GORAGORSKY, Chechnya -- Tired and filthy, Russian soldiers of the Dzerzhinsky regiment were pulling out of Chechnya after a gruelling month of fighting.


Standing beside their tanks and armored personnel carriers on the road running across the bleak hills of north-western Chechnya toward Ingushetia, they admitted they were relieved to be taking a break.


Flak jackets hung over the truck doors to cover the side windows, providing some kind of protection against ambush. Camouflage netting covered a fuel tanker and several artillery guns.


"We are going to Mozdok to rest and to wash," one said, embarrassed to shake hands, thick with grime from a month living and sleeping in mud trenches. But the war was far from over, said Vladimir, a senior lieutenant with the broken nose of a boxer, who declined to give his surname. "We may have to return after only two days."


Their mood was pensive, not celebratory. "No one likes the war at this point," Vladimir said. He dismissed a suggestion that Russian forces were gaining the upper hand. "No one wants to fight," chipped in his companion, a thin pale boy who shivered in the cold wind.


The Interior Ministry regiment saw action in several places north of Grozny, including at the village of Dolinsky, 15 kilometers northwest of Grozny, the scene of fierce fighting in early December. "We lost some men," Vladimir said. "We heard 2,000 of our soldiers have been killed."


A supply column of army trucks returning empty from Grozny came up behind the Dzerzhinsky regiment, stopping on a clear stretch of road near Goragorsky.


An army doctor wearing captain's stars on his epaulets said he was leaving after one and a half months in Chechnya. Pale and tired, he said he had personally treated over 100 Russians, wounded in fighting in the city and when their column was hit by Chechen "Grad" missiles near Dolinsky.


Asked about his view of the war, he said: "We do not know the full story, we are starved of information." Then, apparently sincerely, he trotted out the official line. "This is not a war against a regular army, it is against bandits and armed groupings," he said.


"We do not need to keep an army in Chechnya. It is part of the Russian Federation and once the armed bandits are defeated we can withdraw."


Whether government propaganda or wishful thinking, his words did not seem to tally with the fierce and well-organized Chechen resistance which has fought off the Russian attack on the city for five weeks.


President Boris Yeltsin's description of drawing a noose around Grozny, blockading the city from all sides bears no resemblance to the impression on the ground. At least until the weekend, Chechens were driving unhindered from the city westward to Nazran without any checks. Russian border guards have replaced Interior Ministry troops on the only checkpoint and no longer even bother to stop cars.


The new commander of the checkpoint between Ingushetia and Chechnya explained that the border guards' mission was restricted to guarding the external borders of the Russian Federation, that is the border between Chechnya and Georgia.


Meanwhile they were just guarding the bridge with a couple of light tanks.


Russian forces have rocketed and shelled the roads leading south from Grozny in recent days but talk of blocking escape routes south was premature. Chechen fighters continued to travel freely around much of the country and in and out of the city by several southern routes.


Russian soldiers who attempted to make off with two trucks of loot from Grozny roared out of the city behind a light tank last week. Chechens in the village of Alkan-Yurt on the main road west ambushed the small convoy, shooting out the windscreens and the tires of the trucks.


They drove the trucks, limping unevenly on their flat tyres, into a nearby base, cheering "Allahu Akbar," (God is Great) and firing their guns into the air. The tank got away but the Chechens, who said they took 18 Russians prisoner, claimed victory, and showed off the loot; fridges, air-conditioners and children's clothes.


Refugees returning to Dolinsky also accused Russian troops of looting their homes. "They hit my house twice with rockets," said Assa Umarova, 45, a mother of five. "The day before yesterday I went to see. They have stolen everything."


She was waiting at the checkpoint a few kilometers west of the village where Ministry of Interior troops in black masks searched cars and frisked refugees. Umarova flung her belongings on the ground and threw open her coat in anger when they moved to frisk her and another Chechen woman.


The masked men whirled steel spikes and set off flares close to the refugees' bus, apparently enjoying their display of power on this lonely stretch of road. Wires and a makeshift sign warned that the fields around the post were mined.