MOSCOW -- Russia took the news of the NATO strike against Yugoslavia with sound and fury. President Boris N. Yeltsin called it a "tragic, dramatic step." The Foreign Ministry called it "an act of aggression." Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov said Moscow might break an international embargo and sell arms to Belgrade.

In protest, Russia withdrew its military observer from NATO's headquarters in Brussels, the Belgian capital.

"It's about security in Europe, it's about war in Europe and perhaps even more," Yeltsin said in the course of a short broadcast made yesterday evening during one of his rare trips to his Kremlin office. "This is a strike against the whole international community."

Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, who Tuesday ordered his plane to turn around over Newfoundland rather than continue with a planned trip to Washington because of the looming airstrikes, said in Moscow yesterday that the attacks "endanger the system of international relations in postwar Europe."

Mikhail Gutseriyev, deputy speaker of the State Duma, parliament's lower house, told the Itar-Tass news agency: "We are shocked and angered by what is happening because peaceful people may die -- women, children and old people -- all those who could hope that nothing like this would be possible in Europe at the end of the 20th century."

Russia viewed the NATO attacks as outside interference in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, rather than an attempt to end the fighting in Kosovo. Authorities said Moscow also would have resisted if similar attacks occurred in its war with the breakaway republic of Chechnya. In that war, the Russian army killed as many as 80,000 Chechen civilians and drove 300,000 from their homes.

But there's little Russia can do to act on its indignation.

It won't go to war over Yugoslavia, or even make a permanent break with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Primakov's midair about-face was a dramatic gesture, but not one that was especially constructive, as the liberal politician Grigory A. Yavlinsky pointed out, "Unfortunately, at present Russia is not a strong country, one to be reckoned with in this conflict," said Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. "This is a result of our government, economic and military policy of the past decade at the least.

"Nothing remains for us but to resort to demarches of this type. I am saying this with bitterness and regret."

Primakov's primary goal had been to secure new loans from the International Monetary Fund so that Russia could meet its outstanding obligations this year to the IMF.

The prime minister turned his back on Washington because of Kosovo -- to the applause of most politicians here -- although a particularly bitter commentary in the newspaper Komersant accused him of betraying Russia to advance his own political interests.

That seems to have been premature: As soon as Primakov landed back in Moscow he called IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus. Itar-Tass reported last night that Camdessus will come to Moscow on Saturday for a meeting with Primakov.

The Russians, in any case, have found themselves in an especially distasteful position. Their efforts at a diplomatic solution in Yugoslavia have come to nothing, and a commonly expressed view here is that Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has made Moscow hostage to his own ambitions.

Even Yeltsin last night acknowledged that Milosevic is "a difficult man to negotiate with. Yes, you have to talk with him once, twice, five, 10 times."

In conversations yesterday with French President Jacques Chirac and with President Clinton, Yeltsin tried to make the point that it was nevertheless worth the effort to keep talking to Milosevic.

Yeltsin's conversation with Clinton began about 10 p.m. Moscow time (2 p.m. EST) and lasted 50 minutes. Dmitry Yakushkin, Yeltsin's spokesman, described it as a "call to stop before it is too late."

Minutes after they hung up, the first cruise missiles descended on Yugoslavia.

Pub Date: 3/25/99