SLEPTSOVSK (AFP)-Chechen Islamists vowed Sunday to give acting President Vladimir Putin a bloody nose on the eve of Russian presidential elections, as they slipped away from federal forces to regroup in the mountainous southeast of the republic.
Both Russian and Chechen sides said that Chechen forces were gathering in the eastern Vedeno gorge, after apparently slipping through Russian military lines further west. Russian agencies quoted military command as saying the Chechen units number some 1,500 fighters.
A spokesperson for the Islamists said that their forces were still putting up resistance around a string of mountain settlements in southeastern Chechnya, including Sharo-Argun and Khal-Kiloi.
Spokesperson, Movladi Udugov said that Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov had gathered all his top field commanders together for a council of war, as more and more fighters filtered back to the Vedeno gorge to regroup.
"Soon we will be able to stage full-scale military action across all Chechnya," Islamist spokesperson, Movladi Udugov said, raising the prospect of their attack in the week running up to Russian presidential elections next Sunday.
Putin said Saturday that the war was almost over, and that he would start pulling some soldiers out of Chechnya because the Islamists were no longer in a position to engage federal troops in large-scale combat.
Chechen fighters were moreover making life uncomfortable for Russian police units, which have moved into northern parts of Chechnya already overrun by Russian forces.
Several police stations came under fire from machine-gun and grenade launchers over the weekend, and 3 police officers were killed in Islamist raids on checkpoints, news agencies reported. Sites in the capital Grozny, as well as in settlements further south, were targeted, ITAR-TASS reported.
"During the night Chechen fighters fire at federal units, strongholds and check-points, and the buildings of the commandant's offices and police stations," said a Russian military spokesperson.
Almost six months after swarming into Chechnya, federal forces control the vast majority of the republic's territory, but despite efforts to talk up their battlefield victories, the Russians still face an elusive enemy and have failed to pin down any of their much-wanted field commanders.
Chechen fighters have melted away from the advancing Russian troops and resurfaced elsewhere in the rugged southern mountains to stage deadly ambushes and raids on checkpoints and police stations.
A case in point was Komsomolskoye, a small village in the foothills of Chechnya's southern mountains where hundreds of Chechen force kept federal forces at bay in two weeks of fighting.
Russian warplanes and helicopter gunships meanwhile sought out fleeing Chechen fighters, pounding their positions near the villages of Martan-Chu, Khai-Khatsaguni, Makhketa, Selberoi and Chart-Kort among others.
