Anti-West Anger Explodes in Russia

by Sergei Blagov

NATO warplanes had hardly begun their action before demonstrators were gathering at the U.S. embassy to hurl obscenities, bottles, rocks and eggs before being dispersed by police.

The spontaneous reaction against the western allies attempt to force Yugoslavia to agree to a peace deal that would put NATO troops into Kosovo soon gathered strength in political quarters.

Russian nationalists proposed that Yugoslavia join a defense pact of former Soviet states to counteract the NATO threat. The ultra-nationalist followers of Vladimir Zhirinovsky began setting up recruitment centers throughout Russia for volunteers to help defend Yugoslavia.

But many political analysts cautioned that the country paid too dearly -- with a revolution and a disastrous civil war -- for Russia's unconditional support of the Serbs on the eve of the World War I.

Russia simply could not afford to balance on any new Balkan tightrope, and it looked out of place for Russia to be calling its Western partners "aggressors" while begging for financial and food aid, they added.

As Konstantin Titov, the governor of the Samara region, said in a television interview: Russia cannot afford isolation and confrontation with the West.

Also 13 percent wanted Moscow to invite Yugoslavia to join the Russian Federation and 16 percent of those polled thought the Kremlin should do nothing at all.

Analysts agreed the Kremlin now preferred anti-NATO rhetoric to deeds.

Despite Pres. Boris Yeltsin's ominous talk of possible Russian "measures of a military character," a weary-looking Russian leader ended up in saying that "morally we are above the Americans" and he ruled out "extreme measures."

In Moscow, defense ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) -- the loose grouping of former Soviet Republics -- gathered at the former Warsaw Pact headquarters, and approved a statement condemning NATO action on the initiative of Belarus Defense Minister Alexander Chumakov.

The Kosovo crisis was expected to be discussed Apr. 2 by the leaders of 12 former Soviet republics to attend a summit in the Russian capital, postponed repeatedly because of Yeltsin's steady string of illnesses.

Russia introduced a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, though it was perfectly clear that the draft would be defeated. Moscow and Beijing voiced separate condemnation of the air strikes, but failed to come up with any joint statements.

Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov said last December that he favored a strategic triangle involving China, Russia and India to ensure regional geopolitical stability.

"A lot depends in the region on the policies of China, Russia and India. If we succeed in establishing a strategic triangle, it will be very good," Primakov said. China promptly dismissed Primakov's idea of strategic triangle, though Beijing earlier had criticized NATO's expansion into eastern Europe, warning it could only undermine regional and global stability.

Analysts argued that a major realignment of forces in the world, suggested by Russia to China and India, remained a long way off --notably due to differences between Beijing and New Delhi.

Furthermore, talk of a "strategic triangle" has yet to produce any coordinated response to NATO's action in Yugoslavia.

The air strikes, however, could have grave repercussions for Russia's domestic politics. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said that the NATO action had made parliamentary debate on the START II arms reduction treaty senseless.

Just last week, the State Duma appeared ready to begin the long- delayed ratification process.

Though Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov has declared Russia's intention to remain a part of world economy, he also has called for "mobilization of internal resources."

This strategy apparently would be to revitalize Russia from within, by supporting domestic industry and lessening dependence on international trade and lending, analysts said.

Despite Russia's overriding concern with its faltering economy, there was still the danger that the unifying force -- for which the nation has been searching since the Soviet collapse -- may now have been found in an anti-western stance, analysts said.

And although Russia is no longer a superpower as was the Soviet Union, Moscow still has thousands of nuclear warheads and any growth of anti-Western sentiment in Russia could prove more dangerous for world stability than the humanitarian disaster of Kosovo, analysts pointed out.