1 A donkey-pulled cart carrying a Chechen woman and her children bounces across a rutted field, followed by a tractor with a small white flag tied to the top.
2 Camped in tents at the field's edge, Russian soldiers with machine guns watch warily as they pass.
3 'They are our friends -- very bad friends,' Valery Grebenshikov, a hard-eyed Russian officer, said wryly, referring to residents of Tolstoy-Yurt. 'It's very hard to tell who supports what we are doing and who simply wants to kill us.'
4 Tolstoy-Yurt, a town just over the ridge from the battered Chechen capital Grozny, is a stronghold of opposition to secessionist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. But even here, tension and resentment toward the Russian troops run high.
5 In the weeks and months to come, as Russian forces establish what most feel to be inevitable control over Grozny and other areas, more Chechens will have to deal with life under an occupying force.
6 Their reaction may determine how long the war lasts. Many people in predominantly Muslim Chechnya now fear a guerrilla war could drag on for years.
7 In Tolstoy-Yurt, support for Russia's iron-fisted operation to crush the separatist rebellion seems to erode with each death or report of Russian atrocities.
8 Fresh mounds of dirt mark scores of new graves at the cemetery at the edge of town, victims of the fighting in Grozny -- many of them civilians.
9 One was Berlan Abuyova's brother. Crying softly as she shuffled down the street, the 45-year-old woman said people in Tolstoy-Yurt never expected a protracted war. They thought the Russian army would oust Dudayev quickly.
10 'It was very hard to live during the Dudayev era. We had no money, no work. It was very bad,' Abuyova said. 'But now is worse.'
11 Tolstoy-Yurt was spared the shelling that ruined Grozny. But 3,500 refugees have swarmed into the town, whose pre-war population was 8,000.
12 Helicopters and airplanes roar overhead and the pounding noise of artillery firing into the capital resounds day and night. The din blows out windows and causes small children to cry in terror.
13 The Russians supply anti-Dudayev opposition forces in Tolstoy-Yurt with food, medicine and weapons. It is a tense partnership that anticipates the day the Russians will end their assault and install a pro-Moscow leadership in Chechnya.
14 Many civilian men in the town are uneasy with their role as bystanders in the heart of a war for their homeland.
15 'Every day the Russians kill more people,' said 25-year-old Apti Khazhiyev, sitting in the cozy house he shares with two brothers, a sister and their mother. 'Every day we ask Allah that they don't shoot at us.'
16 The family finds it harder than ever to scrape by. The three sons buy chocolate and cigarettes and sell them for a small profit. A cow and three sheep help their food supply.
17 But the mood inside their home was somber.
18 'We used to have parties with friends and families where we'd dance and sing,' said Salman Khaziyev, 23. 'Now we have no parties. Now, every day, life is like a funeral.'
19 It is the Russians' fear that anti-Dudayev men like the Khaziyevs will turn against them at any moment.
20 There is evidence the opposition's loyalty to Russia is fragile, particularly amid increasing allegations that Russian soldiers have looted homes in Grozny, robbed civilians at checkpoints and beaten prisoners.
21 A Chechen opposition fighter in Znamenskoye, another anti-Dudayev stronghold controlled by the Russians, was among those saying he was ready to change sides.
22 Before the Russian military campaign began in December, Chechen opposition supporters had clashed with Dudayev loyalists.
23 'I used to support the Russian troops but now I want to fight them,' said Adilmir Vidayev, 37, wearing a black ski cap and toting a Kalashnikov. 'They are carrying out genocide.'
24 In Tolstoy-Yurt, Bibert Martanov, a 40-year-old accountant, said the mood will worsen when the many refugees from Grozny try to return and find nothing but ruins.
25 'When people see for themselves how everything is destroyed and impossible to rebuild, it will be horrible here,' Martanov said.

A donkey - pulled cart carrying a Chechen woman and her children bounces across a rutted field , followed by a tractor with a small white flag tied to the top .
white flag
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