Can Grozny be groovy?

Blackened, fissured and sad, the ruins of Grozny, the war-scarred capital of Chechnya, have stood almost untouched for over a decade, a must-see for a handful of curious catastrophe tourists.

A chilling monument to man's power to wreak destruction of biblical proportions on his environs, its shattered tower blocks and factories have been compared with the remnants of Stalingrad, Hiroshima and Dresden.

But if you want to see the ruins of Grozny you'd better hurry; 12 years after Russian jets first began to "downgrade" the city, a new metropolis is rising from the ashes of the old one. Brick by brick, apartment block by apartment block, and street by street, Grozny is being reborn.

It is gruesome work; as they clear away the rubble, builders sometimes stumble across reminders of the region's dark past. Last year, about 60 corpses were pulled from the city's eerie ruins and, in the past two weeks, builders toiling in the city's Dynamo football stadium unearthed 13 corpses mixed in among the rubble.

Bankrolled by the Kremlin's petrodollars, the reconstruction is part of President Vladimir Putin's grand plan to bring stability to a corner of the world associated exclusively with war.

Mr Putin is hoping that the project will win hearts and minds and go some way to erasing the memories of two conflicts that pitted Russian against Chechen and cost the lives, by conservative estimates, of 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops.

It is a process that casts Ramzan Kadyrov, the newly appointed Kremlin-backed President of Chechnya, as "Ded Moroz" (Russia's equivalent to Father Christmas), handing out keys to flats as a king might hand out alms. State-controlled TV talks of little else. Where before there was only war and misery, now, the newscasters explain, there are only new schools and hospitals.

Though technically still classed as "a zone of counter-terrorism activity", Russia's mantra is that life in Chechnya is getting back to normal. And Grozny's renaissance is, it says, proof of that "normalisation". But piecing back together what is left of the Chechen capital is not an overnight job. Its 80,000 Soviet-style apartment blocks were carpet-bombed, shelled and riddled with gunfire in some of the fiercest fighting since the Second World War.

Two savage wars of independence turned a city that was once home to more than 400,000 people into a post-apocalyptic lunar landscape.

Only half of the pre-war population are thought to live there today. An estimated 70 per cent of Grozny's housing stock was pulverised. What was left was so badly damaged that only those with nowhere else to go stayed on. It was as if someone had suddenly pushed the reset button, turning the clock back centuries; running water, electricity, drainage, roads, hospitals and schools were all wiped out.

Even Mr Putin, the man who ordered Russian troops back into Chechnya in 1999, was shocked by the scale of the destruction. "Of course some [reconstruction] work is going on here," he told state TV after flying over Grozny in 2004. "But from a helicopter it looks awful." More than two years later, Grozny (a word which, indeed, means "terrible" in Russian) is looking less awful.

At the beginning of what used to be called Victory Prospect, Grozny's main thoroughfare, two very different "before and after" billboards have been sunk into the roadside. One grainy poster, entitled "This is how it was", shows a scene of destruction at the height of the Second Chechen War. A lone Russian armoured personnel carrier is pictured trundling along the ravaged remains of the avenue. The "road" is scarcely recognisable; flanked by charred trees and bombed-out tower blocks, its surface has been turned into a muddy morass and the entire scene is clouded with the fog and smoke of war.

The other billboard, on the opposite side of the road, paints a very different picture. Entitled "This is what it has become", it shows the same avenue today.

Renamed Akhmat Kadyrov Prospect, in honour of the republic's murdered Kremlin-backed president (Ramzan's late father), it has been almost completely restored and is now lined with shiny apartment blocks and shops.

Nor is the 1.6 mile-long avenue the only part of Grozny to get a makeover. Minutka Square, scene of some of the fiercest fighting in both wars, today resembles a European-style roundabout kept dust-free by broom-wielding Chechen pensioners.

In the city centre, a huge mosque is taking shape, its four pipe cleaner-like minarets piercing Grozny's grey sky. When completed (by Turkish workers), the redbrick mosque will be one of Europe's largest, giving this mostly Muslim region a striking place of worship.

Across town, the finishing touches are being made to the city's airport. On Thursday, regular flights between the Chechen capital and Moscow are due to resume for the first time in more than a decade. A gleaming, silver-and-green metal and glass structure, the facility would not look out of place in Europe.

Yet just a few years ago it represented a depressing spectacle. "It was almost completely destroyed in the wars," says Akhmat Koromov, a senior airport official. "It was bombed twice, its runways were destroyed, and the rebels mined it and blew it up before they left." Chechen Airways, known as Vayneh Avia, is hoping to start offering flights to other destinations soon.

Turkey, Syria and the United Arab Emirates have all been mentioned; St Petersburg and other large Russian cities are certain to be serviced, too.

On a road not far from Russia's Khankala military base, a small town in itself, another potent symbol of Grozny's renaissance has been sunk into the ground. Cars coming into the city zoom beneath a triumphal arch decorated with stone eagles. Portraits of President Putin and Akhmat Kadyrov have been lovingly inlaid into the arch.

Grozny's pièce de résistance, however, is Akhmat Kadyrov Square. Landscaped with grass lawns and paved pathways, a statue of the late Kadyrov Snr dominates, defended around the clock by a two-man, Kalashnikov-wielding honour guard.

Wrought-iron street lamps illuminate the square after dark, and in the summer residents eat ice-cream at a cafe or perch on the rim of a large fountain.

Strolling across the square after picking up her eight-year-old daughter from the newly built school, Milana Alieva says the quality of her life has improved beyond recognition. "I didn't think it [Grozny] would change so quickly. I returned in 2004 and, as you can see, my child studies at that school over there which bears no traces of war. Just one year ago all this was ruins," she adds, pointing to a row of restored apartment buildings.

But though much has been done, Grozny remains very much a work in progress.

Cranes loom over the skyline, builders balance on pulley-operated platforms plastering facades, and there are still thousands of buildings in need of attention. "We're working 24 hours a day," explains Eli Isaev, Chechnya's Finance Minister.

"We have begun rebuilding three cities. We have already fully restored Argun and Gudermes and in the centre of Grozny the work is almost completed."

The aim, he says, is to give Grozny European-style facilities. "At first it [rebuilding] was like putting out a fire. People couldn't tell the difference, but now they can. In Grozny, the main streets have been restored, paving stones have been laid, trees planted, parks put in, roads mended and bridges erected."

More than 150 miles of gas pipelines have been laid across the region, he adds, bringing energy to mountainous parts of Chechnya that never had it before. "You can't rebuild in 10 minutes what was destroyed over 15 years, but you can start to make a real difference," Isaev says.

Perhaps one of the most unlikely side effects of Grozny's renaissance is that property prices are undergoing a mini-boom due to a supply crunch. House price inflation pales in comparison with the likes of London or Paris, of course, but for locals, who often have subsistence-level incomes, it is significant.

Roza, 43, a widowed mother of three, is among thousands of people waiting for compensation for her flat that was destroyed in the Second Chechen War. But if and when she receives compensation, to the tune of 350,000 roubles (£7,000), she argues that it will not be nearly enough to buy a comparable flat. "I can't buy anything with that money. Flat prices are increasing every week like oil." Her old flat had two bedrooms, but the best she can hope for is a small studio flat that will cost at least 270,000 roubles (£5,400).

Inevitably, for many the pace of reconstruction is too slow. Seda, a 25-year-old mother of two who lives in one small room with her husband Akhmed in a refugee centre close to the city centre, says she cannot wait to "get back to normal".

Conditions at the centre, which houses more than 2,000 refugees, are tough. There is no running water, and outdoor lavatories are little more than holes in the ground. Large families are squeezed into dingy single rooms off long, darkened corridors.

"We came here because we had nowhere else to go. We've been here for three years already," says Seda. "Ramzan [Kadyrov] promised those who had nowhere to live that he would give them a flat. We're waiting. Nothing has happened yet but I have hope."

Although she may be fed up with waiting, Seda, like many others, says life in Chechnya today is infinitely better than it used to be. Nobody has officially called time on the Second Chechen War - which started in 1999 - but few doubt that the conflict is over and that Moscow, for better or worse, was the victor.

Not that peace reigns throughout the land; rebels continue to carry out sporadic hit-and-run attacks against Kremlin-backed forces and a hard core, inspired by radical Islam, shows no signs of laying down its arms.

Nor are the new rulers of Chechnya without their critics; human rights groups say that stability has been bought at too high a price. In particular, they accuse the Moscow-backed government and President Ramzan Kadyrov of complicity in kidnapping, torture and murder. The government categorically denies such claims.

There is also little doubt that Chechnya's "peace" remains fragile. Sitting safely inside the sprawling Khankala Russian military base, Col Valery Fedyanin darkly recalls that it does not take many people or much money to mount a terrorist attack.

"A major terrorist attack can be achieved with three or four people or even with just one person," he says, his last comment a reference to the female "Black Widow" suicide bombers sometimes used by the rebels.

On the winding road outside, soldiers are painstakingly checking the area for mines and unexploded ordnance; some nervously prod the roadside with sticks while others patiently work with metal detectors.

According to Col Fedyanin, rebel numbers have dwindled to no more than 700 gunmen. The rebels' most feared and notorious leaders are all dead, and they have not mounted a large-scale terrorist act since the bloody Beslan school siege in 2004.

Numerically they are vastly outnumbered, too; ranged against them are an estimated 40,000 Kremlin-backed troops, and Moscow apparently feels so relaxed that it is planning to withdraw thousands of those soldiers this year and next.

As the pullout gathers pace so, too, will Grozny's unlikely resurrection. According to medical experts, reconstruction of the city will play an important role in healing the psychological scars of years of war.

"The very fact that reconstruction is taking place helps people psychologically," says Magomed Ertukhanov, chief doctor at Grozny's Hospital Number One. "When something beautiful appears in town it gives people hope."

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