party figure, Mr Viktor Iliukinm, escaped an attack in Moscow.
Moscow suffered a wave of attacks between 31 August and 13 September that killed 210 people. The government blamed Islamic separatists in Chechnya and have since launched their bitter offensive against the breakaway republic.
The war in Chechnya has put the Vladimir Putin high in the opinion polls and deflected deep discontent over the economy.
It is a stark contrast with 1995, when mounting Russian losses and a series of military humiliations undermined already low public support for the war.
Seamus Martin can be contacted by e-mail at: seamus.martin@russia.com
