If a national struggle does not bring with it elements of a spectacle and a familiarity of terrain to sustain our interest, we invariably get good and tired reading about it. Alas, the struggle in Chechnya is one such. But the carnage there continues, with daily atrocities perpetrated against the civilian population by Russian troops, atrocities that have gone largely unnoticed by the outside world and mostly ignored by the media. All of which could not make Moscow any happier.

What is happening in Chechnya today is no less than devastating, forgotten though it may be by the outside world.

On July 3-4, following a mine blast on a road outside two villages 20 miles west of Grozny, the capital, that killed four occupation soldiers and wounded several others, hundreds of Russian troops, backed by helicopter gunships, swept into the villages and arrested 1,500 people, looted homes and subjected the male residents to beatings and electric shocks. According to news reports, these civilians were subjected to two days of terror by a column of troops that had arrived in more than 100 armored personnel carriers. They reportedly detained mayors and religious leaders, and went from house to house to arrest every male Chechen they could find between the ages of 13 and 55, who were then carted to “filtration” camps, where torture, beatings and summary executions are the norm. (“Filtration” camps, which Russians had set up all over Chechnya in the past, are well-known to Western journalists, who have repeatedly written about them.)

Patrick E. Tyler, a New York Times reporter, filed a report on July 10 from Assinovkaya, one of the two villages under assault, describing the treatment meted out to the detainees in one filtration camp.

“There they made them lie face down in the sun all day,” he wrote, “or crowded them into open pits, their shirts pulled over their heads in the sweltering heat. Many residents who tried to see what was happening were beaten with rifle butts. Then, one by one, the men were taken for violent interrogation sessions. One of those tortured was Ruslan Payzulayev, 38, a deaf mute, who was pulled away from his mother over her protests that he was handicapped.” They hit him in the mouth to make him talk and applied electric shock all over his body. A neighbor who witnessed the beating, quoted one of the soldiers as saying, “We’re going to see if he’s really deaf and mute or just too tough.”

As Russian President Vladimir Putin warmed up for his summit meeting with Western leaders in Genoa late last week, and for his separate meeting with President Bush on Sunday, he said of Chechnya: “I have no intention of changing my approach.”

This approach, we all know by now, is a scorched-earth military campaign by his 80,000 troops, that includes acts of murder, torture, looting, rape, “cleansing” operations and “disappearances” directed against civilians.

You would imagine that Putin would have been diplomatic enough, or cautious enough, on the eve of his attendance of the G-8 summit in Italy to tone down his bellicose rhetoric about Chechnya. But he did not, nor did his troops ease up on their attacks. Rather, these attacks, it would appear, were in fact stepped up.

Ah, realpolitik!

Putin is convinced that Russia’s excesses in that sad country would not be brought to account. After all, none of the governments represented at the summit ever protested, or even had anything meaningful to say about these bloody campaigns in recent months, campaigns that have nevertheless been amply documented by Western human rights groups. In fact, two weeks ago, as news of the carnage in those two villages broke, President Bush issued what seemed like a statement of support for Moscow’s actions. He told reporters that the Russian president “is deeply concerned about extremism and what extremism can mean to Russia.” To top it all, he added, as an afterthought, “As you know, I am too.”

Never mind that the Washington Post, in an editorial July 21, called the statement “an extraordinary — we would say shocking — public endorsement” of Putin’s lawless policies in Chechnya; the American government appears to have opted to ignore what is happening there; and by doing that it has silenced criticism by other Western governments, as well as emboldened Putin to have his troops continue their rampage unimpeded by outside pressure.

Ah, realpolitik, we say, for how else would one describe President Bush’s seeming endorsement of Putin’s Chechnya campaign except in context of realpolitik quid pro quo: The US will turn a blind eye to what is happening to the Chechen people, and Russia will conclude a deal with Washington on missile defense.

And that is indeed what happened in last Sunday’s meeting between the two heads of state, who agreed to work together toward “a post-Cold War disarmament framework that would reduce nuclear weapons on both sides while allowing the US to build a missile defense field.”

All of which makes the US come out like a darn hypocrite. For while it struts the world stage, as it has been doing in recent years, projecting itself as the moral authority on human rights, at the same time it gives Moscow the green light to pursue what is surely the most violent, bloody, criminal and repressive military campaigns in the world today — surpassing even Israel’s in its brutality.

After President Bush met privately with Putin in Slovenia on his maiden voyage to Europe last June 17, he told reporters, with a straight face: “I looked into his soul and found him trustworthy.”

Sure, George, sure.