MILITARY ATROCITIES PROLIFERATE.

Russian soldiers aboard an APC shot and mutilated the bodies of three Chechen civilians in Katyr Yurt village (western Chechnya), bringing to 17 the number of civilians found to have been killed in this fashion in the last three days. In Grozny, Russian soldiers yesterday were officially reported as killing a father of five while robbing his apartment. In Makhkety village, ravaged last week for presumably harboring Zelimkhan Yandarbiev’s headquarters, the Grozny authorities reported having found yesterday the bodies of 25 residents, "mostly girls and women from 3 to 90 years of age," killed in the shelling, the authorities announced. "Chechnya head" Doku Zavgaev and other collaborationist officials yesterday redoubled calls for prosecution of Russian soldiers who commit crimes against civilians. Grozny "deputy prime minister" Vakha Sagaev complained to the press about "numerous known cases of Russian soldiers beating and kidnapping peaceful local residents and holding them for ransom." The Grozny officials complained, as usual in such circumstances, that military atrocities sap their own position and strengthen that of the opposition. In Vladikavkaz, a Russian military court gave a two-year suspended sentence and immediately released a soldier found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of war correspondent Natalya Alyakina in Chechnya. The killing had been widely seen as military intimidation of the press. The court action indicated that the Russian authorities are not about to restrain their troops. (Russian and Western agencies, July 17)

Moscow Democrats Protest Yeltsin’s Chechnya "Deception."