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UNITED NATIONS -- After pounding artillery and air bombardment, Russian forces pulverized and seized Grozny, the Chechen capital. Moscow taught the Chechen separatists a sanguinary lesson--that despite fierce rebel resistance, the Russian army will wear you down and destroy you. Russia's prize comes as a pyrrhic victory though, a devastated city seething in hatred and fear, a catastrophe for the remaining civilian populace.
The Stalingrad-type siege of Grozny, which ironically means terrible, saw Russia tighten the noose on the Chechens. Though Russian losses were horrific, the point is that despite the cost, Moscow won. Now acting President Vladimir Putin, with his KGB pedigree and poker player's hand, will use this even perhaps fleeting victory to likely win the Russian presidential election in late March thus formalizing his earlier anointment by Boris Yeltisn. Putin's candidacy seems blessed by his circumstances.
The battle for Grozny was about striking fear into the hearts and minds of Islamic separatists as well as about oil. The wild and near untamable mountains form the nexus of petroleum pipelines which export oil from the rich Caspian fields to the Black Sea ports. Moscow now has assigned exclusive rights to extract oil and gas reserves to the ROSNEFT, the state owned oil company.
According to the Times of London, "The move was seen as and unmistakable signal that having conquered most of the breakaway republic at great cost in lives and money, Russia now means to exact a swift return in both oil revenues and regional prestige." Grozny, formerly inhabited by 400,000 people will became a "Closed city," a virtual sealed tomb inside the breakaway region.
The fight is far from over. It would be a fool's prediction to assert that Moscow will ever totally control the restive Caucasian lands; still it shall dominate key petroleum and gas choke points, rich energy arteries from the Caspian to the Black Sea. For that Russia is willing to shed blood and spend national treasure.
As a counterpoint, it's all the more important for the West to reassure Azerbaijan that its oil can be exported through the proposed new pipeline from Baku through Georgia and Turkey precisely to break Russia's pipeline stranglehold.
But Moscow has given other hints too that beyond playing hardball in the Caucasus, she is willing to reinvigorate a foreign policy seemingly stultified in the drunken stupor of the twilight of Boris Yeltsin's rule.
Recently Foreign Minister Igor Invanov, visited North Korea and revived the moribund Friendship Treaty with this neo-Stalinist state. While the pact notably lacks the previous military clause, the political message is quite clear; Russia will not totally forsake North Korea, a geographic neighbor and a perpetual thorn in the side of Washington and Tokyo. Despite Russia's decade long rapprochement with prosperous South Korea, Moscow will use its traditional ties to Pyongyang as a political chip.
More significantly, Invanov reneged on the understanding Yeltsin made with Japan concerning the long overdue return of the Kurile Islands, strategic pieces of Japanese territory seized by the Red Army in waning days of WWII. Japan has long wanted to regain the Kuriles, and was quite willing to strike lucrative deals to do so.
Boris Yeltsin had agreed on an arrangement with former Japanese Prime Minister Rytaro Hashimoto in which a formal Moscow/Tokyo Peace Treaty would be signed by the end of 2000; but the accord has soured. Now the Russians are playing hard to get. This could change if the price is right.
Prior to Russia's Presidential elections, Vladmir Putin is stressing his "tough guy" image and uncompromising nationalist credentials; at the same time he still faces near insurmountable domestic problems of a poor economy saddled with the shadow of crime and corruption. And the ghosts of Grozny may return too, haunting Putin with yet another Chechen crisis.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
