Chechnya: Yeltsin fulfils his promise

June 5, 1996
Issue 

By Boris Kagarlitsky

MOSCOW — Voters in Russia who doubted the integrity of President Boris Yeltsin can rest easy. The country's ruler has kept his word. On May 27 a cease-fire agreement with Chechen insurgents was signed in the Kremlin, and the next day, while the Chechen delegation was working on the details of the agreement, Yeltsin appeared in the Chechen capital, Grozny. True, he did not venture into the city streets, but merely dropped from the skies into a heavily guarded military base, where he declared that victory had been achieved and the enemy "routed". Then followed a lightning descent on a hamlet about 20 kilometres from Grozny, where the media was encouraged to film the president talking to Chechen villagers. After less than four hours in Chechnya, Yeltsin was again in the air and on his way back to Moscow.

There is no denying Yeltsin's cunning; after luring the Chechen leaders to Moscow, he used them as hostages while he carried out his election campaign promise to go to Chechnya. A scheme worthy of a medieval Byzantine emperor.

The talks were preceded by large-scale military actions. Russian forces managed to storm the villages of Goyskoe and Bamut but these successes were of mainly psychological significance. The inability of the federal forces to capture these villages over a long period had earlier been regarded as proof of the army's impotence. Now the generals have rehabilitated themselves in the eyes of the public. But among the troops and junior officers, discontent has risen sharply following the senseless slaughter at Bamut.

Trying to explain the upsurge in the fighting immediately before the meeting in the Kremlin, pro-government commentators said the Chechen leaders had been "forced to the negotiating table". The Chechens, however, did not need to be forced. Direct talks with Moscow has been a demand of the Chechen resistance from the first day of the war. When he received Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and other members of the rebel Chechen government, Yeltsin was forced to recognise them not as bandits, but as a legitimate party to the conflict.

On the whole, the accord that was signed repeats the substance of the pact reached in the summer of 1995. In addition, Moscow has urged the signing of a Russian-Chechen agreement under which Chechnya would be declared a sovereign state, while Moscow would exercise control only over questions of defence and foreign policy. The problem, of course, is that no such agreement will be worth a bent kopeck so long as Chechen territory remain occupied by federal troops, and while the administration in Grozny remains headed by Doku Zavgayev, Yeltsin's corrupt protege who is hated by the majority of Chechens. Zavgayev, the Soviet-era boss of the former Chechen-Ingush Republic, was restored to power by Moscow with the help of rigged elections. Until he is sacked, there is no chance of the conflict ending.

When the Chechen insurgents signed the truce agreement, they understood perfectly what the Kremlin's promises were worth. But a lull in the fighting is to their advantage. The cease-fire will allow the resistance forces once again to legalise their political and administrative structures in urban centres that are formally under the control of the federal authorities. There can be no talk of disarmament until the federal forces are withdrawn, but the insurgents are now placing their main stake on developing a campaign of civil disobedience. Representatives of the Zavgayev regime are being sidelined from power at the local level, and mass antigovernment meetings are being held in towns and villages under the protection of the resistance fighters.

Despite the truce, clashes are continuing between federal troops and the insurgents. Despite the authority of resistance leaders such as Yandarbiyev and Aslan Maskhadov, it is proving very difficult to restrain fighters from using force while federal troops still have not quit the republic.

Now that Moscow has, in essence, recognised Chechnya as a state associated with Russia, continuing the war in the name of a "single and indivisible" Russia has become absurd. The troops remain in Chechnya for a sole purpose: defending Zavgayev's puppet government. In the course of 1995 this government cost the hard-pressed Russian treasury 13 trillion roubles, the equivalent of about US$2.6 billion. A large part of this money was simply stolen.

The republic's future will be decided in talks planned for late June. Both Moscow and the insurgents understand that the future of the war depends on the struggle for power in Russia itself. It was only because he knew he was in danger of losing the elections that Yeltsin agreed to talks. If he manages to hold onto power, all his promises during May will be broken, just like most of his promises before that.

The mass media quickly declared that the talks in the Kremlin, the agreement with the Chechens and Yeltsin's visit to Grozny amounted to a triumph for the president. But is it really that easy to fool the Russian population? Yeltsin organised his trip to Grozny in such a way that the city's residents heard of it on television after it had ended. This was such an obvious swindle that the most general reactions to it were probably shame and irritation. Moreover, both the journey itself and the announcements during the visit that the "bandits" had been defeated show that Moscow is in no hurry to accept a negotiated settlement. It is significant that after the agreement was signed the Chechens offered to receive the president as an honoured guest, but he chose to slink into Grozny secretly, like a thief. Does the Kremlin really imagine that neither the Chechens nor the Russians understand the reasons for this?

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