December 20, 1994
In a striking show of mass defiance, at least 100,000 Chechens lined their last unoccupied highway Tuesday to call for peace as Russian troops stepped up land and air attacks on their tiny breakaway republic. As the Kremlin promised “decisive offensive actions” to press Dudayev into renouncing his oil-rich republic’s claim to independence, fully a tenth of Chechnya’s mostly Muslim population took to its main highway in protest. Men and women, infants and old people walled the 40-mile stretch of the Moscow-Baku highway from the eastern outskirts of Grozny to the Dagestan border. Many carried hand-lettered signs demanding “Freedom for Chechnya” and “Yeltsin! Stop the War!”
