GROZNY: The smell of gas spreads through the air once darkness falls on the Chechen capital, as fires burn to offer some light in a city where electricity is rarely provided.

Not that there is much for the light to illuminate: buildings riddled with gunfire, many reduced to rubble, fallen victims whose remains stand as a testament to the two wars that have decimated the southern Russian republic since 1994.

Around 500,000 people lived in the once vibrant capital when the first conflict between federal forces and separatist rebels broke out, and rights groups contest Russian estimates that some 200,000 people are currently living in the shelled-out city.

In daytime, Grozny seems to belong to another century. Lying on a steppe between the high Caucasus mountains that enclose the republic, it is often swathed in a thick, yellow low-lying fog.

There is barely a soul to be seen, and those who do venture onto the streets are usually women, some returning from the markets that have sprung up as residents attempt to return to normal life.

“I sit at home all day,” said Vaxa Astan, who lives in a temporary housing center for the many Chechen refugees who returned last summer from tent camps in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia.

Officials in Grozny and Moscow have been attempting to prove otherwise, firstly by closing down the Ingush tent camps in a bid to urge — some say force — the refugees to return home.

And most recently, with plans to hold a referendum on March 23 in which Chechens are expected to approve a constitution that would formally set their republic’s place within Russia and give up any claim to independence.

Rights groups have widely criticized the plan, touted by President Vladimir Putin as proof that Moscow has launched a political solution to a conflict which continues to claim lives on both sides almost daily.

“We cannot speak about 100 per cent security in our republic — but neither can any other country in the world,” said Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya.

Yet civilians living among the tattered ruins of Grozny say they can barely speak of any security at all, and nearly everyone has a story about disappearing friends or relatives, picked up by Russian soldiers attempting to weed out separatist rebels. Many of the men are never heard from again.—AFP