1 Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev on Thursday blamed low-ranking field officers for Russia's botched assault on Grozny, the capital of the breakaway republic of Chechnya.
2 Grachev also said recent attacks against him in the media were being directed by people who were trying to oust President Boris Yeltsin from office.
3 The defense minister, arriving in Almaty for a Commonwealth of Independent States summit, said the mishandled operation to take Grozny was the fault of unseasoned junior officers, the Interfax news agency reported.
4 'We planned to start it as a surprise and conduct it with minimum losses,' Grachev said of the New Year's Eve assault on Grozny. Instead, it turned into a six-week savage battle, with heavy losses suffered by the army.
5 Interfax on Tuesday said military sources estimated 1,200 soldiers were killed and 3,400 wounded since the invasion of Chechnya on Dec. 11.
6 'The losses are a result of some low-ranking commanders wool-gathering,' Grachev was quoted as saying about the assault on Grozny. 'They expected an easy victory, and relaxed.'
7 Grachev said taking Grozny, which still is not completely controlled by Russian forces, presented a complex military problem.
8 'We had to destroy a 15,000-strong military force of the enemy in a city with a population of 300,000,' Grachev said. 'Not just disarm them, but also keep intact the city's infrastructure and ensure that human rights are not violated.'
9 The toll of dead and wounded in Russia's assault on Grozny may never be known, but estimates suggest thousands of civilian casualties. Russian lawmaker Yuli Rybakov said Tuesday that a group led by the nation's human rights commissioner had compiled a list of 25,000 civilians killed in Grozny.
10 Grachev, who has increasingly come under scrutiny by the media, said newspaper attacks against him were being made by anti-Yeltsin forces.
11 Last week, the newspaper Segodnya said that Yeltsin had confronted the defense minister about a secret bank account in Germany. The Defense Ministry later said there was nothing secret about the multimillion-dollar account from the sale of Warsaw Pact military equipment.
12 Grachev said such media attacks were being directed by people who wanted Yeltsin sacked. 'I'm in their way,' Interfax quoted him as saying.

Grachev also said recent attacks against him in the media were being directed by people who were trying to oust President Boris Yeltsin from office .
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