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Russian Military Announces Change in Tactics as Chechen Rebels Continue to Inflict Causalities

Aired March 6, 2000 - 6:07 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Russia's military says that it will change tactics in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, but there is no word yet on what the new strategy will be. The move follows rebel attacks which have killed scores of Russian troops.

CNN's Matthew Chance has more.

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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The price of Russia's Chechen war: more bereaved families, more dead from the war zone.

Only last week, the Russian military was insisting the worst of its battles in Chechnya were over. Now this: the bodies of 18 Russian police killed in a rebel ambush in the heart of the Chechen capital.

As their coffins are carried through the streets, there is sadness and frustration that after more than five months of conflict Russian lives are still being lost.

"They died for Russia," says this man, "but it could have been avoided. If only the politics of our government was different -- neither Russians nor Chechens need this."

But fighting this war to the bitter end remains a priority here. These pictures from Russian television show prisoners of war, all Chechens, captured over the weekend by Russian troops, a latest triumph for a military apparently bogged down in Chechnya's mountainous south. Russian commanders insist they're in the final stages of finishing off rebel forces.

SERGEI MAKAROV, RUSSIAN ARMY COMMANDER (through translator): The rebels are surrounded and we are destroying them. It's hard to say, but based on those we took prisoner, it appears there have been about 600 rebel casualties. Unfortunately we also suffered casualties.

CHANCE: Officials say more than 50 dead in recent days on the Russian side. The rebels say many more have been killed in hit-and- run attacks. And as the people of this Russian town pay their respects to their latest dead, Russian troops still in Chechnya face a bitter and bloody guerrilla war.

(on camera): Such is the climate of insecurity now on the ground in Chechnya officials here at the Kremlin have called off a high- profile visit by rights monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is a stark admission that Russia's breakaway republic is still not firmly in Russian hands.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.

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