MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Bush phoned his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to inform him about the military attack on Afghanistan shortly before the offensive took place, a top Kremlin aide said Sunday.
``Bush informed the president of the beginning of the operations. He did this before the attack began,'' Sergei Prikhodko, Putin's chief foreign policy adviser, told Reuters.
Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman for the air force staff as saying that Russian air defense had not received any orders to heighten their alert.
``The air defense forces are working in a normal mode. They have enough forces and means to face any task,'' he said. In the Cold War years, Soviet air defense was automatically put on heightened alert following any military activity by the United States.