With his Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, in Belgrade for talks with President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslav, President Boris Yeltsin used his annual state of the nation address strongly to attack NATO's strikes which he described as being "in defiance of the UN charter and in defiance of common sense".
In a written note to members of both houses of the Russian parliament assembled in the Kremlin's Marble Hall, however, he took a much softer line.
Russia must not, he wrote, allow America's "tragic mistake" to allow relations between the two countries to reach crisis point.
"Russia has made its choice," he said. "We will not be dragged into a military conflict," he told members of the State Duma (Lower House) and the Federation Council (Senate). The Duma, dominated by the Communist bloc, has traditionally been at loggerheads with the president while the council, previously a rubber stamp for him, has recently turned against Mr Yeltsin.
Speaking clearly and wearing reading glasses, Mr Yeltsin said there was no going back towards a command economy despite the temptation to do so following the collapse of the country's economic system in August last year for which he laid the blame at the door of parliament. The blame for economic hardship, on the other hand, was put on the shoulders of his government's policies.
Elections to the State Duma, due to be held in the autumn, would, he said, be freely and fairly conducted and it would be up to the Russian people to decide which direction to take.
Mr Yeltsin's speech was roundly attacked by the Communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, who said that the address was meaningless and that it was clear to all concerned that Mr Yeltsin's impeachment was inevitable.
Reuters adds from Copenhagen: Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the former Soviet Union, warned of a new Cold War unless a diplomatic solution was found to resolve the crisis in Yugoslavia.
"Russia can play a major constructive role in this [diplomatic] process, which must be restarted unless we are to slip back into another Cold War," he said.
