About 200 Russian paratroopers in armoured personnel carriers were last night defying NATO forces in a tense stand-off, preventing the allies from seizing control of Kosovo's key airport just outside Pristina.
Meanwhile NATO troops advancing through Kosovo shot dead at least three Serbs yesterday in the first violence of the peacekeeping mission. Two German journalists died after being shot by unknown assailants near Dulje, 40 km south of Pristina, the German foreign ministry said in Bonn.
Thousands of NATO troops had entered Kosovo by last night, greeted as liberators by jubilant Albanians and cursed as an army of occupation by ethnic Serbs.
Senior British army commanders vented their frustration at the airport roadblock, as Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton spoke directly by telephone in an effort to defuse the crisis of command.
At one stage Brig Adrian Freer, commander of the British 5th Airborne Brigade, delivered a tirade at the Russian armoured vehicles. "What the hell are you doing here? Get on to your commanders and get out of here now," the red-bereted officer shouted at sentries manning the Russian roadblock.
Another NATO officer suggested that the Russians planned to hold their positions on the northern side of the airfield until the Serb army departs from the city tomorrow. Two roadblocks were established on the road skirting the airport near the hamlet of Vrelo; a Russian flag fluttered from the antenna of one vehicle.
Serb T-55 tanks and self-propelled artillery hidden in surrounding villages were spotted yesterday moving into the Russian sector of the airfield.
In one of the most tense sectors of the battered Serbian province, German troops came under fire and shot dead two Serbs as they moved into the south-western town of Prizren.
British forces said they killed a man believed to be an off-duty Serbian police officer after he opened fire on them in Pristina.
In the state of near anarchy which NATO has inherited, at least 15 people were killed over the weekend, nine of them Serb forces apparently shot dead by the KLA. Serb paramilitaries set fire to the home of the imam of Pristina's oldest mosque.
A Yugoslav army general warned his troops would move back into Kosovo if the peace agreement broke down.
But NATO's supreme commander, Gen Wesley Clark, maintained that Kfor's advance was proceeding smoothly and on time though he said the Russian seizure of Pristina airport was "bizarre".
Concluding a marathon round of four days of negotiations in Moscow, the US undersecretary of state, Mr Strobe Talbott, reported progress on the Russian demand to be treated as equal to the five main NATO countries.
Russia would be given its own "area of responsibility" within Kosovo, according to Mr Talbott. But in a demonstration that US leaders can be as confusing as their Russian counterparts the US secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, appeared to disagree.
"Russia should have an area in which its responsibility is manifest and evident for all the world to see," Mr Talbott said in Moscow but in Washington Ms Albright said: "The Russians cannot have their own sector."
Moscow media reported yesterday that more Russian troops had moved into Serbia from Bosnia, and were poised to enter Kosovo.
But the Kremlin, the foreign ministry and the defence ministry issued contradictory signals. Yeltsin aides spoke of diplomatic progress while senior military figures alleged NATO was reneging on the terms of the UN mandate.