Russia has no plans to launch a "widescale military operation" in Chechnya, the Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, said yesterday, hours after federal forces bombed the capital, Grozny, for the first time in three years.
Mr Putin, speaking in the Kazakh capital, Astana, said the main priority of Russian forces currently massed at the Chechen border was to protect the local population from terrorists.
"You will find out how we plan to do this in the next few days," Mr Putin said. He repeated that Russia would not be dragged into a full-scale war similar to the disastrous 1994-1996 conflict that left some 80,000 people dead.
"What happened in Chechnya several years ago will not be repeated."
Earlier yesterday Russian warplanes delivered their first strikes against the Chechen capital since the war, hitting oil refineries and an airport. At least six people have been reported killed in the attacks.
Police in Grozny said five people died in a Russian air raid on a south-western district of the city.
The Chechen police said two Russian warplanes fired a dozen missiles at an oil refinery and petrochemical storage facilities in the Zolotskoi district, killing five workers.
The attack sparked a fierce blaze at the targeted buildings, sending a pall of heavy smoke over the area. Three or four homes near the fuel depots were completely destroyed in the airstrikes, local reports said.
Meanwhile, a firecracker in the lift of an apartment building in St Petersburg caused a commotion among residents who feared their block was the latest target in a wave of terrorist bombings linked to the fighting in Chechnya.
Police confirmed that the loud bang was "evidently caused by a firecracker" after officials from the emergencies ministry reported that an explosion had rocked the ground floor of the building.
"There was no damage and no fatalities," said a police spokesman, Mr Alexander Rastovtsev.
Residents of the building on Vasilevsky Island in St Petersburg immediately notified police after hearing the blast in mid-afternoon in the lift.
The bomb scare came only hours after explosives experts defused a massive bomb in the Russian city of Ryazan shortly before it was due to explode.
Nearly 300 people have been killed by terrorist bombs this month which authorities have linked to Islamic guerrillas based in Chechnya.
The latest bomb discoveries came amid a massive security clampdown across Russia's 11-time zones ordered by President Yeltsin in response to the wave of bomb attacks on residential blocks.