1 Russian forces in Chechnya have seized control of three of Grozny's four districts but still have a long way to go, the commander of Interior Ministry troops said Thursday.
2 'The turning point has not been reached, but there are signs of it,' Interior Ministry Gen. Anatoly Kulikov said. 'This means the army has fulfilled its main objective. It has routed the main (rebel) armed forces.'
3 Kulikov also claimed Russian forces now control most of northern Chechnya.
4 'Not being controlled yet is the south of the republic and (the town of) Gudermes,' he said at a news conference.
5 The fighting continued Thursday, with Russian troops continuing to shell Chechen positions in Grozny, the Chechen capital.
6 Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, who recently handed over control of the operation to Kulikov, was hospitalized for a routine army physical, officials said Thursday. He is the second major official in charge of the Chechnya war to go to the hospital in the past week.
7 Grachev, 48, has been bitterly ridiculed for saying he could take Grozny in two hours with a single paratrooper regiment. Instead, tens of thousands of Russian troops have been locked in a near static struggle with a few thousand lightly armed Chechens for almost two months.
8 Russian Nationalities Minister Nikolai Yegorov was hospitalized earlier with pneumonia, and the prominent daily Izvestia printed a front-page story Thursday speculating that both men would soon be ousted.
9 Many observers expect a protracted guerrilla war once Russia imposes at least nominal control over most of Chechnya. But Kulikov rejected that notion.
10 'There will be no drawn-out guerrilla war,' he said. 'There will be acts of terrorism. '
11 He claimed most Chechens are anxious for a Russian victory and would not back a guerrilla war. 'People with tears in their eyes are waiting for the moment when all this will stop,' he said.
12 Kulikov also acknowledged that three Russian soldiers have been charged with looting. There have several reports of Russian looting in Grozny.
13 'I regret to say that this is an inseparable, dirty part of any war,' he said.
14 Meanwhile, a new poll said the overwhelming majority of Russians oppose courts-martial for soldiers who refuse to fight in Chechnya.
15 Only 11 percent of the respondents in the poll of 1,353 people nationwide said they favored prosecuting soldiers who refuse to fight in Chechnya, the Obshchaya Gazeta newspaper said.
16 Seventy-four percent said they thought it would be wrong to bring charges and 15 percent had no opinion. The margin of error was 2.5 percent.
17 A number of Russian soldiers have surrendered rather than fight and, in a few instances, commanders refused to advance or fire on unarmed civilians.
18 The crushing morale problem is seen as one of the reasons Russian forces are bogged down in Chechnya.
19 The poll is just the latest sampling of public opinion, which has been opposed to the war in Chechnya from the outset.

The fighting continued Thursday , with Russian troops continuing to shell Chechen positions in Grozny , the Chechen capital .
shell
How do the troops shell their position?