Sergei Kovalyov, the human rights activist being touted as heir to the late Andrei Sakharov, returned to Moscow from three weeks under bombardment in Grozny on Thursday and excoriated the Russian state from top to bottom for waging an unwarranted and savage war.


A member of the State Duma and adviser to the president on human rights, Kovalyov has been holed up in Grozny since Russian troops invaded the Chechen capital Dec. 11 in an effort to stamp out the republic's three-year-old bid for independence.


As Russian jets renewed their bombardment of Grozny on Thursday, Kovalyov said he had seen unbearable pain and suffering in the city, as well as the utter failure of Russian troops to execute a military operation.


But Kovalyov's harshest words were aimed at President Boris Yeltsin, who, he said, has surrounded himself with "liars" and "villains."


"Perhaps he is not being lied to as brazenly as we are, because one has to be a very stupid person indeed to believe all these lies," Kovalyov said. "Nazi propaganda at least tried to be more plausible."


But the stream of orders and contradictions issuing from the fortress on Red Square has been so confusing, he said, that he no longer knows who is lying.


"We have come here because we want to look the official representatives in the eye, because we want to understand who is lying," Kovalyov said. "Because even without any meetings, we understand that it is impossible to live in a country where the top officials lie.


"You cannot live in a country run by villains," he said.


Kovalyov, a fragile man nearly crushed by the crowd of some 400 journalists that hung on his every word, announced that he and the president would meet Friday. But a presidential spokesman said Thursday night he could not confirm that the meeting would take place. Kovalyov also has with him a letter to Yeltsin signed by 84 Russian war prisoners asking him to stop the war.


Kovalyov chastised Yeltsin for his television address to the nation Dec. 27, when the president ordered an end to the bombing of Grozny. Shortly after that, bombs rained down on the city anew. On Wednesday, Yeltsin issued a second order to stop the bombing of Grozny.


"Tomorrow at one o'clock I will put the question to the president: What did he have in mind when he addressed the people? Had he forgotten to give the order that he publicly declared, or perhaps the order was not fulfilled?" he asked.


"Why should an order be given again not to bomb Grozny? And will this new order be obeyed? Who decides anything in this country?" he asked.The state-controlled Russian media were not spared Kovalyov's contempt. His criticism is all the more biting because Kovalyov is a respected human rights activist who himself spent time in a Soviet prison and was temporarily exiled from Moscow.


"Why are we here?" he asked of his return to Moscow. "We are here because the storming of Grozny, launched Dec. 31, has failed. Nevertheless, official television ... television relying on governmental news communiques ... is continuing to tell untruths, to put it mildly. To put it in simpler terms, their every word is a lie."


The truth, he said, looks more like this: Grozny bears a horrifying resemblance to the part of Stalingrad left unrestored as a war memorial. To illustrate the point, he told the story of Anna Volkova, who lived on the top floor of a recently destroyed four-story building.


"She is sitting in front of the building with the remains of her belongings. You should see these belongings. She has a stool, a sled and two blankets. On one blanket, people toss money for a funeral. The other blanket covers two corpses. Her middle-aged son and his wife."


Kovalyov appealed to the swarm of microphones, cameras and notebooks in front of him for help. He said Chechnya was no longer an internal Russian affair and that international opinion should be brought to bear on Moscow.


The situation, he said, was not hopeless. There are "unexhausted opportunities" for negotiations, and Kovalyov said he believed Dzhokhar Dudayev was prepared to talk. Kovalyov has already met three times with the Chechen leader, once at the insistence of Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. Kovalyov also said he would not be opposed to mass demonstrations against the war, but declined to organize them himself.


While admitting that the Chechens are indeed armed and hostile, Kovalyov disputed the notion that Grozny is being patrolled by "bandit formations." Bandits, he said, are busy looting blown-out buildings. The Chechens who have taken up arms are simply people defending their homes and their lives. They may not even be defending Dudayev, he said.


Much is at stake in Chechnya, Kovalyov said, for not only is the fate of that state being decided, but so is the fate of all Russia.