Last weekend yet another attempt to overthrow Dzhokhar Dudayev, the president of the self-proclaimed independent republic of Chechnya and retired general of the Soviet army, ended in failure. The forces of the united Chechen opposition entered Grozny, fired a few shots several hundred meters from the presidential residence and then withdrew to their original bases.


Opposition leader Umar Avturkhanov declared that it was an "expeditionary engagement," that Grozny would soon be taken and that Dudayev would be overthrown "at some date to be announced later."


The whole escapade seemed like an operetta, but the funniest thing was that nearly a week beforehand Moscow had been informed that "on Oct. 15-16, Dudayev will finally be overthrown." This report was circulating not only among government officials who are supposed to know, but among journalists as well.


For several months already, each attempt to take Grozny and overthrow Dudayev has been preceded by a special meeting in Moscow, after which a high-ranking delegation is sent to the North Caucasus to take charge of the operation from there. And each time it becomes a little more difficult to maintain secrecy.


On Aug. 25 there was a special meeting chaired by President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, Sergei Filatov, and attended by representatives of all the "power" structures, as well as by Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai. At this meeting, it was decided to undertake immediately another operation to overthrow Dudayev. General Alexander Kotenkov, deputy minister of nationalities, was sent to take charge.


The next day, opposition units, armed with Russian T-62 tanks and armored personnel carriers, began an operation aimed at blockading Grozny. The same day in Moscow Shakhrai announced that Dudayev could muster only 120 men, while the opposition had three battalions, plus Labazanov's and Gamtemirov's units.


But the opposition's "battalions," equipped with Russian weapons and hastily trained by Russian officers, did not want to fight. Dudayev's better-motivated troops moved over to a successful counterattack and nearly routed the opposition. At that point, Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters entered the fray, shifting the military balance back to the opposition. Officially, the helicopter pilots had been released from the Russian Army. But the Mi-24 is a very difficult helicopter to fly, meaning that the Russian Army must have provided on-going training for these "opposition" pilots.


The Mi-24 also requires a specially equipped base at which it must be serviced. Therefore, they must have been based at a Russian military airfield near Mozdok.


On Sept. 29, the official Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda said a Russian officer stationed at the Mozdok base died when his helicopter was hit over Chechnya. The newspaper was reprimanded for disclosing this. On Sept. 30, it wrote "the helicopter did not belong to the Russian Army and it was unknown to whom it did belong."


Last week another high-ranking delegation left Moscow for Mozdok "to handle the overthrow of Dudayev on Sunday." But the opposition does not want to fight seriously. It seems to want "to overthrow" Dudayev for as long as possible, all the while appealing to Moscow for more money and arms. Meanwhile, the cover of secrecy is being torn away from Moscow's operations in Chechnya.





Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security editor for Segodnya.