Oozing confidence after the weekend's election results, Russia's Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, announced that the military campaign in Chechnya was almost at an end.
He also went as far as to restore a plaque in the Lubyanka dedicated to Yuri Andropov, the former Soviet leader, who was once his KGB boss. The plaque had been removed following the failure of a hardline coup in 1991.
Mr Putin also met the US deputy Secretary of State yesterday and Russia's independent NTV channel reported that he offered him a straightforward deal. Russia would, the channel reported, ratify the START2 nuclear arms reduction treaty if the US turned a blind eye to what was happening in Chechnya.
A massive artillery barrage was launched against Grozny yesterday and Russian news agencies reported that a "special operation" would take place in the next few days to take the city.
The nature of this operation is not clear but the defence minister and senior Russian generals have denied repeatedly that a full-scale assault would be launched.
The Reuters correspondent, Maria Eismont, who has been one of the few independent voices from inside Grozny, said about 8,000 rebels had dug in to secure positions in the Chechen capital and had vowed to fight to the death. If this is the case it would take a major assault by Russian forces to dislodge them.
Heavy fighting was again reported in the south of the territory, particularly on the approaches to the almost impenetrable Caucasus mountains. Russian forces are attempting to block any possible route by which the rebels in Grozny might retreat.
The Chechen news agency, Kavkaz Tsentr, claimed that Russian paratroopers who landed near the settlement of Shatili, close to the border with Georgia, were surrounded by mujahideen but this has been strongly denied by the Russian High Command.
In a separate development Russia's defence minister announced that it had opened an inquiry into the persistent allegations that a massacre of civilians had taken place at the village of Alkhan Yurt, south of Grozny.
The Human Rights Watch organisation brought the allegations to light and later claims were made by Mr Malik Saidullaev, a leading pro-Moscow Chechen, who heads a group of volunteers fighting with the Russians against the rebels. Russia says civilians in Alkhan Yurt were used as "human shields" by rebels.
On the political front in the shake-out after the elections, splits were emerging in two of the main anti-Kremlin parties. A proposal was put yesterday that the Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) coalition be broken into its constituent parts. Fatherland was the party of Moscow's Mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, while All Russia was a group composed of regional governors.
The former prime minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, who announced his candidacy for the presidency last week, said after a meeting of the group's leaders in Moscow yesterday that agreement had been reached to keep OVR as a single entity but that there would be two sub-groups under the OVR umbrella. One would deal with agrarian and the other with regional matters. National issues would remain under a united organisation.
Dissenting voices were also heard from the liberal pro-western Yabloko party, headed by the economist, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky. The party's deputy leader, Mr Vladimir Lukin, a former Soviet ambassador to the United States, described the party's campaign as disorganised and claimed that its call for negotiations with the Chechens had lost it votes.
AFP adds from Tbilisi:
Georgia's parliament yesterday angrily rejected Moscow's accusations that the Caucasus state was providing an anti-Russian platform for "Chechen terrorists". The Russian statements "are so cynical they know no bounds," the parliamentary speaker, Mr Zurab Zhvania, said.
The Russian government claims Georgian authorities tolerated regular meetings in Tbilisi between representatives of Chechnya and foreign emissaries, allegedly including the Islamic extremist, Osama bin Laden.