'U-Turn Over Atlantic': How Russian PM Primakov Showed Moscow Won't Be US Satellite

Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of then-Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's famous "U-turn" over the Atlantic, an event that grabbed global headlines at the time.

On March 24, 1999, Primakov was on a flight to the United States to negotiate a $5 billion IMF loan for Russia. But after then-US Vice President Al Gore informed Primakov that NATO had launched a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, Primakov decided to turn his plane around and return to Moscow.

Witnessing the Primakov-Gore conversation was the now-deputy head of Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, who served as an assistant for international affairs to the prime minister in the late 1990s. Kosachev was among the members of a Russian government delegation on board Primakov’s plane when the incident took place.

The Federal Council deputy head later recalled that Gore told Primakov about the beginning of NATO’s military operation and the alliance’s decision to start bombing Yugoslavia "in these very minutes." According to Kosachev, Primakov reacted by telling Gore that such a development means that the Russian delegation’s visit to the US "becomes impossible." The lawmaker added that the plane turned around after Primakov received the go-ahead from then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

When asked by reporters why Primakov’s move was so significant for history, Kosachev stressed that "it was the first sign of Russia's disagreement as a state with the policies that the US and its NATO allies were pursuing in a world which seemed to have changed since the end of the Cold War, but in fact which had not changed at all."

"As I see it, the decision proved to be a turning point both literally and figuratively in relations between Russia and the West, something that reflected our country’s utter disagreement with the West's line on building a unipolar world," Kosachev underscored.

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It predetermined the entire course of subsequent events, the lawmaker went on, noting that Russia and the West "could have come out of all this by preserving partnership in those issues that unite both sides."

"The two, however, continued to move in opposite directions because the West refused to reconsider its policy line with regard to the outside world and Russia. What’s more, the West in many situations further aggravated the situation," Kosachev pointed out.

As for Primakov, needless to say he was shocked after hearing the news about a European country being bombed for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

Despite Gore’s desperate attempts to persuade Primakov to backtrack on his decision and come to Washington, the Russian prime minister was undeterred. "If I had accepted Gore's terms, I would have been a real traitor," Primakov later said.

Speaking of a decision on his plane’s U-turn, Primakov didn't consider it heroic, calling it a "perfectly normal behavior of a man who believes that he doesn't need to encourage aggression by his presence at the time and by his visit."

"I have simply implemented the mission that any other normal prime minister should have fulfilled. I think that now we can safely say that we have taken the right position," he said.

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This U-turn also proved to be a crucial "turning point" in Moscow-Washington relations, Peter Kuznick, a professor of history at the American University and co-author of the "Untold history of the United States," told Sputnik in an interview.

"US-Russian ties had been very strained before that. The whole decade following the [1991] end of the Soviet Union was highly problematic. And so this was one of the major events that marked the continued and worsening deterioration of US-Russian relations. Things were already starting to unravel by 1998 with NATO expansion, then with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999," Kuznick pointed out.

The launch of the alliance's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia "was sending a direct message on top of the NATO expansion as to the US view of Russia and its disregard for Moscow’s interests and its position in the world," the expert shared.

"So it certainly can be seen as an important turning point in terms of the deterioration of potential friendship between the US and Russia and creating a much more positive kind of multipolar world," he stressed.

Referring to the current "terrible" US-Russian relations, "the lack of trust" and "a polarization" between the two, the professor said that one is "beginning to see signs of that certainly with Primakov's mission in 1999."

“What began there in a relatively mild, benign way, has now happened in a very extreme way with the world's two most powerful nuclear nations really threatening the use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of World War III. So, the situation went from bad to much worse and is very dangerous at the moment,” as per Kuznick.

He added that Primakov's "dramatic" move to turn the plane around and return to Russia had both "symbolic and very concrete and practical significance" given his high popularity in his country, where then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was "fragile" and "ill" at the time.

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Dr. Samuel Hoff, a George Washington distinguished professor emeritus of history and political science at Delaware State University, also pointed to the significant expansion of NATO after the March 1999 incident.

"It is the fact that in 1999, NATO had 16 countries. And as we sit here in 2024, there are 32 members. And [as for] Prime Minister Primakov, one of his ultimate strategic goals was to have a more multilateral relationship with other countries and perhaps even strategic alliance, eventually, against NATO if expansion occurred," Hoff explained.

Commenting on Primakov's decision to make a "U-turn over the Atlantic," the professor said, "Obviously, the sudden announcement that came to the Russian leaders was last minute and you could understand the prime minister's action at the time."

Moscow has repeatedly warned NATO against its eastward expansion, which the Kremlin says could further inflame tensions in Europe. In an interview with Chinese television last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the alliance had been making empty promises about its commitment not to expand eastward since 1991.

He added that there have been "five waves" of expansion since the US government assured Russia in 1991 that NATO would not expand eastward.

"Each time we expressed our concerns, we were told: well, yes, we promised you not to expand NATO eastward, but these were verbal promises, namely, where is a piece of paper with our signature on it? There is no such paper, so goodbye. You see, it's very difficult to have a dialogue with such people," Putin said.