The devastation even extends below ground: deep penetration bombs have torn up water pipes once buried six feet deep, which now stick out at crazy angles into the air, like the guts spilling out of a corpse. On the streets of Grozny, Russian soldiers outnumber the civilians, though by how many it is impossible to say. Fortified concrete-block checkpoints, usually supported by a light tank, guard every crossroads.The few Chechens I could see on the streets were women, children or old men, with shocked, blank expressions on their faces, wearily picking their way through the rubble. Many were clutching empty plastic bags, and I thought they must be on their way to buy bread or water at one of the little street stalls that used to spring up in Chechnya during any lull in the fighting But even these had been destroyed in the siege. We could see their scorched and twisted metal frames beside the road.The survivors of the four-month-long bombardment turned out to be making for a Russian soup kitchen where several hundred people were jostling to receive a small ration of food. “It is a total disaster,” said Zura Tukaeva, who is 59 but looks older, and who was clutching five small loaves of bread.

“I have no money, no job, no gas and little food.” Glancing around at the crowd, she added: “You only see women and old people here. The day before yesterday some young men came here to get food and the Russians immediately arrested them and beat them just because they were young and male and might be rebels.”Russian soldiers were standing close to where the Chechens were queuing for their rations, but this did not stop one old woman explaining what she thought should happen “The Russian army must go home,” she said “We support the rebels. We just want to live peacefully.” Other Chechens spoke bitterly about their own leaders. A woman who gave her name as Kulsum said: “Both sides are responsible.” Asked if she expected anything from Aslan Maskhadov, the elected Chechen president, now hunted by the Russians in the mountains, she said: “No, he is a dead loss. We will have to start our fight for independence again.”Nothing angers the Chechens so much as to hear that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president-elect, who yesterday met Tony Blair and the Queen in London, claim that the war, of which he is the architect and beneficiary, is directed against “terrorists” and not the Chechen people as a whole.

From the moment the Russian army invaded Chechnya at the beginning of last October, it relied on the firepower of its artillery, rocket launchers and aircraft to devastate towns and villages. When several long-range, ground-to-ground missiles plummeted into a Grozny marketplace last October, killing some 200 people, Mr Putin simply denied that it had happened. He showed no signs of embarrassment when the official Russian military spokesman blithely confirmed the attack a few hours later.The small efforts at reconstruction in Grozny only emphasise the utter devastation. As our APC drove down a broad avenue, with shell-blasted trees in the middle and ruined offices on either side, a party of workers was clearing rubble from a walkway – as if the first priority for the shell-shocked inhabitants of the city would be to enjoy an evening promenade. Some workers were burning blackened branches, lopped off the trees by shrapnel, on a bonfire.