Urus-Martan - The battle for Chechnya shifted to the key town of Urus-Martan yesterday as calls in Moscow intensified for the army to complete its conquest of the rebel republic.
Federal ground troops and Chechen fighters armed with anti-aircraft missiles and grenade-launchers clashed around the town that commands the southern route to the capital, Grozny.
Moscow said 80 per cent of Grozny had already been surrounded while defence officials announced the completion of a "mopping up" operation in the village of Samashki. Meanwhile, in Moscow the former dissident and author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, added his voice to the chorus urging the Russian military to pursue the war against Chechnya to the end. "It was not us who attacked. We were attacked," Solzhenitsyn said in a television interview at the weekend. "We capitulate all the time," he said. "Yet no one seems to recognise this." Solzhenitsyn was apparently referring to a wave of bombings in Russia that killed nearly 300 people and which was blamed on Chechen terrorists by Moscow.