Twenty-six years ago a tall, stooping man in a maroon beret and a powerfully-built figure with hooded eyes in green camouflage stood opposite one another in a Balkan field. The taller of the two produced a hip flask. A conversation began. And an understanding was reached.

Thus the last confrontation between Russian and British troops – a stand-off over control of Kosovo’s Pristina airport – was resolved without bloodshed.

One of those men – the British General Sir Mike Jackson, who in the run-up to the confrontation had warned his Nato superior about what was at stake, saying “Sir, I’m not going to start World War III for you” – is now dead. The second, colonel-general Viktor Zavarzin, is retired from the military and sits as a member of the Russian parliament.