Twenty years ago, on June 12, 1999, Russian peacekeepers, using one battalion, made a rapid 600 km march through Bosnia and Yugoslavia and captured the Slatina airfield in the Kosovar capital of Pristina. The NATO command was simply shocked by the actions of the Russian military. After all, NATO members were able to approach the airfield only a few hours after the Russian soldiers had already fortified there.
Attack on Yugoslavia and Russia's position
The Pristina march was preceded by extremely dramatic events. The West, led by the United States, accused the authorities of Yugoslavia (then Serbia and Montenegro were still a single state) of ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population in Kosovo. The NATO countries demanded that Yugoslavia withdraw all Serb troops from Kosovo and Metohija and let the units of the North Atlantic Alliance troops there. Of course, Belgrade did not fulfill this requirement of the West.
On March 24, 1999, the United States and its NATO allies launched an aggression against sovereign Yugoslavia. Bombs fell on Belgrade and other Serbian cities. At the same time, NATO aircraft indiscriminately bombed both military and civilian objects. Not only soldiers of the Yugoslav army were killed, but also civilians. The bombing of Yugoslavia lasted from March to June 1999. At the same time, NATO countries began preparations for the invasion of the territory of Kosovo and Metohija by the alliance's ground forces. It was assumed that NATO units would enter the region from the Macedonian side. They also decided on the date of the entry of troops - June 12, 1999.
Despite the fact that at that time Russia was not yet in open confrontation with the West, Moscow from the very beginning sided with Belgrade and tried to influence Washington and Brussels by political means, to dissuade them from aggression against Yugoslavia. But it was useless. Nobody was going to listen to Moscow's opinion. And then it was decided to march on Pristina. It was adopted with the direct permission of President Boris Yeltsin, who was already finalizing his last year as head of state.
The most interesting thing is that many politicians and military leaders were not put in the course of the upcoming operation, as they opposed the introduction of Russian troops into Pristina out of fears of a possible clash with NATO troops. But President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov in this case showed maximum determination, which, by the way, was quite atypical for the Russian government in the nineties of the twentieth century.
Back in May 1999, Major Yunus-Bek Bamatgireevich Yevkurov, then serving with the international peacekeeping contingent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, received a top-secret mission from the command of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. He was instructed, at the head of a group of 18 servicemen of the special forces unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, to secretly enter the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, get to Pristina and take control of the Slatina airport. After that, the special forces had to hold the strategic object until the arrival of the main part of the Russian troops. And this task, the details of which are still classified, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and his subordinates performed excellently. Using various legends, they managed to infiltrate the airport and take control of it.
Pristina raid
On June 10, 1999, NATO completed its military operation in Yugoslavia, after which it began preparations for the entry of troops into Kosovo and Metohija on June 12. Meanwhile, on the same day, the Russian SFOR peacekeeping contingent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, represented by units of the Russian Airborne Forces, was ordered to prepare a mechanized convoy and a detachment of up to 200 people. This order of the command was carried out as soon as possible. It is interesting that the personnel were not informed until the last moment about where and why the unit was going.
The general leadership of the march was carried out by Major General Valery Vladimirovich Rybkin, who was responsible for the Russian airborne units in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the commander of a separate airborne brigade as part of the UN International Peacekeeping Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Ignatov (pictured). The battalion of Russian paratroopers that moved directly to Pristina was commanded by Colonel Sergei Pavlov.
The command of the convoy was given the task of capturing the airport "Slatina" by 5 o'clock in the morning on June 12, 1999 and taking positions on it. They counted on the surprise of the raid of the paratroopers, who were to cover 620 kilometers in armored personnel carriers. The convoy included 16 armored personnel carriers and 27 trucks - a satellite communications vehicle, fuel tankers, food trucks. The convoy moved towards Kosovo and drove at full speed.
In Moscow, Lieutenant General Viktor Mikhailovich Zavarzin was responsible for the operation, who since October 1997 was the main military representative of the Russian Federation to NATO, and after the start of the North Atlantic Alliance's aggression against Yugoslavia, was recalled to Russia. Zavarzin developed an operation plan together with Lieutenant General Leonid Grigorievich Ivashov, who headed the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the RF Ministry of Defense.
At 2 am on June 12, 1999, the convoy arrived in Pristina. In the shortest possible time, Russian paratroopers seized all the premises of the Slatina airport. By 7 am on June 12, the airport and the approaches to it were under the full control of the Russian battalion. CNN broadcasted a live broadcast about the introduction of Russian troops into Pristina.
To say that the NATO command was in shock is to say nothing. After all, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, American General Wesley Clarke, ordered the subordinate British brigade under the command of the commander of NATO forces in the Balkans, General Michael Jackson, to seize the airfield before the Russians. It turns out that the British were late. And the enraged General Clark demanded from General Jackson to dislodge the Russian battalion from the airport. But the British general found the courage not to carry out the order of the superior commander, directly responding that he did not want to start a third world war.
However, the British helicopters tried several times to land at the airfield, but all their attempts were immediately stopped by the armored personnel carriers of the Russian paratroopers, who circled the territory of the Slatina, preventing the British pilots from landing. At the same time, the grenade launchers kept aiming at British jeeps and tanks that approached the airport.
The British Chieftain tank pulled up close to our junior sergeant. He did not budge. An English officer came out: "Mr. Soldier, this is our area of responsibility, get out!" Our soldier replies to him, they say, I don't know anything, I stand at the post with an order not to let anyone in. The British tanker demands to call the Russian commander. Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Yatsykov arrives. He also reports that he does not know anything about any international treaties, but is following the order of his command. The Englishman says that then the checkpoint will be crushed by tanks. The Russian officer commands the grenade launcher: “Sight 7. Charge! " The British officer still continues to threaten, and the Chieftain's driver-mechanic has already begun to take the combat vehicle back … You can't try to take a Russian paratrooper into fright. He himself will scare anyone, - recalled the ex-commander of the Airborne Forces Georgy Shpak in an interview with RT.
As a result, the British brigade, which arrived at the Slatina airport, did not enter its territory, but simply surrounded the airport, hoping to starve out the Russian battalion. However, when the Russian soldiers began to run out of water, it was NATO that helped out.
Colonel Sergei Pavlov
After the capture of the Slatina, the Russian leadership planned to airlift military equipment and personnel of two regiments of the Airborne Forces. But a very important point was not taken into account - by the time of the events described, Hungary and Bulgaria, through which the Russian planes were to fly, were already NATO members. And, as members of the North Atlantic Alliance, they acted at the behest of their "senior" partners - the United States and Great Britain. Therefore, the Hungarian and Bulgarian authorities refused to provide Russia with an air corridor for aircraft with military equipment and paratroopers.
Negotiations and the further fate of "Slatina"
Seeing all the hopelessness of the situation, the US and Russian authorities began organizing urgent negotiations at the level of defense ministers and foreign ministers. The talks took place in Helsinki. Ultimately, the parties decided to deploy a Russian contingent of peacekeepers in Kosovo. True, Russia was not assigned a separate sector, like the United States, France or Germany, since the NATO command was most afraid that the Russian sector, if it appeared, would immediately turn into a Serbian enclave, separate from Kosovo.
All the time while negotiations were going on in Helsinki, the Slatina airport was under the full control of the Russian paratroopers. In June - July 1999, additional forces of Russian peacekeepers, military equipment and equipment were transferred to Kosovo. But the bulk of the Russian peacekeepers arrived in Yugoslavia by sea, disembarking at the port of Thessaloniki (Greece) and marching to Kosovo and Metohija through Macedonian territory. Only in October 1999, the Slatina airport again began to receive international passenger flights.
We had a colossal responsibility. Not only generals. The whole world already knew that the Russians had taken Slatina. We constantly felt that we had a country behind us. On her behalf, we made a daring challenge. And each of us realized that he was involved in this event, - recalled then in an interview with the magazine "Rodina" Colonel of the Airborne Troops Sergei Pavlov.
The significance of the Pristina raid
The Pristina march was one of the first signs of Russia's return to international politics as a great power that can force people to reckon with it. Indeed, over the nineties, the West has already become accustomed to the idea that the Soviet Union has collapsed, and post-Soviet Russia is almost knocked to its knees. But that was not the case.
On April 13, 2000, Yunus-bek Yevkurov was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation for his participation in the Pristina operation. In 2004-2008. he served as deputy head of the intelligence directorate of the Volga-Ural military district, and in 2008 he became president of the Republic of Ingushetia and still holds this post.
Lieutenant General Viktor Mikhailovich Zavarzin was awarded the rank of Colonel General by President Yeltsin. Until 2003, Zavarzin was the first deputy chief of staff for the coordination of military cooperation of the CIS member states, and then he was elected a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, he still retains his deputy mandate.
Colonel-General Leonid Grigorievich Ivashov did not stay as head of the GUMVS of the RF Ministry of Defense for so long. In 2001, after the appointment of Sergei Ivanov as the new Minister of Defense, he was forced to leave the ranks of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Currently, Leonid Ivashov is often published in the media, is engaged in social and political activities. One of the few Russian generals, he openly declares his political positions as a true Russian patriot.
Lieutenant General Nikolai Ivanovich Ignatov has been Chief of Staff - First Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces of the RF Armed Forces since 2008.
In honor of the Pristina throw of 1999, a special award was established - the medal "To the participant of the March 12, 1999 Bosnia - Kosovo". In 2000, 343 medals were awarded by four orders.
