Stop Yeltsin to Halt Chechen Massacre

As a Russian citizen, I am ashamed of what President Yeltsin is doing in Chechnya. He tries to justify the use of air power and artillery in urban areas by the necessity to preserve Russia's unity.

However, it's exactly the use of military force in some Soviet republics that accelerated the disintegration of the USSR.

I am ashamed of the Russian Air Force pilots who are bombing blocks of apartment houses, hospitals, schools, and marketplaces. And I applaud the Russian generals who had the courage to defy Yeltsin's criminal orders.

It's to them, and to politicians like Sergei Kovalyov, chairman of the Russian parliamentary Human Rights Commission, who demanded to stop the slaughter of civilians in Grozny, that Russia's future belongs, not to Yeltsin.

A leader of a nuclear power shouldn't be allowed to follow the principle that the end justifies the means. Nothing can justify the massacre in Chechnya ordered by Yeltsin. Yuri Pavlov, Oregon City, Ore. Former Soviet Ambassador to Costa Rica and Chile