Several analysts compared the mopping-up operations in southern Iraq with the notorious "zachistka", or sweeps, with which Russian troops rampaged through Chechen towns and villages in their efforts to track down and eliminate "terrorists."

"The allies are starting their sweeps. The Americans and British are using the tactics of the Russians in Chechnya," the daily Izvestia headlined.

A British special forces operation aimed at flushing out "Iraqi saboteurs" in Basra on Sunday was "almost the exact copy of the sweeps carried out by Russian troops in Chechnya," the paper said.

"The British troops armed with automatic weapons burst into houses, kicking down doors, throwing everyone outside and forcing every male of fighting age to kneel," it noted.

The daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta noted that "little by little the operation in Iraq is following the same track as the war in Chechnya."

Warning that the Iraq conflict "promises to be long and bloody," Nezavisimaya noted that the "Shock and Awe anti-Saddam operation may become a repetition of our Chechnya epic: the longer the war goes on, the more the two sides will want to fight on to victory."

Alexander Golts, a military analyst with the weekly Ezhenedelny Zhurnal, noted that "all the Americans need to do now to make the Russian generals' pleasure complete is to proceed to attack Baghdad.

"Then our generals will be given a postdated blessing for their bloody assault that destroyed Grozny."

The Chechen capital was virtually razed after Russia sent troops to put down a separatist insurgency in December 1994, and much of what remained or had been rebuilt was destroyed when hostilities resumed in October 1999 after a three-year ceasefire.

Even now, and after suffering heavy losses, Russian troops maintain only a precarious hold on the republic.

"The reports from the (Iraqi) theatre are deeply satisfying to the Russian general staff's operational department," Golts added.

"The Iraqi military leaders appear to have learned well from our military academy, where we taught them that when the adversary is technologically superior, you must force him into low-level land combat, where he starts to suffer severe losses and has to halt the offensive," he noted.

The business daily Vedomosti meanwhile headlined: "The war helps Russia, the Iraqi army is showcasing Russian weapons."

The land war in Iraq "is good for Russian producers of anti-aircraft defence systems and armaments for land forces," it said.

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