Putin's Wars
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Nobody, however, listened. US President George W. Bush, in the last year of his presidency and extremely unpopular, was a lame duck, and the leading European states let economic interests prevail over uncomfortable principles. During the same period the Kremlin strengthened the self-declared “governments” of the breakaway provinces by bringing in more of its own people. An important appointment was that of the Russian General Vasily Lunev, a former deputy commander-in-chief of the Siberian Military District. On March 1, 2008, he became minister of defense of South Ossetia, a region with only sixty thousand inhabitants. In normal conditions this would have been more than a degradation: rather an exile. In this case, however, in view of the coming war, it was an important promotion. And on August 9, 2008, General Vasily Lunev’s secret real function became clear, when he was appointed commander-in-chief of the 58th Army of the North Caucasian Military District, the army that led the invasion into Georgia.[36]
A new step in the process of escalation was taken on April 20, 2008, when a Georgian Israeli-made Hermes-450 reconnaissance drone was shot down above Abkhazia. The Russian government attributed this act to “Abkhaz militias.”[37] This explanation was ridiculed by Novaya Gazeta journalist Yuliya Latynina, who wrote, “Apparently, in the near future small, but proud Abkhazia will have its own space armies.”[38] The Georgian government was able to produce video evidence of the attack that was filmed by the unmanned drone seconds before it was shot down. It showed a Russian MiG-29 fighter attacking the drone with a missile and then flying back in the direction of Russia. Russia said the video was a fake, but a UN report, published one month later, concluded that the video evidence was authentic.[39] In the same week in which the drone was shot down, Pavel Felgenhauer reported that “Sergei Shamba, the head of [the] Abkhazian foreign ministry, made a statement about the intention of capturing part of Georgian territory for making a certain ‘buffer zone.’ Apparently, it is planned to banish local population from there.”[40] These aggressive declarations hinting at further annexations of Georgian territory coupled with ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants were accompanied by accusations at the address of Georgia that Georgia prepared an attack. Georgia’s “aggressiveness” was also used as a pretext for transferring on April 29, 2008, an additional Russian military contingent of what were called mirotvorcheskie sily (peacekeepers) to Abkhazia. Felgenhauer commented: “People in the Staff of airborne troops stated that it’s not ‘additional peacemakers,’ but a battalion of 400 soldiers with regular ammunition, including heavy material, anti-aircraft means and artillery (which is not allowed for peacemakers) that was brought into Abkhazia without any prior arrangement with the Georgian side.”[41] This move was a flagrant violation of the 1994 cease-fire agreement that had ended the war between Georgian and Abkhaz fighters.
On May 31, 2008, a further step on the escalation ladder was taken when four hundred soldiers of Russia’s railway forces illegally entered Abkhazia and started to repair the railway connection between Sukhumi, Abkhazia’s capital, and Ochamchire in south Abkhazia, near the frontier with Georgia proper. The railway along the Abkhazian coast connects Abkhazia in the North with the Russian town of Sochi. It is the only railway connection linking Georgia with Russia. The official reason given for this troop activity was a ruling by the—newly elected—Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, “on rendering humanitarian aid to the republic.”[42] NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pronounced the deployment to be “clearly in contravention of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and “an escalating action by Russia.”[43] He said the troops should be withdrawn. The Georgian government indicated the real reason for the repairs: the preparation for a Russian attack on Georgia. “Nobody needs to bring Railway Forces to the territory of another country, if a military intervention is not being prepared,” declared Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze.[44] Due to the poor road system the Russian army, as a rule, transports its troops and tanks by rail. The troops finished their work at the end of July, only a few days before the war started.
In July Russia further increased the pressure. On July 3, 2008, an assassination attempt was made on Dmitry Sanakoev, head of the Tbilisi-backed interim administration of South Ossetia, which still controlled about one third of the territory, including some villages north of the separatist capital Tskhinvali. Throughout the month of July new incidents took place.
On July 9 Moscow demonstratively acknowledged that four Russian Air Force planes had flown a mission over South Ossetia. That action sought to deter Georgia from flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), thus blinding Tbilisi to Russian and proxy military movements in the area. A series of roadside bomb blasts targeted Georgian police patrols. During the second half of July and the first days of August, Russian-commanded Ossetian troops under the authority of (Russian-led) South Ossetian authorities fired repeatedly at Georgian-controlled villages, forcing Georgian police to fire back defensively.[45]
For informed observers it was clear that the wheels of war were turning. On July 5, 2008, a publication in the Russian online paper Forum.msk.ru titled “Russia is on the verge of a great Caucasian war,”[46] quoted Pavel Felgenhauer, who predicted the outbreak of a war with Georgia. “The most important fact is,” Felgenhauer said, “that around Putin’s circle the decision has already been taken to start a war with Georgia in August.” The chief editor of the paper, Anatoly Baranov, just returning from the North Caucasus where he had spoken with Russian officers stationed in Rostov-on-Don, wrote: “The army wants to fight . . . . They see in the war the solution to internal political problems, the consolidation of the nation, a purge of the elites, in general everything that is positive.”[47] On August 3, four days before the outbreak of the war, the Georgian internet portal Gruziya Online (Georgia Online), wrote that five battalions of the Russian 58th Army had passed through the Roki tunnel, a 6-kilometer tunnel that is the only direct road connection between Russia and South Ossetia.[48] The same day the Russian deputy minister of defense, Nikolay Pankov, was in Tskhinvali and conducted secret talks with the separatist South Ossetian “President” Kokoity and other leaders of his government. An even more disquieting fact, reported by the Internet paper, was that the evacuation of women and children from Tskhinvali had begun. Four thousand people were said to have been evacuated. When Kokoity was asked about it, he “declared that they had not evacuated the children, but sent them on holiday.”[49] A few days later, on August 7, the master of this announced war, Vladimir Putin, was to board the plane in Moscow to attend, together with other world leaders, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Hot War: August 7–12, 2008
On August 7, 2008, the day the war started, the situation was so tense that only a spark was needed to set Georgia afire. There have been discussions afterward over who actually fired the first shot. It was clearly in Russia’s interests that this first shot should be fired by Georgia so that the Russian aggression could be presented as a defense. In the EU-sponsored Tagliavini Report, published on September 30, 2009, the opening of the hostilities was attributed to Georgia. “It is not contested,” wrote the authors of the report, “that the Georgian armed forces started an armed offensive in South Ossetia on the basis of President Saakashvili’s order given on 7 August 2008 at 23.35.”[50] The report confirmed, however, that at the very moment the hostilities started, troops from the regular Russian army—troops that were not part of Russia’s peacekeeping forces—were already present in South Ossetia, that is, on Georgian soil. They were there illegally, without permission from the Georgian authorities. This fact came on top of prior violations of Georgian sovereignty, such as the passport offensive and the provocative flights of Russian fighter jets over the Georgian airspace. The incursion of Russian regular troops (and irregular troops in the form of Chechen and North Ossetian fighters coming from Russia) into South Ossetia, together with tanks and heavy weapons, was a violation of Georgian sovereignty of a totally new, and extremely menacing k
ind. In fact it constituted as such a casus belli.
Notes
1. Vaclav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Mart Laar, Vytautas Landsbergis, Otto de Habsbourg, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Timothy Garton Ash, André Glucksmann, Mark Leonard, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, and Josep Ramoneda, “Le test géorgien, un nouveau Munich?” Le Monde (September 23, 2009). The real question was, indeed, who invaded and not who fired the first bullet. As John Lukacs wrote, it is an old ruse used by politicians, “who wanted war (and attempted to tempt their opponents ‘to maneuver [them] into firing the first shot.’” (John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 211.)
2. Hans Crooijmans, the Moscow correspondent of the Dutch weekly Elsevier, for instance, four days after the ceasefire published an article titled “Reckless Violence.” The word “reckless” referred not to the Russians, but to Saakashvili, who was believed to have started the war regardless of the consequences. “What incited the political leaders of Georgia to attack exactly on August 8, Tskinhvali, the capital of South Ossetia,” wrote Crooijmans, “we cannot be sure.” And he continued, “As could be expected the Russians came to the rescue of the South Ossetians.” (Hans Crooijmans, “Onbesuisd geweld,” Elsevier (August 16, 2008).)
3. Pavel K. Baev, “Russian “Tandemocracy” Stumbles into War,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 5, no. 153 (August 11, 2008).
4. Nicu Popescu, Mark Leonard, and Andrew Wilson, “Can the EU Win the Peace in Georgia?” Policy Brief (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, 2008), 3 (emphasis mine).
5. Cf. Thornike Gordadze, “Georgian-Russian Relations in the 1990s,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), 37. Shevardnadze reported Grachev’s assertion in an interview, published in the Russian magazine Argumenty i Fakty on July 2, 2005. In a report of the International Crisis Group even the separatist Abkhaz authorities expressed a certain distrust vis-à-vis Moscow’s intentions. According to the report they believed that Moscow “is more interested in its territory than its people. The Abkhaz de facto leader, Bagapsh, said, ‘Russia is interested in access to the sea, of which our territory offers 240 km.’” (“Georgia and Russia: Clashing over Abkhazia,” Europe Report No. 193, International Crisis Group, June 5, 2008, 3.)
6. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (March-April 1994), 73–74.
7. Cf. Andrey Illarionov, “Another Look at the August War,” Center for Eurasian Policy, Hudson Institute, Washington (September 12, 2008), 7.
8. Ronald D. Asmus, A Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West, 73. The Abkhaz and South Ossetian holders of Russian passports enjoyed complete Russian citizen rights. In December 2007 they voted in the Duma elections and in March 2008 in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation. (Cf. Marie Jégo, “’L’indépendance’, et après?” Le Monde (August 28, 2008).)
9. Asmus, A Little War, 42.
10. Janusz Bugajski, “Russia’s Soft Power Wars,” The Ukrainian Week (February 8, 2013).
11. Cf. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, Report, Volume II (September 2009), 182. http://www.ceiig.ch/pdf/IIFFMCG_Volume_II.pdf.
12. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, 147. In October 2009 the Abkhaz Ministry of the Interior announced that between 2006 and 2009 141,245 of the 180,000–200,000 inhabitants of Abkhazia had received Abkhaz passports. On the basis of the data given in 2006 this would mean that almost all Abkhaz passport holders also had a Russian passport. (Quoted in Sabine Fischer, “Abkhazia and the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict: Autumn 2009,” ISS Analysis, EU Institute for Security Studies (December 2009), 3.)
13. The passports in Abkhazia were issued on the basis of the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Abkhazia of October 24, 2005. Article 6 of this Law stipulated “that a citizen of the Republic of Abkhazia is also entitled to obtain the citizenship of the Russian Federation.” The South Ossetian de facto Constitution of April 8, 2001, stipulated “(1) The Republic of South Ossetia shall have its own citizenship. (2) Double-citizenship is admissible in the Republic of South Ossetia.” (Cf. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, 163.)
14. The Abkhaz minister of Economic Affairs, Christina Osgan, confirmed in June 2008 that there were fifty-one thousand pensioners in Abkhazia, thirty thousand of whom received a pension from the Russian government. The average payment was 57 euro per month. (Cf. Gerald Hosp, “Leise Hoffnung an der Roten Riviera,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (June 14, 2008).) From 2003, paying pensions was one of the incentives Moscow used to distribute its passports in Abkhazia. Only holders of Russian passports could apply for a pension paid by Moscow.
15. “Putin Says Russia Has No Imperial Ambitions,” RIA Novosti, September 11, 2008. Cf. also Hannah Strange, “South Ossetia Slapped Down over Russia Unity Claim,” Times Online (September 11, 2008).
16. A former minister of the interior of his government, Alan Parastayev, accused Kokoity of terrorism and banditry. The terrorist acts were alleged to have been committed in South Ossetia and have been attributed subsequently to Georgia. Cf. “Byvshyy glava MVD Yuzhnoy Osetii obvinil Eduarda Kokoyti v terrorizme” (Former Head of the Ministry of the Interior of South Ossetia Accused Eduard Kokoity of Terrorism), Lenta.ru (February 23, 2009).
17. Cf. Marlène Laruelle, “Neo-Eurasianist Alexander Dugin on the Russia-Georgia Conflict,” Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst (September 3, 2008). http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/4928/print.
18. “Russia Launches Economic Blockade of Georgia, Puts Troops on High Alert,” Pravda (September 30, 2006).
19. Salomé Zourabichvili, La tragédie géorgienne 2003–2008, De la révolution des Roses à la guerre (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2009), 305.
20. “Aktsiya Ya Gruzin,” Radio Ekho Moskvy (October 6, 2006). http://www.echo.msk.ru/doc/281.html.
21. Andrey Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–2008,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, 65.
22. Thomas Graham Jr. and Damien J. LaVera, “The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty,” in Cornerstones of Security: Arms Control Treaties in the Nuclear Era, eds. Thomas Graham Jr. and Damien J. LaVera (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 597.
23. Graham Jr. and LaVera, Cornerstones of Security, 593.
24. Graham Jr. and LaVera, Cornerstones of Security, 593.
25. There is no right “to suspend.” Article XIX of the CFE Treaty gives each State Party “the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”
26. The snub was not lessened by the heads of state and government agreeing “that these countries will become members of NATO” (Bucharest Summit Declaration, April 3, 2008). Without a concrete time schedule this membership risked being postponed indefinitely. On Angela Merkel’s refusal to grant Georgia a MAP, Illarionov wrote, not without irony: “[A]t the NATO Bucharest SummitA] on April 3–5 [in fact it was April 2–4], German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that countries with unresolved territorial conflicts could not join NATO. On the basis of this principle, which would have applied equally to West Germany at the time of its NATO accession, the summit denied both Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan” (Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–2008,” 68).
27. Quoted in “Georgia and Russia: Clashing over Abkhazia,” Europe Report No. 193, International Crisis Group (June 5, 2008), 14. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/193_georgia_and_russia_clashing_over_abkhazia.ashx.
28. David J. Smith, “The Saakashvili Administration’s Reaction to Russian Policies before the 2008 War,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds.
Cornell and Starr, 126.