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city s vital installations, and FSK personnel worked to improve their security. A large number of state institutions were guarded by police patrols armed with automatic weapons. The Ministry of the Interior announced that this was all a response to the threat of terrorist groups being sent to Moscow from Grozny. The first suspected Chechen terrorists began to be sought out. On the evening of December 13, the Chechen Israil Getiev, a native and resident of Grozny, had been arrested for setting off New Year firecrackers outside the Prague restaurant on New Arbat Street and detained at the station of the Fifth Moscow Police Precinct. At this stage, announcements like this could still raise a smile, but on December 14, it was suddenly announced that after less than three full days of military operations, casualties on both sides are already in the hundreds. It was all getting beyond a laughing matter.

On December 15, the true scale of the operation being launched was revealed. Advancing on Grozny, alongside subunits of the Ministry of the Interior, were two general army divisions from the North Caucasus Military District and two assault brigades at full strength. Chechen territory was also entered by composite regiments from the Pskov, Vitebsk, and Tula divisions of the airborne assault forces (VDV), with 600 to 800 men in each. In the region of Mozdok, disembarkation had begun of composite regiments from the Ulyanovsk and Kostroma divisions of the VDV. Grozny was being approached along four main lines of advance: one from Ingushetia, two from Mozdok, and one from Dagestan. The Russian forces were preparing to storm the city. On the Chechen side, according to information from the Russian Ministry of the Interior and the FSK, more than 13,000 armed men had been assembled in and around Grozny.

Yeltsin was moving towards the edge of an abyss. A session of the Security Council, held under his chairmanship on December 17, reviewed a plan for the implementation of measures to restore constitutional legality, the rule of law and peace in the Chechen Republic. The Security Council made the Ministry of Defense (Grachyov), the Ministry of the Interior (Viktor Yerin), the FSK (Stepashin), and the Federal Border Service (Nikolaev) responsible for using every possible means to disarm and destroy illegal armed formations in Chechnya and to secure the state and administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. The work was to be coordinated by Grachyov. This was the day that marked the end of Russia s liberal-democratic period. President Yeltsin had committed political suicide.

On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that from 00.00 hours on December 18, units of Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry forces would be obliged to take decisive action, and make use of all means at their disposal to re-establish constitutional legality and the rule of law on the territory of Chechnya. Groups of bandits would be disarmed and, if they offered resistance, destroyed. The Ministry of the Interior statement claimed that the civilian population of Chechnya had been informed of the urgent need to leave Grozny and other centers of population in which rebel groups were located. The Interior Ministry strongly recommended foreign citizens and journalists in the zone of hostilities to leave Grozny and make their way to safe areas. (Despite the warnings from the Russian leadership, most of the foreign journalists remained in

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Grozny, and at The French Courtyard Hotel where they stayed, rooms were in as short supply as ever.) On the same day, Soskovets announced to the world that President Dudaev had been summoned to Mozdok to meet a Russian government delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Yegorov and FSK director Stepashin. Soskovets stated that if Dudaev did not come to Mozdok, the Russian forces would take action in accordance with the regulations for the elimination of illegal armed formations, and