Sarah Paine

But Gorbachev is being extraordinarily cooperative with Bush Sr.

He sends Evgeny Primakov on multiple missions to Baghdad.

The first one, Primakov gets all Russian hostages out of

Iraq.

And then on the second trip, he gets all Westerners out, Americans included.

Third trip, not so lucky.

He's there for the coalition force bombing.

I don't think he liked that very much.

But imagine that bombing going on if there were Western human shields going down with every target.

Russia took that card right off the table.

And here's some of the reasoning.

Sergei Tarasenko was an aide to Foreign Minister Shevardnadze.

And

They understood that the United States was going to do something about this invasion of Kuwait.

And so the Russians thought, it'll be better if we force all of this to go through the UN, where Russia has a veto power.

And he said, look, there was a division of roles.

It extends to China, the help that Russia provided.

When the Americans asked us to work with the Chinese, we told the Chinese, think about it.

You're one of the big five with veto player.

Doesn't it suit your interest to funnel everything through the UN where you can put your foot down?