Russia Confronts Results of Hasty Deployment in Kosovo

Russia may have stunned the West by moving troops into Kosovo ahead of NATO, but it became apparent Tuesday that Moscow gave little thought to how it would sustain its island of 200 soldiers in a sea of NATO troops.

Russian news services reported Tuesday that the paratroopers holding the airport outside Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, were running low on food and fuel only four days into their standoff. Even worse, the soldiers had already run out of cigarettes.

British forces took pity on the Russian soldiers and gave them water. But someone--presumably a Kosovo Albanian guerrilla--lobbed a mortar shell into the Russian enclave, demonstrating how vulnerable the Russians are.

“We should only be grateful to the British for helping our servicemen,” said Russian lawmaker Alexei G. Arbatov. “But we really must take care of our own soldiers ourselves. We should not count on someone else to bring them water and give them gasoline.”

A convoy of 11 trucks drove about 300 miles Tuesday from Russia’s peacekeeping base in Bosnia-Herzegovina to deliver supplies and spending money to the paratroopers. The convoy left Bosnia at 4 a.m. and arrived in Pristina in the evening--not a very practical way to keep the soldiers supplied on a long-term basis.

Amid the deployment of more than 15,000 international peacekeepers in Kosovo so far, Russia’s difficulties in maintaining its tiny force illustrated how hastily conceived and poorly planned its rapid deployment was.

“The blitzkrieg of Russian paratroopers into Kosovo . . . is on the verge of failure,” observed the Russian newspaper Kommersant. “They have fallen into a trap. There is no reinforcement, there is food only to last them two days, and there are several hundred Albanian fighters around them.”

The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper also noted the fragile position of the Russian soldiers. “We have been dreaming about at least a couple of coffins sent from Yugoslavia to the U.S.,” it said. “Now we will be lucky if we do not get any ourselves.”

The paratroopers’ predicament highlighted the importance for Russia--as well as NATO--of resolving the dispute over what role Russia should play in the Kosovo peacekeeping force.

Russia has sought its own sector and has refused to let its soldiers serve under the alliance’s command. But with Russia’s clear favoritism toward its longtime allies the Serbs, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is concerned that giving it control over a zone and allowing it to operate with autonomy could lead to the partition of Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

Until the two sides agree on a plan, the neighboring countries of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary are refusing to grant Russia an air corridor so it can fly troops and supplies to the airport seized by its advance force.

Russian Prime Minister Sergei V. Stepashin said Tuesday that he hopes to resolve the conflict with NATO in the next few days.

“I think that all frictions we had will be over before the end of the week,” he told reporters after meeting with President Boris N. Yeltsin at the Kremlin.

Later in the day in St. Petersburg, Stepashin indicated that Russia is ready to compromise: “It is not a matter of a sector now. It is a matter of our rather active participation. There are several options of that.”

Russia is preparing to send 2,500 to 3,000 troops to join the peacekeeping operation, one official said, fewer than earlier estimates of up to 10,000 troops.

One possibility under consideration is to place Russian troops in more than one sector along with troops from a different nation--preferably a non-NATO country, the Russian official said. Under this scenario, the troops would report to a local commander of the peacekeeping forces, but Russia would retain authority over its soldiers.

“I would not be surprised if we have zones of responsibility maybe in two or three sectors,” the official said. “It may be Russia subordinating tactically to a commander from a neutral country and strategically to Russian Central Command.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen are scheduled to meet with their Russian counterparts today and Thursday in Helsinki, Finland, to discuss the problem. Russia hopes to resolve the issue before Sunday, when President Clinton is supposed to meet with Yeltsin in Germany at a summit of the world’s leading industrial nations.

“We are concerned about the troops’ safety and security,” said one Russian diplomat. “We would like to accelerate the discussions. I hope that it will be resolved before the summit.”

Stepashin announced Tuesday that Yeltsin’s Security Council has placed Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov in charge of setting Kosovo policy. Ivanov was publicly embarrassed last week when he pledged that the troops would not go into Kosovo, only to be taken off guard when they entered just hours later.

Russian legal experts said Tuesday that the decision to send in the troops was a blatant violation of Russia’s constitution, which stipulates that the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, must approve sending troops into another country.

“That the hasty deployment of Russian troops in Kosovo contravenes Russia’s own constitution can’t be any clearer even to a law student, to say nothing of the Kremlin’s experienced legal advisors,” said Igor M. Stepanov, a leading constitutional expert. “Maybe they no longer bother to check their actions against the text of the constitution.”

The Federation Council is expected to vote on deployment of the larger peacekeeping force once an agreement is reached with the alliance.

NATO officials said they were unconcerned about the entry of the supply convoy into Kosovo and the additional 29 soldiers it carried.

“This is not an augmentation of the Russian force--this is just a supply effort, and we will obviously treat it on that basis,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told reporters in Brussels.