Grozny's Streets Lined With Mines, Hatred as Refugees Stream Back : Chechnya: Some call city occupied, others proclaim it liberated. Russian troops' presence, continued fighting hamper return to normalcy.

By SONNI EFRON

April 29, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

GROZNY, Russia — Nature has bestowed few blessings upon this ravaged city, but one is the hot spring that gushes into an empty lot in the parched and shell-pocked Chernorechiye neighborhood.

Women come here by the hundreds to scrub their hands raw on the epic mounds of laundry that have accumulated during Russia’s nearly 5-month-old war in secessionist Chechnya. Their dejected-looking men come to help lug the clean, wet laundry home.

Since this city has no running water, no telephones, no postal service and tens of thousands of homeless refugees, the hot spring has become a meeting place. Men linger to learn the latest war news, inquire after missing friends and relatives, and exchange vital information about how to avoid being arrested or beaten up by Russian soldiers.

Some people call Grozny occupied, others proclaim it liberated. Both sides agree that the Russian-controlled capital of Chechnya is beginning to resemble Beirut--an urban minefield of hatred between Russians and Chechens, looters and the looted, civilians and rebel fighters posing as civilians, murderous snipers who pick off young Russian troops and vindictive soldiers who pick on the population.

“I have no illusion that constitutional order will be restored any time soon,” said Abdulla M. Bugayev, deputy head of the new Russian-appointed interim government of Chechnya.

Bugayev said peace will not be restored to Grozny until the Kremlin truly hands over the reins to a Chechen government and an all-Chechen police force. But as the war rages on, with Russians pounding rebel forces in the village of Bamut and reportedly bombing other towns, Russian military authorities remain firmly in charge in Grozny.

“We do not have any influence on the activities of the Russian military,” Bugayev said, adding that the Chechen police force is being formed very slowly.

Grozny is slowly reviving as refugees stream back into the city from the war-torn mountain regions to find what is left of their homes. Officials said last week that Grozny now has 250,000 residents--compared to about 80,000 at the height of the bombing in January and about 450,000 before the war. By day, the city is filled with people cleaning, sweeping away bomb rubble, hauling water, buying food, burning garbage, hanging plastic wrap over their shattered windows and trying to return to normalcy.

Russia has promised $1 billion to restore Chechnya’s economy, but the city’s mayor said that even the few million dollars needed to restore basic city services has still not arrived. Russian soldiers do go out to help old or infirm residents bury their dead, and government trucks deliver water daily to thirsty neighborhoods.

When a fire broke out earlier this month on Leninsky Avenue, once the city’s most posh address, the crowd that gathered to gawk at the flames initially scoffed at the notion that Grozny’s fire department had survived the war. They were struck speechless by the sight of two firetrucks pulling up to the scene just six minutes after the flames were spotted.

Yet life is not normal. Hardly an hour passes without an explosion as Russian soldiers detonate leftover mines and grenades, and construction teams attack the 42 irredeemable wrecks of buildings that have already been slated for demolition. People dressed in rags can be seen wandering through the hellish landscape ranting from rage, madness or senility.

By night, the city crackles with gunfire between trigger-happy soldiers and desperadoes seeking revenge. From high-rise buildings, armored personnel carriers can be seen roving the bomb-cratered streets, while flares and flames light up the horizon. People who still have homes stay inside in candlelight until the curfew is lifted at dawn. The unfortunate sleep in basements.

One fine April morning, the people of Grozny woke to find that six buildings had been torched by unknown arsonists overnight.

At the Russian command post in Chernorechiye--a working-class, concrete-block neighborhood made grittier by nearby oil refineries--soldiers spend each morning hunting for the mines that rebels laid the night before.

“They think we will be blown up by these mines, but our guys know what to look for,” said Col. Simyon V. Makarov, commander of the Russian Interior Ministry troops. “It’s the neighborhood children who are going to get blown up.”

To give themselves warning of ambushes, Makarov’s troops have set trip flares, but they often find their flares have been cleverly replaced with live mines.

A favorite guerrilla tactic is for a Chechen to stand between two Russian outposts, shoot both ways and then vanish, hoping that the spooked Russians will start firing on each other in the dark. They usually do.

“There has not been a single night when three or four command posts (around Grozny) haven’t been shot at,” Makarov said.

The Russians in Chernorechiye are afraid to step outside their day-care center at night. Snipers are everywhere.

One recently shot 26-year-old Senior Lt. Nikolai Smirnov, narrowly missing his heart. The sniper was a good marksman, firing from more than 200 yards away in pitch dark from the roof of an apartment building jammed with refugees, apparently on the cynical calculation that the Russians probably would not fire back at such a target.

“What are we supposed to do? There are kids living in that building,” Makarov fumed. “We did not shoot back. He got away.”

Smirnov happened to swivel and took the two bullets in his shoulder. “I was lucky--but I’d have been luckier if I hadn’t been shot,” the soldier said. He has only two months more to serve in Grozny, and despite his wound he will not be sent home early.

“I don’t think too much,” Smirnov said. “If you think too much, it gets harder.”

The cycle of violence seems to be escalating in Chernorechiye. On a recent afternoon, several of the young men at the hot spring sported cuts and bruises they said were inflicted by Russian soldiers at a nearby checkpoint.

“I was fetching hot water for my sister so she could do the washing at home,” explained Ruslan Janbeka, 21, who had a black eye and an ugly gash in the back of his head. “It was 11 o’clock in the morning. The soldiers came up and asked me, ‘Are you a Chechen?’ I said yes. The boss came out, he was drunk . . . and he said, ‘Get on your knees.’

“They hit me on the head with a rifle, and they kicked me in the stomach,” Janbeka said. “I passed out.”

When he regained consciousness, Janbeka said, he saw the soldiers beating four other Chechen men and threatening to shoot women who tried to intervene.

Later that afternoon, Leche Abuhadjiyev, a 39-year-old father of four, went through the same checkpoint with his cousin, a former Russian army officer. Abuhadjiyev said soldiers beat them both, then ordered him to go home and bring back a bunch of fresh flowers within 29 minutes or they would beat his cousin to death.

“He came home all beaten up, and all the neighbors and the kids and I were running around frantically all over the place trying to pick some flowers,” said his wife, Marieta Abuhadjiyeva. Her husband returned with a nicely wrapped bouquet, and the cousin was released. Later they heard the soldiers wanted the flowers to honor two colleagues who had been shot by Chechens.

“It’s hopeless for you to write about this, it won’t do any good,” said Abuhadjiyev. “They are out of control.”

A group of furious Chechen women who live near the checkpoint said the troops had looted their homes, used their kitchens as toilets, swilled vodka and terrorized local Chechens with impunity for weeks.

An elderly Russian woman, however, said she saw no beatings but did see the soldiers being shot at by local Chechens. Her words sparked an instant shouting match between Russian and Chechen neighbors.

Col. Makarov denied any wrongdoing by his soldiers but said the troops at the checkpoint had returned to Russia as scheduled and had already been replaced.

The fresh Russian soldiers standing at the checkpoint were polite but jumpy. They said the local women had brought them bread and jam that morning, and they hoped relations would be peaceful. But a few days earlier, they had been told, two officers were killed at a neighboring checkpoint by two Chechens who drove by on a motorcycle and sprayed them with bullets.

“Who knows about them?” asked one Russian officer who refused to give his name. “One minute, they’re peaceful citizens, and the next minute, they shoot you.”