No country was more strident than Russia in voicing its opposition to the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. Moscow, it will be remembered, accused the US-led alliance of cowardice, recklessness and illegal aggression. It is quite remarkable therefore that Russia should embark, as it has done, on a strategy in Chechnya which shamelessly copies NATO's Yugoslav policy. Bomb strikes have been made against bridges, oil refineries and industrial targets in Grozny. None of these targets appears to be directly associated with the rebels who have launched forays into Dagestan and who have been blamed for the murderous attacks against apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere. All of the strikes, however, have had the effect of damaging the infrastructure of the region as a whole rather than that part of Chechnya which the rebels control. Tens of thousands of refugees have now massed on Chechnya's administrative borders with other areas of southern Russia. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the attacks by Russian aircraft equipped with weapons which are even less accurate than those used by NATO.
News programmes on Russian TV show press briefings uncannily similar to those given at NATO headquarters by Dr Jamie Shea. Videos show "surgical" strikes on rebel positions. Lists of destroyed bridges and other targets are triumphally read out. Much of the information fed to the media by Dr Shea in the course of the Yugoslav conflict has now been shown to be untrue. There is little doubt too that the reports being pumped out by the Russian Defence and Interior ministries are open to question.
NATO's strategy, for all its faults, at least had the saving grace that it was successful in ending the attacks on ethnic Albanians by Serbian police and paramilitaries. The situation in Chechnya is different and there is no guarantee that Russia's copy-cat policy will succeed. On the contrary there are experts in Moscow who feel that the latest military adventure has been doomed to failure from the beginning.
A leading Russian defence analyst, Mr Pavel Felgenhauer, has pointed out that warlords such as Shamil Basayev, may gain encouragement and further support from Russia's air war. Mr Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's moderate president, has asked for an urgent meeting with President Yeltsin on the matter. The response from the prime minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, has not been encouraging. A meeting would take place, he said, "when the president finds it expedient and when it is advantageous to Russia."
Russia's anger at the cowardly and brutal attacks against innocent families asleep in their apartments is wholly understandable. Moscow is entirely justified in attempting to wipe out bandit formations on its own territory but the methods being used to achieve this legitimate goal are questionable in the extreme. To start a land war similar to that in which 30,000 unarmed civilians lost their lives in Chechnya in 1995 and 1996 would be inexcusable.