NARO-FOMINSK - Just as the Russian military has to put up with wartime conditions in the North Caucasus, soldiers' wives back home must also learn to rough it.

In the town of Naro-Fominsk, some 70 kilometers southwest of Moscow - home to families of the elite Kantemirovskaya Division and 119 Paratroop Regiment sent to fight in Dagestan and Chechnya - women say they live in conditions close to those in the battlefield.

"We have to decide now whether to bathe or wash the diapers," says Irina Troshina, rocking her four-month-old daughter, Nastya.

Buckets, pans and bottles filled with water line Troshina's kitchen.

For two weeks, there was no running water, either hot or cold. A burst pipe left many in the area queuing for water brought in by the fire brigade.

But even without that, most of the families living in nine-story apartment blocks do not enjoy running water for much of the year, anyway. Hot water has long become an unaffordable luxury. The local water station does not have enough power to pump it up from ground level - only those on the lowest floors get the privilege.

The portable heater is always on, for radiators rarely come to life. Candles are also handy in case of electricity outages, a frequent occurrence.

"On top of that, our elevator broke down today, so I have to lift the stroller to the sixth floor, which is rather unfortunate," Troshina said.

Her next-floor neighbor, Irina Matyunina, a medical worker at one of the military units, says she didn't expect anything of the sort when she and husband Anatoly moved into the building in 1994 after leaving their station in Lithuania, where they had spent almost a decade.

Matyunina shows a diary her husband keeps, marking the dates and time when they had water. It reads no water since Oct. 29. But even when it does come, it's only a tiny spurt.

A multitude of letters from the residents came to no avail. The local water supply station hasn't tackled the problem in years.

"Everyone says we are lucky because we live on the third floor, so we get people coming to us for water," says Tatyana Sadakova, formerly stationed in East Germany.

"They only remember about us when they need our husbands to go to war," laments Troshina, whose husband left for Dagestan in August just 10 days after his daughter was born and is due home in February. He left with 50 other paratroop officers. Three have been killed, along with 15 other soldiers in battle since then.

Natalya Skurikhina joins the chorus, although her husband is close by, serving his last year in the Kantemirovskaya division artillery regiment. "It's like the times of the Leningrad blockade during World War II, only then they had the Neva River. We don't. Even when we were stationed in the Far East, it wasn't that bad," she says.

Together with daughters Veronika and Yana, they rent an apartment in one of the town's residential blocks and consider themselves luckier than those living in the regimental barracks. "We were offered quarters there but refused. It's just a big room separated from the others by thin walls, with a communal toilet and a sink," Mikhail Skurikhin said.

Pensioner Nina Ivanovna has to endure it all. "Every morning, I fill up at least four buckets to last me, my daughter and granddaughter through the day."

Grim living conditions have always plagued the Russian Army, coupled with low salaries, which at the Kantemirovskaya Division average 1,800 rubles ($69) a month. And pay doesn't always come on time at that. But military wives say what bothers them most of all is the humiliating lack of care which, to them, hurts more than deprivations.

"Everyone says it's an elite division," Skurikhina said. "Yes, but only in name."