Yeltsin's Fast-Break Generals

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

Just when it seemed Boris Yeltsin could not become more eccentric and unpredictable, the mad dash of some 200 Russian troops from Bosnia into Kosovo and their takeover of the Pristina airport has reduced political analysis of his regime to something very like chaos theory. The politics of presidential truculence and pique that has so long dominated decision making in Russia has now spilled into foreign relations. And the fact that the Russian military was able to bypass most of the country's top civilian decision makers shows that Yeltsin has a new set of favorites--Russian army generals with a bleak view of the outside world and its designs.

Even so, it is hard to pinpoint just how Yeltsin was involved in the NATO-trumping encampment at Pristina. Close aides insist Yeltsin knew about--even ordered--the move. In fact, Russian military sources say, the raid was a spur-of-the-moment undertaking, devised by generals furious with NATO's stonewalling. The decision, say Russian sources, was taken no earlier than June 10, two days before the troops moved in. At that point, U.S.-Russia talks on peacekeeping in Kosovo were going badly. Military representatives suspected that their main U.S. interlocutor, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, was playing for time in Moscow, trying to keep negotiations bogged down until NATO had deployed. Yeltsin, meanwhile, was smarting at what he felt was Bill Clinton's condescension toward him. Sometime that day, Yeltsin was briefed on the talks, and he asked, as he often does, if anyone had any ideas. Chief of staff General Anatoli Kvashnin conferred with his aides and Lieutenant General Viktor Zavarzin, Russia's representative to NATO, and sketched out a surprise idea: a fast breakout by Russian troops stationed in Bosnia. Yeltsin was shown the plan, military sources said, and grunted a comment that they construed to be approval. They were probably right: Yeltsin's ability to not leave fingerprints on risky decisions is a legend among his staff.

While only a few people in Moscow were privy to the plan, it seems to have been well known and warmly welcomed in Belgrade. The Yugoslavs went out of their way to facilitate the convoy's movement, Russian military sources say. Serbian state officials secured the convoy's route through Serbia and ensured that a road into Kosovo was kept free of refugees and retreating troops. To allow the convoy to travel at top speed as much as possible, a Yugoslav military officer rode in every third vehicle, ready to navigate if the convoy was broken up in traffic.

The Pristina operation has given Russian military commanders a tremendous surge of confidence, and perhaps more important, it has helped the generals gain Yeltsin's ear. Russia's military hierarchy has little love for Yeltsin--one of his nicknames in the general staff is Pelmeni (a small dumpling), an apparent reference to his puffy features and tortured articulation. And the officers have little doubt that he will let them take the blame if the Pristina operation backfires. For the time being, though, an aggressive-sounding military has established a disturbingly close relationship with an ailing and mercurial President.