As Russian soldiers advance slowly and carefully through the minefields that surround central Grozny, a picture of professionalism and courage is being painted by their generals on national TV channels. Others closely involved in the conflict think differently.
The Committees of Soldiers' Mothers (CSM), the real heroes of the last Chechen war, now believe that three times as many Russian conscripts have died than the generals are prepared to admit.
Senior army officers say 347 soldiers have been killed and 1,040 wounded since the operation in Chechnya began, with more than half of those wounded returned to active service. Casualty figures for Interior Ministry forces serving alongside the army are less accessible.
A voluntary organisation, CSM works from dingy offices in Luchnikov Lane, almost in the shadow of the Lubyanka, the dreaded former headquarters of the KGB. The organisation helps mothers get information about their sons who have been conscripted and sent into action.
Maria Fedulova, secretary of CSM's co-ordinating committee, told The Irish Times: "We have not been given official figures but we are convinced that three times as many have been killed as the generals have been prepared to admit publicly. The same goes for the wounded. Casualties are arriving every day in the military hospital in Mozdok."
Out in the corridor, Alevtina Eduardovna is in tears. She has come to the CSM offices for the sixth time to see if she can find any information about her grandson Mikhail.
Alevtina's, son, Mikhail's father, died two years ago. Her grandson is all she has in this world and now she fears he has been killed. "All I know is that Mikhail's unit was sent to Vladikavkaz six months ago. I have heard nothing since. He is just 19 and I don't know what has happened to him. I have tried all the military offices. There has been no information. They have told me nothing."
Vladikavkaz is close to the Chechen border and has been used as a base for soldiers before they are sent into the conflict. The lack of information provided to Alevtina and what appears to be completely disorganised efforts to deal with the needs of soldiers families runs contrary to the image portrayed nightly on the main television news.
In Luchnikov Lane, there is no talk of heroism or of raising the Russian flag over the Presidential Palace in Grozny or of routing the Chechen bandits. Here the talk is of missing boys, most of them just out of their teens.
Raisa Mikhailovna, a quiet retiring woman in her early forties from Moscow, also waits for information. She stands in line wrapped in her furs against the winter cold. Her son Mikhail is 21 and has been in the Caucasus region for four months.
"Soldiers are not supposed to be kept there for more than three months. I last heard from him when I got a letter on December 10th. They won't tell me why he has been kept there longer than they say he should. I have come to see if the committee can find out anything about him. I am terribly worried about him," she said.
Valentina Vassilievna came to Luchnikov Lane with a more mundane but worrying problem.
Her son Pavel was not in Chechnya but had suffered nonetheless. There is a savage macho tradition in the Russian army called Dedovshchino (grandfatherliness) by which older conscripts treat the new arrivals like slaves and subject them to appalling brutalities. Pavel had been subjected to this and his mother wanted to know what she could do to stop it.
Between phone calls from anxious mothers, Maria Fedulova spoke of a train that arrives from Rostov-on-Don almost every morning at Moscow's Paveletsky railway station carrying "cargo 200", the military slang for the zinc coffins which are the Russian equivalent of body bags. She deals too with deserters who furtively come to Luchnikov Lane to find out about their rights and gain legal assistance but all in all she describes this as a much more difficult war for the organisation than the last one.
"Last time we were getting information from the Chechens and from journalists. Now we hear nothing from the Chechens and the journalists, not only the foreign ones but the Russian ones as well, can only go where the military allows them and where they can see only what the generals want them to see. So it is much more difficult now to get information particularly about soldiers who have been captured."
Information is, by the way, still being sought on the 600 soldiers still missing from the last war. A small group of mothers spent their time in Grozny since the war ended in 1996 trying to find news of their sons. In September three of them were kidnapped by Chechen outlaws. Their names have been added to the lists of those the CSM is trying to find.
