Russian rescue teams have found the body of a Russian general killed in fighting in Grozny last week, putting an end to Chechen rebel claims that he had been captured, the Kremlin said yesterday.
Last week Russia admitted that one of its top military commanders in the zone, Maj-Gen Mikhail Malofeyev, was missing after leading an attack on the rebels in the no-man's zone in Grozny. The rebels claimed Gen Malofeyev had been captured and interrogated outside Grozny.
However, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, information co-ordinator for acting President Vladimir Putin, said yesterday his body had been found by a Russian rescue team. Despite severe winter weather, Russian forces continued to hammer Chechen rebel positions in mountain gorges and in the shattered capital, but reported little headway in their week-long drive to storm the city.
Warplanes and helicopters flew more than 100 sorties over Chechen targets. Russian headquarters said heavy fighting was under way in the city. Russian troops had taken control of a bridge over the Sunzha river, which bisects the city, but were still fighting for the central Minutka square.
The reports were a sign of the slow progress troops have made since starting an all-out onslaught on Grozny a week ago. Russians have reported several times that they held Minutka and the bridge.
The city's maze-like streets and Soviet-era nuclear bunkers make it a haven for Chechen fighters working in small groups of snipers, machine-gunners and mortar grenadiers. Between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain, trapped in cellars.
On Saturday pro-Russian Chechen militiamen raised a Russian flag over Grozny's residential district number six, one of several neighbourhoods of high-rise apartment blocks on the city's edges. The city centre remains in Chechen hands.
Grozny, once a leafy southern Russian town of more than 400,000 people, has been reduced to a wasteland.
The other main focus of fighting is the mountains in the south, part of the Caucasus, Europe's highest range.
Russians on Saturday hoisted their flag over Vedeno, the largest village in the mountains, which marines in white snowsuits captured after crossing high-altitude passes from neighbouring Dagestan province to the east. However, guerrillas still maintain bases in the steep Argun and Vedeno gorges, all but impenetrable in winter and lined with rusted shells of tanks and armoured vehicles that testify to the price Russia paid for storming them in the 1994-96 Chechen war.
Mr Malik Saidullayev, a proMoscow Chechen businessman, was due to fly to Chechnya from Moscow yesterday to meet the leaders of armed groups.
Mr Saidullayev had planned to convince the leaders to switch to Russia's side. His visit has been postponed to later this week.
Rebels have dismissed his initiative.
Despite the heightened intensity of the fighting, Russia's military continues to report only single-digit daily death tolls, although the media have cast doubt on the figures.
The war remains highly popular in Russia and has helped make Mr Putin the runaway favourite in the presidential election due in March. However, the army has suffered setbacks since last month and a souring of the public mood could hurt Mr Putin.
The wife of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov yesterday denied Russian reports he had been wounded.
Mrs Kusama Maskhadov told an anti-war rally in a refugee camp in nearby Ingushetia province that she had spoken to him by phone and he was "alive and well".