Strongman

by Roxburgh, Angus

  Looking back, Ivanov now laughs wryly at how he inadvertently brought about the end of Shevardnadze’s rule, without ever understanding how it happened. Of the triumvirate who led the Rose Revolution, he speaks most warmly of Zurab Zhvania, describing him as ‘wise, calm, balanced, and intent on having good relations with Russia’ – more or less the opposite of what he says about Mikheil Saakashvili, the man whose charisma made him the pre-eminent leader of the opposition. ‘Misha’, as he was universally known, was a big, ebullient bear of a man – Westernised in mentality (he had studied in Strasbourg and New York, and had a Dutch wife), but at the same time oozing Georgian charm and spontaneity. Aged only 36, he swept to victory in the early presidential election held on 4 January 2004. Taking 96 per cent of the vote, Saakashvili embodied the hopes not only of the thousands of demonstrators who had backed the Rose Revolution but of the vast majority of Georgians, who saw the ballot as an opportunity finally to turf out the corrupt Soviet-era regime and orientate their country towards the West and democracy.

  I interviewed Saakashvili a year or so later, when his pro-Western policies were already raising hackles in Moscow, and reminded him of his predecessor’s famous phrase about the ‘sun rising in the north’. Was he not afraid of provoking the Russian bear, I asked? ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘I also know where the sun rises. We want the best relations with the West and with our great neighbour to the north.’3

  In fact, Saakashvili’s first moves as president were uncannily like Putin’s at the start of his rule. He immediately pushed through constitutional amendments that increased his presidential powers, while drastically reducing the role of parliament. He replaced regional governors and began to impose state control over television stations.4 In a crackdown on corruption he had former ministers and businessmen arrested, and (unlike in Russia) carried out a radical overhaul of the police which dramatically reduced bribe-taking. He and his prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, transformed the economy by, among other things, slashing taxes and attracting major foreign investments.

  Like Russia, Georgia also faced the threat of separatism. After the country gained independence from the USSR in 1991, the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia both broke away and after brief civil wars enjoyed de facto independence – with Russian support. A third ‘autonomous republic’, Ajaria, did not declare independence but was ruled like a personal fiefdom by its autocratic president, Aslan Abashidze. Regaining control over Georgia’s lost provinces was as much of an obsession for Saakashvili as retaking Chechnya was for Putin. On the eve of his inauguration as president on 24 January 2004 Saakashvili solemnly swore on the grave of Georgia’s twelfth-century King David the Builder that, ‘Georgia will be united and strong, will restore its wholeness and become a united, strong state.’

  It was that resolve, that determination to reintegrate Georgia’s minority nationalities, that four years later would bring his country to war with Russia.

  Saakashvili also flaunted his love affair with the West like a reckless divorcee, thumbing her nose at the bullying ex-husband. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was guest of honour at Saakashvili’s inauguration ceremony. He recalls: ‘We all stood up when the national anthem was played. And when it was over I was about to sit down again when another anthem started up – it was “Ode to Joy” and the European Union flag was being raised. I thought: oh boy, I bet Igor [Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister] isn’t enjoying this part of the performance.’5

  Igor certainly would not have enjoyed what followed. Saakashvili invited Powell to come with him into the City Hall, which was decorated with dozens of Georgian and American flags, side by side. ‘Then we went into the chamber where the city legislature meets,’ Powell remembers, ‘and we sat behind a table in front of all these people ... and we had a town hall meeting with the whole population, televised throughout Georgia. Just President Saakashvili and the American secretary of state, while all the other guests and senior people from around the world, including those from the Russian Federation, were outside wondering what’s going on.’

  Saakashvili did have the prudence to head north, not west, though, for his first presidential visit abroad. And remarkably, his trip to Moscow on 10–11 February 2004 was a great success. Igor Ivanov was present when the two presidents met in the Kremlin, and recalls that – considering the hatred the men would later develop for one another – the mood was very positive: ‘Saakashvili greeted Putin very emotionally, very joyfully, and said that he greatly respected him as a politician and had always dreamed of being like him. He said he would do everything in his power to develop good relations between our countries, and that the previous leadership of Georgia had made many mistakes which he would try to put right.’

  Saakashvili’s own foreign minister, Tedo Japaridze, confirmed that the Georgian president emerged from the meeting almost bewitched by Putin: ‘He came out of it very much excited and thrilled with that encounter and with the man himself: “He’s a real leader, a resolute and strong man who controls everything – Duma, the mass media and so forth.” These were his first words when we were driving back to the airport.’6

  Saakashvili himself described in an interview what happened when the presidents left their foreign ministers and retreated to a separate room for private talks. Having proposed that they take off their jackets and ties, Putin apparently launched into a tirade about the subject that worried him most – Georgia falling into the all too warm embrace of the United States. It was not just American involvement in supporting – or, as the Russians firmly believed, planning – the Rose Revolution that concerned Putin. The US had also had a small military presence in Georgia for two years. Ironically the American troops had been invited in by the previous president, Shevardnadze, to help him deal with a problem that was spoiling his relations with Russia. After Putin had launched the second Chechen war at the end of 1999, thousands of Chechens, including armed militants (and foreign Islamist fighters), had moved over the mountains from Chechnya into Georgia and settled there in the Pankisi Gorge. Russia claimed the gorge was being used as a terrorist base and threatened to bomb it. Alarmed at the prospect of Russia attacking Georgia, Washington offered instead to help the Georgians themselves clear terrorists from the Pankisi Gorge by training their armed forces. Launched in May 2002, the Georgia Train and Equip Programme involved only a couple of hundred American soldiers at first, but it gave the US its first foothold in the Caucasus. Attending Saakashvili’s inauguration two years later, Colin Powell remarked upon the marching styles on show in the military parade: ‘I was just fascinated to sit there and watch some Georgian troops march by, marching like Soviet troops, the way they had been trained, and then the next contingent go by marching like American soldiers – 120 steps per minute just the way we teach our soldiers. And I said, times they are a changing.’

  So it was not surprising that Putin’s toughest message for the new Georgian president was to cool it on the American front. According to Saakashvili, Putin stressed on the one hand that Russia was a friend of America and developing relations with it, but on the other hand claimed that Eastern European countries had become ‘slaves to America’, doing whatever ‘some second secretary’ at the US embassy told them to do. ‘Basically, it was all about America, a 20–25 minute tirade, until I finally politely stopped him and said, “Look, it’s very good you’re telling me about your relations with America, but I’m not here to talk about America.” I said, “Do you really believe that what happened in Georgia is an American plot? Do you really believe that our government is paid by Americans, or George Soros or, you know, that we are directed by them?” And he said, “No, no. Not you for sure. But some people in your government might be in that position, to be closely working with the Americans.” ’7

  (In fact, Putin was almost certainly aware that Saakashvili’s senior adviser was an American, Daniel Kunin, who previously worked for the National Democratic Institute and was paid not by the Georgian government but by the American
, through the US Agency for International Development. Kunin was the first port of call for Washington officials trying to contact – and influence – the Georgian leader.8)

  Saakashvili says he proposed they should start from a clean sheet – that as a small country Georgia would do whatever it could to accommodate Russia’s interests, in exchange for some understanding of its own, much smaller interests. He says Putin seemed very receptive. ‘Actually I liked him. I cannot blame George Bush for looking into his soul because my first impression was that I liked him. I thought, well, yeah, he comes from this KGB kind of background, he is very different from what I come from and what I believe in, but this seems to be a pragmatic guy. He likes his own country, and maybe he would act on behalf of his county in a very pragmatic way and we can find some understanding. And you know, he was basically also trying to show, by the end of our conversation, that he could go a long way to solving some issues.’

  The good rapport led to regular telephone calls and genuine efforts on both sides to mend fences. But it was never going to be easy for Saakashvili to balance his desire for good relations with Moscow with his two major obsessions – restoring the territorial integrity of Georgia (ending the de facto independence of three provinces with close ties to Russia) and tethering his country to the West’s great alliances, NATO and the European Union.

  On 25 February 2004 Saakashvili made his first trip as president to the United States, and immediately raised the issue of Georgian membership of NATO. He announced a new five-year deal under which US army instructors would train thousands more Georgian troops.

  The honeymoon with Moscow lasted until May 2004, when Putin did what he called his ‘last favour’ for Saakashvili. The new Georgian government was close to civil war with the province of Ajaria – under its maverick Soviet-era leader, Aslan Abashidze. Saakashvili did what his predecessor Shevardnadze had done: he called Putin for help. And once again, Putin dispatched Igor Ivanov – now no longer foreign minister but secretary of the National Security Council – to the scene. Ivanov flew first to the Ajarian capital, Batumi, planning to negotiate with Abashidze and then fly on to Tbilisi. But as they had dinner that evening of 5 May, Ivanov recalls, news came of a Georgian armoured column heading for Batumi. Despite his call to the Georgian prime minister, requesting him to stop the advance, a fierce fire-fight soon broke out, right on the outskirts of the city. ‘It was so intensive we felt the smell of powder in the palace.’ According to Ivanov, Abashidze told him he had sufficient military power of his own to confront the Georgian troops and force them out of the region, but Ivanov replied: ‘I have a plane at the airport. If you are prepared to leave with me to Moscow, you are welcome to take this opportunity.’ Abashidze seized the chance of political asylum in Russia, and fled, taking his son, who was the mayor of Batumi, with him.

  Within hours Saakashvili’s troops entered the city, and Ajaria was reclaimed as part of Georgia. The next day, Saakashvili himself made a triumphant appearance in Batumi and addressed a jubilant crowd in the city square: ‘You are heroic people,’ he told them. ‘You have achieved your Georgia. We have shown the world we are a great people. Only we could have staged two bloodless revolutions in six months.’ Surrounded by jubilant supporters chanting ‘Misha! Misha!’, he walked to the Black Sea beach – out of bounds to Georgia’s leaders for many years – and splashed seawater on his face. And he uttered the promise, or threat, that the restoration of central control over Ajaria was only the start of his mission: ‘We must start negotiations, serious and peaceful negotiations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, about reuniting the country and settling problems which are not settled. We have proved in Ajaria that it is possible to act peacefully but resolutely. This means that Georgia will be strong and we will definitely get to Sukhumi [the capital of Abkhazia]. Exactly when? We shall see.’

  Aware of Moscow’s crucial role in defusing the crisis and getting rid of Abashidze, Saakashvili telephoned Putin to thank him. According to the Georgian, Putin gave a tart reply: ‘OK, Mikheil Mikheilovich, we helped you on this one, but remember very well, there will be no more free gifts offered to you, on South Ossetia and Abkhazia.’ Russia had much deeper interests in Georgia’s two breakaway territories than in Ajaria. Abkhazia is a republic of some 200,000 people (the figure is disputed) – less than half its pre-1992 population, since almost all the Georgians fled in the civil war. Its Black Sea coastal towns – Sukhumi, Gagra, Pitsunda – used to be principal holiday resorts for Russians during the Soviet period. South Ossetia is much smaller – less than 100,000 in Soviet days (roughly two-thirds Ossetian, and one-third Georgian), and only some 70,000 following the civil war of the early 1990s. The majority Ossetians had close links to their kinsfolk living in North Ossetia (a republic inside the Russian Federation). Both the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians looked to Russia for protection against the Georgians, and received large subsidies and other support. Since most of them did not have, and did not want to have, Georgian citizenship, Putin introduced a policy of ‘passportisation’ – issuing residents of the two provinces with Russian passports, which then allowed the Kremlin to claim the right to protect its citizens. In both republics ethnic Russians held important jobs, and in South Ossetia former KGB officers were brought in to staff key government posts.

  If Putin’s words about ‘no more favours’ were meant as a warning – and they certainly were – Saakashvili paid little heed. Perhaps he even misunderstood a hint that Putin is said to have given during their first meeting in the Kremlin, to the effect that he was prepared to do a deal over South Ossetia that would see it restored to Georgian sovereignty. In May, Giorgi Khaindrava, a film director whom Saakashvili appointed as his conflict resolution minister, saw maps hanging in the deputy security minister’s office showing plans for a military attack on South Ossetia. As he told the Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal, ‘All the days were mapped out – they wanted to do an exact copy of what they had done in Ajaria.’9 On 26 May 2004, Georgia’s Independence Day, Saakashvili held a huge military parade in Tbilisi at which he addressed the Abkhaz and South Ossetians in their own languages, urging reintegration with Georgia. The South Ossetian president, Eduard Kokoity, a onetime wrestler and businessman with strong links to Russia, recalled in an interview that Saakashvili’s call for reintegration sent an unambiguous message: ‘I want to emphasise that he did it in front of a column of tanks moving down Rustaveli Avenue. It was not a call but a threat for Ossetians. And everyone in Ossetia regarded this call as a threat.’10

  Five days later Saakashvili moved troops to the South Ossetian border to launch a massive ‘anti-smuggling’ operation. Ostensibly, the aim was to close down a huge market at the village of Ergneti, through which vast quantities of goods passed illegally between Russia, South Ossetia and Georgia. The Georgian attack caused the worst fighting in the region since 1992. Perhaps the real aim was to trigger the collapse of the South Ossetian government, but it had the opposite effect. Kokoity’s position was strengthened, and anti-Georgian attitudes hardened among ordinary South Ossetians, for whom the Ergneti market had provided their only source of income.

  With the Russian ministry of foreign affairs issuing a warning that ‘provocative steps’ might lead to ‘extremely negative consequences’, Saakashvili headed to Washington for help. But there too, his actions were seen as impulsive and dangerous. The secretary of state, Colin Powell, recalled: ‘I think the president over-reached too early. I had to make clear to him that, “You might think this is in your vital national interest – we’re not so sure it is. But it isn’t in our vital national interest. So don’t get yourself into a situation that may overwhelm you and think we are going to race in to rescue you from any difficulties you get into. So be careful.” ’

  Saakashvili took note, and in August Georgian troops were withdrawn.

  Election night

  Throughout history, Moscow has been afflicted by fires. The original wooden structures of the Kremlin – the fortress at the heart of th
e capital – burned down time after time. In the sixteenth century Tatar invaders torched the city. In 1812, as Napoleon’s Grande Armée entered Moscow, a great conflagration destroyed almost everything, leading to the city being rebuilt virtually from scratch.

  On the evening of Sunday 14 March 2004, the Manezh exhibition hall, the former tsarist riding school which stands right next to the Kremlin, caught fire in unexplained circumstances and blazed for hours into the dark night sky.11 Vladimir Putin climbed to a vantage point inside the Kremlin’s dark red walls and observed the scene. Television pictures showed him staring out at the inferno, then turning and walking away, with a look of apprehension in his eyes. Perhaps he saw it as some of kind of omen. It was election day. Polling stations had closed just a few hours earlier, and he had been chosen as Russia’s president for a second four-year term, with 71 per cent of the vote. Napoleon had seen his prize burn down before his eyes. Would Putin’s vision also be destroyed by foreigners, encroaching on Russia with their alien concepts of democracy?

  I have no idea whether such thoughts really ran through the president’s mind at that moment. But events a few months later in the south of Russia would show that Vladimir Putin, the strongman, was haunted by almost paranoid illusions of weakness and external danger. Another bloody terrorist attack, which ended with the deaths of hundreds of children in a school, apparently served as proof for Putin that his grip on the country was too feeble, and that Russia was an emasculated rump state surrounded by enemies. Cornered, he would lash out to prove his strength. Putin Mark II would be an angry phoenix, born in fire.