In March 1999 Russia stridently opposed the U.S.-led NATO military operation against Serbia—a historic ally of Russia that was mistreating Kosovo. In December 1999, while on a visit to China, President Yeltsin verbally assailed Clinton for criticizing Russia's tactics in suppressing rebellion in its Chechnya province (at the start of the Second Chechen War) emphatically reminding that Russia remained a nuclear superpower and adding: ″Things will be as we have agreed with Jiang Zemin. We will be saying how to live, not [Bill Clinton] alone″.