FOR WAR CRIMES and crimes against humanity, there must be a universal standard. Perhaps the most glaring current example of an international failure to uphold a single standard for such crimes is the tactful restraint of the democracies on the subject of Russia's vicious bloodletting in Chechnya.

When the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic was arraigned before an international tribunal in The Hague for presiding over ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, and mass murders in Bosnia and Kosovo, his trial suggested a norm for the protection of all civilians. The criminal behind the war crimes enjoys no immunity from prosecution because he was a chief of state or a head of government. If double standards are applied to such crimes, then Milosevic's complaint that he is the victim of political persecution may ring true.

Sad to say, Russia's sympathy for Milosevic during his slaughter of civilians in Kosovo forms a fearful symmetry with American and European tolerance of the crimes perpetrated against Chechen civilians by Russian forces under President Vladimir Putin.

Those crimes have continued unchecked since the fall of 1999. The Russian human rights organization Memorial has reported in detail about particular Russian military operations in Chechnya in which large numbers of civilians were taken hostage. Some were used as human shields and then mutilated and murdered. Women were raped and, to the surprise of Memorial, later overcame Chechen cultural constraints and spoke about what was done to them. Other civilians were tortured, robbed, or held for ransom.

The foreign minister of the independent elected Chechen government, Ilyas Akhmadov, said in an interview this week that although precise figures are not available, cautious estimates suggest that 200,000 Chechens may have perished in the two wars waged there since 1994. Since the Chechen population was about 1 million before the first of those wars - 1994 to 1996 - Akhmadov believes that the Russians have eliminated 20 percent of the Chechens in what Putin still calls a war against terrorism.

Akhmadov echoed what outside observers, including Russian reporters, have said when he described his visit to the ruins of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. ''I saw ground zero, and I could not help feeling that Chechnya has become an enormous ground zero.''

To its credit, the State Department last month condemned recent Russian operations in Chechnya as ''a continuation of human rights violations,'' citing the ''use of overwhelming force against civilian targets.'' To adhere to a single standard for war crimes, though, the Bush administration should insist that Putin accept international observers in Chechnya who are able to investigate charges of Russian war crimes.

This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 2/9/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.