After a heated debate Robert Kennedy met with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and in effect, promised to remove obsolete American PGM-19 Jupiter MRBMs from Turkey. This promise was sufficient and the next day the Soviet Union informed the United States that the missiles in Cuba would be withdrawn. The Soviets began turning their ships around, packing up the missiles in Cuba, and dismantling the launch pads. As the work progressed, the Air Force started to redeploy aircraft back to home bases and lower the alert status. The United States and Soviet Union stepped back from the brink, and the crisis was resolved without armed conflict. Never in the history of the Cold War had the United States and the Soviet Union come so very close to mutual nuclear destruction.