Looking for the Next Step

RUSSIAN TROOPS FINALLY HAD TO do the job the only way that works in the center of a city. They blasted their way through Grozny building by building. Backed by tanks and artillery, infantrymen probed the deserted streets for bands of Chechen rebels hiding out in basements and rubble-strewn upper stories. After pounding each block with high-explosive shells and rockets, rifle-toting Russian soldiers moved up, closing in on the presidential palace, which had become the symbol of Chechnya's effort to secede from the Russian Federation. On Saturday they had captured the Council of Ministers building, just a few hundred yards from the palace. It was a brutal, terrifying style of warfare, as the Chechens learned to their sorrow.

If the urban battle was at last going the Russians' way, little else was. Televised images of the death and devastation in Grozny continued to flicker around the world, increasing the cries of revulsion. Complaints about errant bombing became accusations of massive human-rights violations.

Russians were horrified at the ineptitude of their armed forces, the carnage to soldiers and civilians alike and the realization of how much damage the war was doing to Russia's internal reforms and its international reputation. Mothers of boys at the front staged demonstrations in Moscow and Vladivostok; on Friday mothers in Yekaterinburg lay down in front of army vehicles transporting their sons to Chechnya. Russians everywhere spoke out angrily against the war. "Yeltsin has betrayed our democracy," declared former dissident Gleb Yakunin, a liberal member of parliament. Even when Chechnya's presidential palace is in Russian hands, President Boris Yeltsin will not have won the war or restored his own political prestige.

Already the implications are being felt as far away as Washington. With Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill, top officials know that further reversals might inspire the G.O.P. to unleash a "Who Lost Russia?" debate. They wonder if the fond hopes the U.S. expressed for democracy, reform and Yeltsin might be going up in Grozny's smoke. The officials have conducted several secret reviews of their Russia policy since last spring, asking if Yeltsin would survive and whether the U.S. was too close to him. When Secretary of State Warren Christopher meets Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in Geneva this week, he cannot appear supine in the face of the Chechnya slaughter. But how tough can he get without further straining ties with Russia?

There were negative reverberations from Washington, where politicians were speaking out, criticizing the Kremlin. The new chairman of the Senate's foreign appropriations subcommittee, Senator Mitch McConnell, said Clinton should tell Moscow that the U.S. will not "continue to give tax dollars to them if they're going to treat their citizens this way."

The State Department also took a sterner tone. Spokeswoman Christine Shelly charged that Moscow had violated two commitments to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: failing to notify its partners of large- scale movements of troops, armor and artillery, as required; and violating the organization's code of conduct, which calls on members to respect civilian populations and work for peaceful solutions to disputes.