Chechen extremists may have started the war by invading the neighbouring republic of Dagestan but Russian politicians, particularly those close to President Yeltsin, are milking every ounce of publicity from an apparently successful military campaign,
Amid all the reports of impoverished refugees, murderous bandits, wily terrorists and heroic Russian soldiers being fed to the public on TV, one important fact should not be forgotten: on Sunday, right across the 11 time zones of the vast Russian Federation, the electorate goes to the polls to elect a new parliament.
Psephologists and pollsters were forecasting a couple of months ago that any politician or party openly linked to Mr Yeltsin's administration would suffer annihilation at the hands of the voters. They had every reason to believe this at the time.
Russia's economy is in shreds. Mr Yeltsin, members of his family and his associates stood accused of serious corruption. A new, young Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, had been plucked from nowhere at the president's latest whim. A potentially unbeatable political formation, Fatherland-All Russia (OVR), was founded out of an alliance between Moscow's mayor Mr Yuri Luzhkov and former Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov.
Things could not have looked worse for the Yeltsin camp. Many of its members faced not only defeat at the polls but possible imprisonment for corruption at the hands of a new administration. Two elections were in the offing: the parliamentary poll which now looms and the election to replace Mr Yeltsin as president in June.
A big defeat in the parliamentary vote would, the pundits felt, herald an equally substantial reverse for the pro-Yeltsin group in the struggle for the presidency.
Then everything changed. Bombs went off in apartment blocks in Moscow and elsewhere, killing 300 people as they slept. Mr Putin's response was as merciless as one might expect from a former KGB operative. The war of containment in Dagestan became a full-scale assault on Chechnya itself aimed at the "elimination of international terrorism".
With every victory portrayed on TV, Mr Putin's ratings soared. He is now the strong favourite to succeed Mr Yeltsin in the Kremlin.
The fact that impoverished Chechens were the main victims of the assault and the leading warlords, Shamil Basayev and an Arab known only as Khattab, remained at large, has been conveniently ignored by those who manipulate the media on behalf of Mr Yeltsin and Mr Putin. What Russians saw instead was a glorious sequence of military successes.
A lesson from NATO in Kosovo had been learned. Russian commanders made sure that every targeted village or town was subjected to a massive air and artillery barrage before the troops moved in almost with impunity. The official figures for Russian deaths so far in the campaign remain in the hundreds.
An indication of how severe the bombing and shelling has been can be gathered from the following: at one stage in the first Chechen war (1994-1996), it was estimated that Grozny was being hit by 4,000 shells or bombs an hour; the current rate is believed to be considerably higher.
Significantly in the run-up to the elections next Sunday, the war has almost obliterated everything else from the TV screens. The NTV channel, which has taken an independent line, did manage to show Mr Yeltsin almost toppling over during his meetings with the presidents of Belarus and China.
It also gave viewers a glimpse of a stylish villa in Antibes on the Cote d'Azur which it claimed belonged to Ms Tatyana Dyachenko - the president's daughter.
But all this, even on NTV, paled before the war coverage and the victory drives through Chechnya not only by Russian soldiers but also by politicians who support Mr Yeltsin and Mr Putin.
The main pro-Yeltsin party Yedintsvo (Unity) is led, in a fortunate coincidence, by the Minister for Emergency Situations, Mr Sergei Shoigu. It has been Mr Shoigu's job to deal with the Chechen emergency. Consequently, he has been shown racing round the territory in two roles. First, he is portrayed as the representative of victorious Russia and second, as the kind victor organising ceasefires and safe passages for ungrateful Chechen refugees who refuse to take up his offers.
Former premier Viktor Cherno myrdin, who also supports the government, has been shown touring the pacified areas of the territory and even the almost-universally despised Anatoly Chubais managed to be pictured ordering the restoration of electricity to Chechnya's second city, Gudermes.
Russian opinion polls are notoriously unreliable. Some are believed to be open to government influence, but all show OVR now in third place behind the Communists and Mr Shoigu's Yedinstvo.
The more reliable polls indicate that, despite the publicity, Yeltsin supporters have little hope of gaining control of parliament. They should, however, get enough seats to prevent a vote of no confidence in Mr Putin being pushed through in the new year.