The battle in the Moscow theatre has thrown the spotlight on the Russian President's failure to end the conflict in the rebel state, writes Chris Stephen
Until last week, Chechnya had been Russia's forgotten war. There was no solution in sight, but with the death toll down to a dozen or so a week, that hardly mattered. Not any longer.
The battle in a theatre just a few miles from the Kremlin walls has thrown the international spotlight back on to this conflict, and to the failure of Russia's President, Mr Vladimir Putin, to end it.
Chechnya is very much Mr Putin's war. He unleashed it, sending tanks into the rebellious province, while still an untried prime minister in 1999.
The brutal suppression of the Chechens, with the levelling of their capital, Grozny, may have shocked the outside world but it made Mr Putin hugely popular at home.
He won election to the office of President and overnight transformed Russia's political landscape.
To this day there remains no serious challenger for him or his Unity party in parliament.
But his popularity has come at a price. The smashing of Chechnya's towns, and the brutalisation of its people through execution, torture, rape and extortion by sections of the Russian army have stoked the fires of hate.
Early on in the war the former Chechen president, Mr Aslan Maskhadov, offered compromise talks, but the Kremlin said no. The Kremlin has long insisted that independence is not negotiable, and further, that the guerrillas are criminals who must face justice.
In the end, Mr Maskhadov chose the way of the gun. Some Chechen leaders have gone the other way, embracing the rule of Moscow and have been appointed mayors and presidents of various parts of a puppet administration. They have also become targets for terrorist bombs and bullets.
Russians say they have good reason to spurn the chance of a negotiated peace - they tried it once before.
The first Chechen war ended after two years of bloodshed - and humiliation for the Russian army - with a deal giving the Chechens wide powers of autonomy.
But when Russian forces pulled out in 1996, home rule quickly degenerated into gangsterism, with warlords not only turning their noses up at Russia but also bullying ordinary Chechens.
Three years later the Russian forces were back.
Now the brutality of this second invasion has choked off any hope of meaningful compromise.
Russia has two choices. First, to get out - raising the question why did it fight so long in the first place, if only to give the place away in the end. And second, to hammer the rebels so hard they settle for peace.
This is not impossible. The rebels may have been weakened by the War on Terror, which has seen their support from the Middle East dry up and US special forces attack their al-Qaeda allies in Georgia.
Simply to get a quiet life, many ordinary Chechens may give up, and agree to live under the Russian boot.
But they will not love the Russians, and even "victory" will be hollow, since Moscow would still have to keep a huge force - currently 80,000 strong - in the province simply to prevent a revolt. Guerrilla attacks on these forces would probably break out, reprisals would follow, and the war would return.
A more radical solution is to follow Stalin, who solved the Chechen "problem" during his dictatorship by simply deporting the entire population.
But although the world has tried hard to ignore the suffering of this war, the United Nations would be unable to turn a blind eye to such a policy.
Faced with these choices, President Putin is likely to do nothing.
There will probably be a flurry of fighting as the Russian army seeks to take its revenge on the rebels.
And, because there are no attractive solutions, Mr Putin is likely to decide simply to keep on fighting - crossing his fingers that the war dies down again.