Diplomacy: Boris to Bill: speak up.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have faced a post-Cold War low due to Russia's brutal campaign in Chechnya (Bill Powell, with Deborah Rosenberg from Istanbul).

• Criticism of Russia at the OSCE summit and its defense: Chechnya is ungovernable.

Further, as justification for this war, the Kremlin points to the August invasion of Chechen rebels into the neighboring province of Dagestan - still a part of Russia proper - and the bombs last summer in two residential buildings in Moscow. The bombs killed about 300 people. Although rebel leaders, including supreme commander Shamil Basayev, adamantly deny any involvement and the Russians have yet to present any real evidence, Moscow brands Chechen terrorists for these bombs.

• Chechnya - a long-term problem; Russia and the countries around the Caspian.

...Boris Yeltsin made it clear over the past week that the Russian bear, though nowhere near as strong as it once was, is now vigilant over a wide area. And hibernation is not among its winter plans.

The Observer, London

Russia calls Chechens bomber-terrorists.

Doubts are growing that Yeltsin's underfunded, demoralized intelligence services can capture the terrorists who killed 300 people, reports Amelia Gentleman in Moscow.

In the early hours of last Tuesday morning, several families living in building No. 35 on Oktyabrskoye Shosse in Volgodonsk were awakened by telephone calls. "How are you sleeping, with death already around the corner?" an anonymous caller asked one person. The same snide voice asked another resident: "How do you feel in the face of death?".

Both hung up and went back to bed. Most of the building's residents, in any case, knew for certain that a few hours earlier the police had thoroughly checked the entire structure and declared it safe.

At 5:58 AM, the entire facade of the 9-story residential building was torn off when a massive charge of explosives hidden in a truck at the base of the building exploded. Eighteen people were killed as they slept in their beds, increasing the death toll collected by death this month in the wave of terrorism sweeping across Russia to 300.

For the fourth time in two weeks, the country watched in horror as state television broadcast images of rescuers scuttling among the debris in hopeless attempts to find survivors. The scenes of devastation had already become depressingly monotonous.

This was the most powerful explosion to date. The bomb's proximity to a nuclear power plant raised the level of alarm in Russia to a new height and intensified pressure on the country's anti-terrorist forces.

Officers are working seven days a week and leaves have been indefinitely canceled as the successor to the KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the police struggle to prevent further explosions and bear responsibility for this.

Yesterday, the hunt for two key suspects continued. Police stated that a certain Chechen, Achimez Gochiyayev, was the leader of those behind the attacks. They name ethnic Uzbek Denis Saitakov as his accomplice. News programs constantly broadcast their photos. They rented office space in the basements of both destroyed buildings in Moscow, and explosives were planted there. Saitakov regularly traveled to Chechnya, according to FSB sources, and they believe he stayed at a base maintained by the extremely wealthy Jordanian-born warlord Khattab.

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and Khattab deny responsibility for the bombs, but Russian forces targeted suspected Islamic guerrilla bases in Chechnya during air strikes over the weekend. Since the beginning of last month, Islamic