The congratulations offered by the Security Council to Defense Minister Pavel Grachev for his military operation in Chechnya beggar belief.


To perpetuate the myth that the seven-week-old war -- which Grachev once boasted could be wrapped up in a matter of two hours -- has been a success is surreal. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed. Hundreds of thousands more have lost their homes. Grozny and several other towns and villages in Chechnya lie in ruins; reconstruction will take years and cost fortunes. And the fighting goes on.


If the sheer human cost of the war does not impress, then surely the fact that the country's top generals have uniformly attacked the assault on Grozny as a travesty of military planning that was bungled by Grachev should have given the Security Council pause for thought.


But the council had other priorities at its meeting Wednesday. Its aim was to announce an end to the military stage of the Chechen operation, with Grachev formally handing over the baton to the Interior Ministry. From now on, according to the official version of events, the forces of law and order will be reasserting control and re-establishing constitutional rule.


That would be good news were it true. But the army is still busy trying to take the city and besides, Interior Ministry troops are not police. They are an internal army. Irrespective of who is supposed to be in charge, the war continues with neither side showing any inclination to end it. And the sealed zinc coffins go on arriving home.


Moreover, the Security Council is deluding no one. Gone are the days when the leadership in Moscow could hold a meeting, pronounce solemnly that black was white, and get away with it. Occasions like the Security Council meeting, or the charades played out at a series of Defense Ministry press conferences serve merely to strengthen the widely held view that the authorities are not to be trusted.


It is hard to tell where President Boris Yeltsin stands in this light. It seems inconceivable that he is unaware of the true state of affairs, that he is continually being misinformed by a small circle of hardliners, whom for some unfathomable reason he has come to trust instead of his reform-minded former allies.


The alternative is even more depressing. If, as Yeltsin himself has asserted on several occasions since the Chechen crisis began, he is indeed abreast of the situation and in full control, then he is presumably aware of how little credence is given to his propaganda. If he is aware, but does not care, there is precious little hope for further democratic progress in this country any time soon.