SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Ingushetia - Several hours spent in the Sleptsovskaya airport, 1.5 km from the Chechen border, is enough to gain a sense of the extent to which Russia's mighty military machine has been unleashed on the republic.

The sound from behind the hills near the airport of guns booming at 10-minute intervals and the sight of attack helicopters flying off on sorties every 15 minutes is enough to tell the story.

Russia is concealing a brutal war behind those hills.

Moscow, it seems, has regained the ability to effectively utilize propaganda and is now openly conducting an "information war" parallel to its military campaign. The public relations battle this time stands in stark contrast to the bungled media policy during the 1994-1996

Chechen war. So how does one penetrate the "spin" and gain a real understanding of the situation in the breakaway republic? With great difficulty.

The Chechen authorities and commanders of militant forces in the republic have not helped either - they are as secretive as the Russians about the nature of the struggle.

Moreover, in recent years reporters have been more prized in the North Caucasus as valuable kidnap victims than as helpful mediums to relay the true situation in Chechnya. As a result, few journalists have ventured into the republic.

One thing is certain about Russia's campaign in the southern republic, however, ordinary Chechens are no longer talking about independence, much less fighting for it. The choice today is between life and death, and they are struggling for their survival.

Almost every refugee interviewed for this article said they believe that Russia wants to rule a republic free of Chechens.

The displaced say that if the Russian authorities really wanted to eliminate "terrorists" - such as field commanders Shamil Basayev and Khattab - the military would not be bombing civilians and randomly targeting villages. Nowhere else in the world, refugees say, are surface-to-surface missiles being used to fight terrorism.

The victims of the Russian Armed Forces' tactics in this campaign are much in evidence - some 40 wounded refugees lie in the central hospital of Sunzha in Ingushetia.

One of them is 14-year-old Yusup Magomedov from the Chechen village of Novo-Sharoi.

Yusup was playing outside with 18 other children near his house on the morning of Oct. 23 when a tank shell exploded nearby. Eight of the children died and Yusup was badly wounded in the legs.

"I tried to take him to the Urus-Martan hospital [in Ingushetia], his mother, Leila Magomedova, says, "but the federal authorities [didn't] open the corridor [out of Chechnya] for a long time."

The boy and his mother spent five days waiting at the border.

Doctors appealed to border guards to allow the two civilians to pass, "but they would not provide a corridor," Magomedova says.

"On the sixth day, a physician came up to me and, crying, said that if a corridor had been opened earlier my son could have been able to preserve his legs."

Yusup's legs were amputated above the knees inside Chechnya. Shortly after, Russia opened the border with Ingushetia. But that was also an ordeal. "We spent some three hours in the ambulance at the border as guards searched us with dogs," Magomedova recalls. "I feared my son would die and even thought about how I would bury him. ..."

Meanwhile, Magomedova's husband and three daughters remain in Chechnya. She doesn't know how they are living, nor does she know what she and Yusup will do next. The pair have no money, and Yusup is in need of additional surgery to avoid the onset of gangrene.

Another refugee, Luiza Asukhanova, was in the central market in the Chechen capital Grozny on Oct. 21 with her 15-year-old daughter, Zurikhan, when a missile struck. The blast tore the girl's arm off above the elbow and imbedded shrapnel in her stomach.

Luiza recounted the scene shortly after the attack. "I saw parts of human bodies being torn off, but people didn't seem to notice," she says. "They ran, jumping over dead bodies. I also ran, pulling my daughter with me as she was too stunned to move."

Zurikhan Asukhanova says she only wants peace. "I don't want bombs falling any more."

The leg of another refugee, Ibrahim Susayev, 45, was torn off by a missile fragment. Two of Susayev's relatives died in front of him in the same attack. "I didn't want to leave my farm and cattle behind," Susayev says, explaining his decision to remain in Chechnya after hostilities began in September. "I hoped to pull through - and, anyway, where would I have gone?"

Ibrahim does not condemn the Russian people for the war, but he does condemn the Kremlin.

Asked whether he would be prepared to fight Russian forces, Susayev replies, "What for? I cannot defeat Russia."

The horrors of the refugees aside, on a political level there are two basic perceptions of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in the region.

One holds that he actually governs the republic; the other that his power is in reality very weak.

The latter view is more widespread and, sources say, only two Chechen rebel field commanders out of a total of 15 support Maskhadov - the remainder apparently operate independently of the president.

Observers name Movladi Ugugov and Vakha Arsanov as Maskhadov's strongest opponents.

The two men most widely vilified in Russia, Shamil Basayev and Khattab, are not said to be the most influential in the rebel republic.

Imran Izheyev, an aide to Chechen legislative deputy Ramazan Akhmarov, recounted a meeting between Akhmarov and Maskhadov shortly after Moscow launched air strikes against the republic in September.

During that conference, Izheyev says, Russia's Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo telephoned Maskhadov to say he had information that Khattab was retreating to the village of Serzhen Yurt. "Rushailo demanded Maskhadov arrange for Khattab to be extradited to Russia and threatened to bomb Chechnya," Izheyev claims.

"Maskhadov replied that extraditing Khattab was beyond his power. Chechen parliamentary deputies tried to persuade Maskhadov to condemn Basayev and Khattab, but Maskhadov said that he didn't want a civil war to erupt in the republic [and therefore refused]."

Against this background of intrigue and brutality, the only "truth" of which one can be certain is that Moscow does not want the public to know what's going on in the Chechen campaign.

As the Dec. 19 parliamentary elections approach, Moscow's "anti-terrorist" crusade is being played up by the supporters of President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for the benefit of their electoral campaigns.

The attitude of Col. Anatoly Khrulyov, commander of the Kavkaz checkpoint between Chechnya and Ingushetia, infamous for its scenes of scores of refugees caught in a bottleneck after the military closed it, is typical.

"I don't understand why these refugees [still] want to go back to Chechnya," Khrulyov said after a number of Western journalists asked him to let them speak to refugees. "There is no business for them there!"

Pressed further, Khrulyov said, "There is only one truth, and that truth is what I am saying. The only truth, and there will be no other truth."