MOSCOW -- As the fighting in Chechnya sharpened, as villagers there buried their dead and fighters swore their defiance, a strikingly Soviet-like style of talking gained strength within the Russian government.
Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Yegorov said that the only goal of the Russian military was "to free" the Chechen people from the "criminal state" that was oppressing them -- a statement that called to mind the official explanations for Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979.
The Russian Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published an article that portrayed the Russians as the reasonable side, the ones whose interest is to stop the bloodshed, and the Chechens as wholly wrong.
The paper, in a disingenuous tone, said it was "disquieting" that Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev's "illegal detachments" were attacking Russian troops and thus unfairly affecting the progress of peace talks -- as if the only side, the Russian side, was entitled to fight the battles that were intensifying in the Caucasus.
The talks being held in the town of Vladikavkaz in any case broke down: The Chechen delegates walked out yesterday after rejecting Russia's demand that they acknowledge their mostly TC Muslim region of about 1 million as part of Russia.
Dhzokhar Dudayev, the Chechen president, then blamed Russia for the failure of the talks and urged his followers to intensify their resistance against Russian troops.
"I call on the population to wage war with Russia until it leaves the territory of Chechnya," Mr. Dudayev, a former Russian air force general, said in a television broadcast. "We have no other option."
"The earth should burn under the Russian occupiers," Mr. Dudayev said.
The Russians were just as threatening, setting today as the deadline for the forces loyal to Mr. Dudayev to lay down their arms. Otherwise, the government declared in an official statement, "all means at the state's disposal will be used" to quell the revolt.
"We appeal to the leaders of illegal armed formations not to try to test the patience of the federal authorities any longer," the statement said. "The time of persuasion is running out."
The government has not disclosed which units from the army, Interior Ministry and counterintelligence service are seeing action Chechnya -- another aspect reminiscent of Soviet times. Families with sons or husbands in the military don't know if they are there, and there have been no notifications to families about casualties.
Official statements have reported only nine Russian soldiers killed and 20 wounded so far, figures that are difficult to square with eyewitness accounts. Independent Television reported yesterday that as many as 70 Russian soldiers had been killed.
Analysts speculate that somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 Russian troops are involved in the operation.
In the fighting yesterday, Chechen forces brought down a Russian helicopter and killed two crew members who survived the landing, and Russian aircraft attacked villages near the capital of Grozny.
Reporters who came upon a funeral for six people in the western Chechen village of Serovodsk said survivors there told them that the Russian troops had been firing indiscriminately from helicopters.
While gunfire sounded in the distance, old men standing in trucks sang mournful songs about dying for the glory of God. The victims, wrapped in white sheets, were lowered into graves and covered with bricks of soil.
Adlan Gutiev, a bricklayer, told the reporters, "He who comes here in a tank will burn in his tank. Maybe we'll lose, but we'll lose with great blood."
The Chechens said that quite a few people had been shot in a neighboring village, but that the Russians had prevented them from going in to remove the wounded.
Mr. Yegorov, who was at the Russian headquarters at Mozdok, maintained that Russian planes had only struck at military targets.
"No air strikes were dealt against Grozny or other Chechen cities or villages," he said, according to Interfax, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
There were other signs that the government had adopted a fairly blatant disregard for credibility in its pronouncements.
Sergei Kovalyov, head of the State Duma's human rights committee, gained, through a great deal of perseverance, permission to fly to the area of the fighting. On Tuesday he left on a government plane but it was turned back to Moscow in mid-flight with the explanation that there was ice on the runway in Mozdok -- even though fighter jets were taking off and landing all day.
Yesterday he did manage to fly south, but on a commercial flight that was diverted to Mineralniye Vodi, about 150 miles from Mozdok and 210 from Vladikavkaz. He told Interfax he hoped to reach those towns "in the near future."