https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-the-kosovo-air-war-foreshadowed-the-crisis-in-ukraine Skip to main content The New Yorker * Newsletter To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories Close Alert Sign In Search * News * Books & Culture * Fiction & Poetry * Humor & Cartoons * Magazine * Puzzles & Games * Video * Podcasts * Archive * Goings On * Shop Open Navigation Menu To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories Close Alert The New Yorker More on Ukraine * Is Putin a War Criminal? * A Tragedy Foretold * The Potential for Ukrainian Resistance * Russia's Weapons Our Columnists How the Kosovo Air War Foreshadowed the Crisis in Ukraine Twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the NATO bombing campaign to justify their own actions. [gessen-mas] By Masha Gessen February 15, 2022 * * * * * Save this story for later. Building destroyed by Nato bombing in 1999. Vladimir Putin has consistently drawn from a reservoir of resentment that was deepened by NATO's air strikes in Kosovo in 1999.Photograph by Antonia Galante / AP * * * * * Save this story for later. For weeks, people in Ukraine, and some people in Russia, have been stuck in the purgatory of doublethink. On the one hand, the media--Western media in particular--bring daily bulletins of the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine, and of intelligence warnings that a large-scale invasion is a real threat, and possibly imminent. Western embassies evacuated diplomats' families from Kyiv. Then they evacuated nonessential personnel. Then, over the weekend, the United States pulled its military trainers from Ukraine and directed U.S. citizens to leave the country; on Monday, it moved its embassy operations from Kyiv to Lviv. The Dutch airline KLM discontinued flights to Kyiv. On the other hand, the big war (as opposed to the shooting war in the east, which has continued to claim near-daily casualties for eight years) is unimaginable. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments keep downplaying the probability of war and reprimanding journalists for fanning the fear. A prominent Ukrainian think tank run by the former Defense Minister has issued two reports, three weeks apart, arguing that a successful large-scale Russian invasion is not yet feasible. Everyone understands that the war would be both bloody and senseless--surely Russia doesn't really want to occupy one of the poorest countries in Europe, inhabited by forty-four million people, most of whom have come to hate Russia. And in peacetime--even in fragile, relative peacetime--it's always hard to imagine war. In late January, I spent time in Ukraine with, among others, Nataliya Gumenyuk and Pyotr Ruzavin, a married couple. Gumenyuk is a leading Ukrainian journalist; Ruzavin is a Russian investigative journalist. One evening over dinner, Gumenyuk said, "It's impossible to imagine air raids in Kyiv." Before I could catch myself, I blurted out, "Like it was once impossible to imagine air raids of Belgrade." I was referring to the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, which I covered on the ground; I was in Belgrade when the first bomb fell on the city and the unimaginable became real. Ruzavin was in grade school at the time, but he understood. "And that's what they keep coming back to," he said, meaning that, almost twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the 1999 air war as a point of comparison and justification. More on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine * Putin's historic miscalculation may make him a war criminal. * What can Biden do to stop Putin? * Questions about Russia's war on Ukraine, answered. * What China may be learning from the invasion. * Putin aims to end what he sees as a prolonged period of Russian humiliation. * His weapons include military hardware, malware, and propaganda. * Putin will respond to resistance the only way he knows how: with devastating force. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. [gessen-mas] Masha Gessen became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 2017. Their latest book is "Surviving Autocracy." More:Vladimir PutinUkraineRussiaForeign PolicyNATOKosovo The Daily The best of The New Yorker, every day, in your in-box, plus occasional alerts when we publish major stories. E-mail address [ ] Sign up By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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