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| RUSSIA'S RAGE | |
 June 24, 1999 
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NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia have fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment in Russia. Special correspondent Paul Miller reports from Moscow on Russia's growing mistrust of the West.
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JIM LEHRER: Our Russian report is from special correspondent Paul Miller in Moscow.
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| A moment of glory. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ALAN ROUSSO, Carnegie Moscow Center: This operation has had a very positive effect on Russia's sense of its national importance on the importance of the Russian military.
PAUL MILLER: Russia's political leaders were deeply frustrated by the humiliation being unable to stop NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, and by being ignored, despite threats of dire consequences if NATO persisted. Sometimes the frustration showed. In a meeting with his foreign minister, Boris Yeltsin mockingly spoke of a rare phone call from President Clinton. "He called me, imagine that," Yeltsin said. Clinton said "I was a fine fellow and a diplomat and a jack of all trades." Alan Russo of Carnegie's Moscow Center, who keeps track of Russia's government, says the frustration may lead to more attempts at diplomatic one upsmanship along the lines of the paratroopers in Pristina. ALAN RUSSO: Russia will continue in ways that may be perhaps more serious in this case to stick the thumb in the West's side whenever it can. And I think the long-term implications for U.S.-Russian or Russian-NATO relations are not terribly positive.
SERGEI ROGOV: They saw that the civilized West, which wanted to join and behave like civilized people, behaves like a Soviet caricature. The West is bombing and that might be something very dangerous for our society because we might conclude that this decision, which was made ten years ago, was wrong; that everybody does it; that market economy doesn't work, that political democracy doesn't work.
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| Growing distrust of the West. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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FATHER NIKON, Faith and Fatherland Movement: I regard NATO as the main rival, not just of Russia and the Slavic world but all Europe. The late events in Kosovo destroyed NATO's image as a big respectable national organization that cares about global security. PAUL MILLER: The extreme nationalists represent a tiny percentage of the population, but the anger and distrust are also voiced more quietly in communities such as Prisotiv, 20 miles West of Moscow, where workers and moderate income families spend weekends in modest cottages. Irina Abdalyan and Igor Yushmanov pass the time with friends. Irina says she used to respect the U.S. and other NATO countries, but no longer. IRINA ABDALYAN: (speaking through interpreter) The world order has been changed completely. Who gives a country their right to send its planes over the territory of another state given that there has been no U.N. resolution to give it a go-ahead. PAUL MILLER: Igor says there is a double standard in the way NATO uses its military. IGOR YUSHMANOV: (speaking through interpreter) See what is happening in Turkey with the Kurds? Take the Chechen war in Russia. Why did they not interfere in these regions? Why Yugoslavia and what is so special about the Albanians?
IGOR BUNIN: (speaking through interpreter) This distancing from the West has got its limits and the Russian political elite understands that. It also understands that Russia should make an entry into the western world, but it is very upset about the way this entry is happening.
VLADIMIR RACHMANIN: It was positive, constructive and practical. So I believe we made the first step in developing cooperation with the West in the new circumstances. Nobody is talking anymore about G-7 plus one or something like that. Everybody is talking G-8, and that is very important for Russia. PAUL MILLER: But many in the Russian political elite think despite the rhetoric, the agreements that came out of the G-8 meeting will not address the frustrations that have been developing for months and years. SERGEI ROGOV: We need a strategy. Instead, we have zigzag tactics, and thus adding new problems on top of the existing ones. The G-8 meeting at least helped us to prevent the crisis with Russian-western relations to develop into a real confrontation. But key problems still remain.
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PAUL
MILLER: The 200 Russian paratroopers who raced to Pristina's airport
before NATO and who were cheered by Serbs as they went, gave their country
one of its few moments of glory in recent years. 
PAUL
MILLER: It had an opposite effect on the United States and its NATO
allies, who were alarmed to find Russia acting unilaterally in Kosovo.
Just who ordered in the troops is not clear. But the alternatives are
equally alarming to the West. Either the military acted on its own,
or it went around the chain of command to get President Yeltsin' approval.
Igor Bunin, who has close ties to top officials, says it was the latter.
IGOR
BUNIN, Political Analyst: (speaking through interpreter) The foreign
minister and the special envoy to Yugoslavia were ignored. A group of
generals avoiding the defense minister got to Yeltsin, who sanctioned
the move. He thought it would compensate for the humiliation he suffered
all this time. 
PAUL
MILLER: For many Russians, those relations have changed fundamentally.
They have had enough of the West. Analyst Sergei Rolov, who directs
a government think tank, says Russians are turning from western values
they eagerly embraced ten years ago when they rejected the Soviet order,
values undermined by the bombing of Yugoslavia. 
PAUL
MILLER: Russians at all social levels have already given up on the market
economy as parts of it have given up on Russia. Since last August, when
Russia defaulted on its foreign debts and the economy collapsed, there's
been a lot of finger pointing, much of it at the West. Some writers
have suggested the West deliberately created the country's corruption,
croney capitalism, and the punitive terms for loans as a way of bankrupting
Russia. The NATO alliance was another source of irritation for many
people here, even before Yugoslavia. The Warsaw Pact dissolved a decade
a but NATO, its western counterpart, expanded into Central Europe and
then changed its mission.
SERGEI
ROGOV: We were told don't worry; NATO can use force only for self-defense.
NATO never starts wars. But many in Russia didn't believe it. And what
they saw in Yugoslavia was the worst case scenario. And that made many
people here feel that our country's quite humiliated, that we excluded
from crucial decisions concerning European security. 
PAUL
MILLER: When the bombing began in Yugoslavia there, was an explosion
of anger. And the American embassy in Moscow was attacked. The government
was so alarmed, it sought to diffuse the anger. News reports of the
displacement of Kosovars and atrocities against them were encouraged.
But with the end of the war, NATO's occupation of Kosovo, some of the
anger and distrust returned. It has been displayed on the street, such
as at this demonstration of extreme nationalists in downtown Moscow.
PAUL
MILLER: The distrust extends deeply into the military and has been expressed
by some of the highest-ranking and most respected generals. These paratroopers
are among 3500 peacekeepers Russia says it will send to Kosovo. The
agreement worked out with NATO does not give the Russians a separate
zone. It does put them under Russian commanders at several levels, although
the troops are supposed to answer in tactical situations to NATO's orders.
They have the right, however, to opt out of operations they disagree
with, and several generals have said they will exercise that right.
And this week Russia is conducting military exercises to repel an invasion
from the West. The timing is a coincidence, the military says. It has
nothing to do with NATO or Yugoslavia. Despite the disquiet among the
military, the public and some members of parliament, Boris Yeltsin has
made a point of renewing ties with the West, as he did in a meeting
with President Clinton in Germany last weekend. 
PAUL
MILLER: Officially Yeltsin's government says the meeting in Cologne
of the leading industrial powers and Russia is an example of how Russia
is not being ignored. It even claims a small victory in the meeting
having a new name. 
PAUL
MILLER: The zigzag tactics were certainly evident in Kosovo. Russia
first froze relations with NATO, then helped it broker an agreement
with Yugoslavia. Now, after the war, Russia's economic, political, and
military weaknesses remain, and so does one constant: Anger at its own
weakness, coupled with a pervasive tendency in many parts of society,
to blame the weakness on the United States and the West.