Then and Now

Ten years ago, on March 29, 1999, I was welcomed to Moscow by a grenade launcher.

The U.S. had recently begun bombing Serbia, Russia’s Slavic ally in the Balkans, hoping to halt Slobodan Milosevich’s aggressive actions in Bosnia. As a result, U.S.-Russian relations took a nosedive. Suddenly it was rather uncomfortable to be an American in Russia.

That’s where the grenade launcher comes in. Fifteen minutes after my cab drove me past the U.S. Embassy to my hotel, a crazed gunman took aim at the embassy from across the ten-lane highway with a grenade launcher. Thankfully, it failed to fire. But he raked the building with machine gun fire before speeding away.