The recent fighting in Chechnya was part of a clear two-month old state intervention by Russia to topple Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, being carried out in the face of repeated denials of direct involvement, Russian and Western military analysts said Monday.


"They have been endeavoring to tumble Dudayev since he declared independence" in 1991, said Charles Dick, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center at Sandhurst College in England.


"The North Caucasus is vital to Russian security, it is their first line of defence and vital to projecting influence in the Trans-Caucasus," he said, adding that Russia also had significant oil interests in Chechnya and wanted to control the Chechen corridor to safeguard oil pipeline routes.


Bringing Chechnya to heel would be in their long-term security interests since it would make it clear that Moscow was not prepared to accept dissident governments and that survival without Russia was not possible, Dick said.


Analysts were hesitant about the status of the Russians fighting in Chechnya since some were probably mercenaries, others former Soviet servicemen who were confused about their identity.


Alexander Konovalov, a military political analyst at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, suggested that some of the Russian forces were not directly subordinate to Moscow. "The helicopters are undoubtedly manned by Russians, but who paid them, whether Chechens, Azeris or the Russian administration is not clear," he said.


"The Russian administration started to activate its own idea two months ago, with an economic blockade, cutting off sources, initiating an opposition movement, but then the movement can go beyond Moscow's control."


The poor performance of the opposition forces who have numerical superiority and reached the center of Grozny only to retreat, raised serious doubts about their quality and implied Russian forces were not fighting, Konovalov said.


Russia was fighting the conflict "by proxy" to avoid getting bogged down in a long drawn-out affair, Dick said. "A Russian invasion of Chechnya would be the one thing to unite Chechens against the invader. It would also bring in other Caucasian countries against Russia."


Fear of casualties held back the Russian administration from direct involvement, said Konovalov. "Politically it would be devastating for the current administration, it could be the last straw."


In the same way it was in Dudayev's interests to show that Russians were fighting to topple him. "It is the only way for him to survive, to get outside assistance and to convince his Moslem brothers to help him," said Konovalov.


Twenty Russian mothers, who saw their sons as captured prisoners in Chechnya on the television program Itogi on Sunday, are to petition the State Duma. The men are all from the same garrison, Segodnya news program said.


Tuesday's edition of Izvestia has pictures of three of the captives, interviewed by NTV television, under the headline "Why is war on Russian territory kept secret from Russians?"


The article quotes them as saying they signed a contract "through the Federal Counterintelligence Service" to fight in Chechnya.