ANOTHER UPDATE is due on the much-celebrated shift by Russian President Vladimir Putin toward partnership with the West. Since his last meeting with President Bush two months ago, Russian authorities have tried to shut down the country's last independent television network and have convicted a critical journalist on trumped-up charges of espionage. Moscow has again refused to cooperate with a U.S. initiative to tighten United Nations sanctions on Iraq, and it has again rejected requests that it curtail supplies of weapons and nuclear materials to Iran. Now Mr. Putin's army has embarked on another bloody offensive in Chechnya, besieging the republic's third-largest city and killing scores of civilians with artillery barrages and helicopter assaults.

According to Russian human rights groups, the offensive began Dec. 30, while most of the world was distracted by New Year's celebrations. Russian forces swept into the village of Tsotsin-Yurt and, according to the group Memorial, began shooting Chechen men indiscriminately. According to the official Russian account, more than 100 were killed over the course of several days; the independent Glasnost organization reported finding 200 corpses of civilians. "None of them was identified as a rebel," the group reported, "but relatives were not allowed to take the bodies for burial unless they signed a testimony that the killed person belonged to the Chechen rebels."

The Russian forces then sealed off the town of Argun, beginning Jan. 3, and launched a "cleansing operation," in which hundreds are typically rounded up, beaten and in many cases killed; the survivors are released to their relatives in exchange for ransom payments. The Argun operation, which is still going on, has been particularly rough: According to official Russian reports, helicopter gunships were used to attack apartment houses where rebels were believed to be hiding.

According to Mr. Putin, this brutal war, which by Russia's account has killed 11,000 Chechens since October 1999, is now an integral part of the war on terrorism; in fact, he recently suggested that Russia's campaign is more scrupulous than that of the United States in Afghanistan, as it did not "use aircraft or heavy bombers on settlements" -- an assertion quickly belied in Argun. Before his visit to the United States last fall, Mr. Putin appeared to agree with Mr. Bush that not all the Chechen rebels were terrorists, and he called for negotiations; but after a single low-level meeting the process broke down, largely because of the Kremlin's insistence that the rebels, who are seeking self-rule, surrender and disarm before negotiations begin.

The Bush administration says it is following these developments, and it has criticized Mr. Putin's latest moves against the press. It clearly would like Mr. Putin to respect democratic freedoms and human rights. The question is whether such behavior will be a condition of a Russian-Western partnership or merely a fond wish. Mr. Bush hasn't been clear on that point; meanwhile, Mr. Putin acts as if he knows the answer.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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