Six weeks after Defense Minister Pavel Grachev boasted that his forces would subdue Chechnya's rebellion in a matter of hours, the Russian tricolor finally fluttered last week atop the ruins of the presidential palace in Grozny. As resistance fighters melted into the suburbs and took to the hills, the bloody battle for control of the Chechen capital shifted sufficiently in Moscow's favor to allow Boris Yeltsin to claim victory. This he speedily did. ``The military stage of restoring the constitution in Chechnya is effectively over,'' he declared in Moscow, adding that the time had come for the ``restoration of Chechnya's life-support...
A FIGHT TO THE LAST BOY?
YELTSIN CLAIMS VICTORY IN GROZNY. THE DEFIANT CHECHENS, HOWEVER, VOW YEARS OF GUERRILLA WAR
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