The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, sets out for Belgrade today boosted by a deal with the International Monetary Fund to extend fresh credits for his country's ailing economy. His visit will also make it difficult for NATO to continue bombing Belgrade while Russia, a leading member of the Contact Group on Yugoslavia, holds peace talks with President Slobodan Milosevic.
Even a temporary halt to the bombing could provide the key to renewed negotiations and a cessation of hostilities by all sides.
Whatever happens it is clear that Russia has wrested the initiative from Western countries, and Mr Primakov can point out that his visit to Mr Milosevic comes after calls for Russian intervention by France and Italy.
Another NATO member, Greece, has begun to distance itself from the current operations.
The success of Russia's bid for IMF assistance was announced after several hours of talks in Moscow yesterday between Mr Primakov and Russian officials and an IMF team led by the fund's chief executive, Mr Michel Camdessus.
Mr Primakov, it should be remembered, was involved in postponing attacks on Baghdad last year by organising a partly-successful meeting there between President Saddam Hussein and the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan. He is regarded as a formidable negotiator with long experience not only as a diplomat but also as a former head of the KGB.
There is a strong likelihood that Mr Primakov, who is accompanied by defence minister Mr Igor Sergeyev and foreign minister Mr Igor Ivanov, will move to other destinations after meetings in Belgrade and there were hints in Moscow yesterday that the group's next stop would be in Bonn.
Mr Ivanov has been playing a remarkable role in Russia's response to the NATO attacks. Normally a suave and urbane performer at media briefings in the press centre of the foreign ministry, he has adopted a strident anti-American tone reminiscent of some of the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Despite the new peace initiative Mr Ivanov continued to be on the offensive yesterday and accused NATO of military co-operation with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which he said was pointing out targets to NATO warplanes. Their were strong indications, he said, that NATO was preparing a land force to invade Yugoslav territory, adding that the very existence of the Contact Group was now threatened. Russian officers stationed as observers at NATO headquarters in Brussels have been ordered to return to Moscow.
Mr Sergeyev claimed yesterday that more than 1,000 civilians had been killed in the NATO bombings. This was denied later by NATO. It was not clear from where either side was getting its information but the Russian embassy in Belgrade is still open and reporting to the foreign ministry in Moscow.
Despite Mr Ivanov's rhetoric there have been signs of a softening in Russia's position. On the late-night Itogi political programme on Russia's NTV channel the anchorman, Mr Yevgeny Kiselev, who is known to have strong connections with the government, ridiculed the communist leader Mr Gennady Zyuganov and the eccentric right-wing Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who appeared on television in the uniform of a colonel of the Russian army having earlier declared that the third world war had begun.
To Mr Zhrinovsky's sabre-rattling about the defence of "our Slavic brothers", Mr Kiselev reminded the audience that "we once sent in the tanks against out Slavic brothers in Czechoslovakia", and pointed out that the Russian Federation's significant Muslim population could equally consider Albanian separatists as their "Islamic brothers".