Secure in the knowledge that some 90 percent of the Russian public oppose the war, news editors in both print and audiovisual media have launched a tidal wave of indignation at the loss of civilian life in Iraq with little attempt to conceal their anti-American fervour.

"The Americans have crossed the red line and have started shooting children," the Gazeta daily headlined its coverage Wednesday, with a gruesome frontpage photograph of a woman and small child shot dead by US troops at Najaf, south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The daily Vremya Novostei published a photograph of children's coffins, with people praying nearby, adding that "for ethical reasons" it was not depicting the dead children.

"Women and children are being shot like fighters," wrote the official daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid recently presented a large photograph of US President George W. Bush walking through a cemetery with the headline "Good morning, Iraq!"

Reporters on the Channel One television station routinely refer to the US and British troops as "occupation forces," a term with powerfully negative overtones in Russia and in many other European countries which remember World War II.

On its website, state-owned Rossiya channel's main news programme has a banner over the war coverage reading "US aggression".

The difficulties US and British troops have encountered in winning over the support of the Iraqi population, initially deemed to be likely to welcome them as liberators, have been written up with some relish, with commentators drawing parallels with the Russian military's problems in separatist Chechnya.

"The Americans have entered the hate zone. They are now afraid of every refugee," Vremya Novostei headlined.

The print media have few reporters in the war zone and rely largely on Moscow-based journalists to put together coverage from agencies and other sources.

They have displayed strong sympathies for the Iraqi side, commenting sarcastically on statements by US and British spokesmen and reporting in detail on coalition blunders such as friendly fire incidents or helicopter crashes.

Attempts at more balanced coverage come mainly from media striving for Western-style professionalism such as the daily Izvestia or the minority television channels NTV and TVS.

For analyst Andrei Piontkovsky of the Centre for Strategic Studies, "the malicious pleasure in the Russian media (coverage of the war) reflects the general anti-Americanism in our society."

"There are indeed resemblances with Chechnya, because civilians are dying. But the lamentations of our media are sheer hypocrisy. The people who fully backed our military's actions in Chechnya are now lambasting the Americans for doing the same things," he said.

Warning of possible economic repercussions, Roland Nash of the Renaissance Capital finance house noted that it was now "open season on the US in the domestic media, with the Cold War commentators unleashed" to beat the drum for Russian interests.

The phenomenon was also noted by Alexander Minkin, a commentator with the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, who wrote last week that "the whole world would like to see Bush get a bloody nose while winning the war. But how many American soldiers have to die for that? A hundred? A thousand?

"How strange. By wishing the US a very hard-won victory, we are wishing for thousands of soldiers to die."

SPACE.WIRE