Human rights abuses in Chechnya had taken place "on a massive scale" but mainly at the hands of Chechen rebels rather than by Russian forces, Mr Oleg Mironov, the Russian Parliament's human rights commissioner, told The Irish Times at the Council of Europe conference on human rights in Dublin.
Mr Mironov, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which supports the Chechen war, also commented on the ambush in Grozny on Thursday night. (See below.)
The ambush, Mr Mironov said, showed that the capture of Grozny by Russian forces did not mean that the conflict in the city was over. "It is only the first step towards real peace in Grozny," he said.
"It is clear there was a preplanned Chechen operation in which soldiers were killed and badly wounded. So although the operation in Grozny is officially finished, it does not mean that it has finished in reality."
The ambush did not mark the start of a new guerrilla war, he said. "Guerrilla war was already there. The guerrillas were there and they are still there." Asked about allegations by western agencies of human rights abuses in Chechnya, Mr Mironov said: "Of course there are human rights abuses in Chechnya and we can say that they are on a massive scale but it's not only on the part of Russia.
"The regimes of [Gen Dzhokhar] Dudayev and [President Aslan] Maskhadov for the past 10 years were neglecting human rights. People didn't have work, schools were closed, hospitals closed, pensions and salaries were not paid and of course in wartime civilians suffer a lot.
"I have been to the refugee camps and I have seen for myself what the conditions were like there and the conditions were disastrous. The people have had their houses demolished, property destroyed, they lost everything. They were forced to leave their houses," he continued.
Many allegations have centred on a "filtration camp" at Chernokozovo near the Chechen border. Male Chechens have been taken there to be interrogated to ascertain if they have fought against Russia and human rights bodies claim that they have been beaten and tortured.
Mr Mironov expressed doubt about specific claims regarding the camp, in which, he said, the soldiers and officers were controlled from headquarters in Moscow, but he did admit that prisoners had been beaten.
"Unfortunately, there are cases of the punishment of prisoners not only in Chechnya but in other places in Russia and I have reported these to the Minister of the Interior but it is still possible that these practices continue. After all, there is a war," he said.
"We now need a very wise policy from the federal government to normalise the situation," Mr Mironov said. The only policy capable of defeating the rebels was, he said, the use of force but force on its own was not capable of bringing out a solution and Russia needed to "widen the spectrum of its options, to find every means possible of reaching a solution". "If people in Chechnya clearly see that this government has come to settle their problems, to restore their houses, hospitals and schools, they would believe in the federal government and it would help a lot."
Mr Yevgeny Gusarov, a Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, also attended the conference and confirmed that Russia was preparing to withdraw a number of military units from Chechnya. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson would, he said, be permitted to visit Chechnya early next month.