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.
29.
Vladimir Socor, “The Goals Behind Moscow’s Proxy Offensive in South Ossetia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 5, no. 152 (August 8, 2008).
30.
Neil Buckley, “Russia Accused of Annexation Attempt,” The Financial Times (April 17, 2008).
31.
Buckley, “Russia Accused of Annexation Attempt.”
32.
Andrey Illarionov provided a small list of Russians in the government of South Ossetia. They included lieutenant-general Anatoly Barankevich, minister of defense from July 6, 2004, to December 10, 2006; Anatoly Yarovoy, FSB major-general, chairman of the KGB in South Ossetia from January 17, 2005, to March 2, 2006; Mikhail Mindzayev, FSB lieutenant-general, minister of the interior of South Ossetia from April 26, 2005, to August 18, 2008; Andrey Laptev, lieutenant-general, minister of defense of South Ossetia from December 11, 2006, to February 28, 2008; Aslanbek Bulatsev, FSB colonel, prime minister of South Ossetia since October 31, 2008 (Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–2008,” 81–82).
33.
Alexander Golts, “Opyat Kavkazskaya Voyna,” Ezhednevnyy Zhurnal (August 9, 2008).
34.
Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparation for War, 1999–2008,” 68.
35.
Mart Laar, “Echoes of the 1930s in Russia’s Sweeping Annexation,” Financial Times (April 17, 2008).
36.
“Georgia and Russia: Clashing over Abkhazia,” 4.
37.
Cf. “Kommentary Departamenta informatsii i pechati MID Rossii v svyazi s voprosami SMI otnositelno intsidenta s gruzinskim bespilotnym samoletom 20 aprelya 2008 goda” (Comment of the Information and Press Department of the Foreign Ministry of Russia concerning questions from the media on the incident with the Georgian drone on April 20, 2008). Website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
38.
Yuliya Latynina, “200 km. tankov. O rossiysko: gruzinskoy voyne” (Two Hundred Kilometres of Tanks. On the Russian-Georgian War), Ezhednevnyy Zhurnal (November 19, 2008), 7.
39.
Cf. Neil Buckley and Roman Olearchyk, “UN Says Moscow Shot Georgian Drone,” The Financial Times (May 27, 2008). The Russian attack also endangered the civil aviation. According to the UN investigators the interception “took place very close to, or even inside an international airway, at a time where civilian aircraft were flying.”
40.
Pavel Felgenhauer, “Saakashvili Wants to Get to Moscow, While Russian Troops Are in Abkhazia Already,” Novaya Gazeta (May 20, 2008). These plans for an ethnically cleansed “buffer zone” had, at that time, certainly already been discussed with Shamba’s Kremlin bosses. The plans would be executed during the August war.
41.
Felgenhauer, “Saakashvili Wants to Get to Moscow, While Russian Troops Are in Abkhazia Already.”
42.
“NATO calls on Russia to withdraw railway troops from Georgia,” International Herald Tribune (June 3, 2008).
43.
“Saakashvili Calls Security Council to Decide on Abkhazia,” Nevtegaz.ru Novosti (June 3, 2008). The journalist of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung who visited Abkhazia in June 2008 repeated, uncritically, the vocabulary used by the Russian side to justify the entry of these troops, calling them “unarmed pioneers” (unbewaffnete Pioniere), comparing this Russian army battalion of engineers and technicians with a group of idealistic boy scouts. (Cf. Hosp, “Leise Hoffnung an der Roten Riviera.”)
44.
“Tbilisi Condemns Russian ’Railway Troops’ in Abkhazia,” Civil Georgia (May 31, 2008). http://www.civil.ge/eng/_print.php?id=18445.
45.
Socor, “The Goals Behind Moscow’s Proxy Offensive in South Ossetia.”
46.
“Rossiya stoit na grani bolshoy Kavkazkoy voyny,” Forum.msk.ru (July 5, 2008). http://forum-msk.org/print.html?id=496351.
47.
“Rossiya stoit na grani bolshoy Kavkazkoy voyny.”
48.
“58-ay armiya RF gotova voyti v Tskhinvali,” Gruziya Online (August 3, 2008).http://www.apsny.ge/news/1217792861.php.
49.
“58-ay armiya RF gotova voyti v Tskhinvali.”
50.
Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, 238.
Chapter 14
The War with Georgia, Part II
Six Events Announcing the Kremlin’s
Preparation for War
Different authors have tried to reconstruct the chain of events leading to the outbreak of war. In this chain of events there are at least six events that should be considered. They are, separately, and taken together, a clear indication of Russia’s preparations for war. These events are as follows:
A cyber war, launched by Russian servers before the outbreak of the hostilities, paralyzing Georgian government websites. This cyber war must have been prepared well in advance.
The huge Kavkaz-2008 military exercise conducted near the Georgian border just before the outbreak of the war.
The evacuation of the population of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali before the war.
The surprising presence of a huge group of about fifty Russian journalists from the most important Russian press media and TV stations in Tskhinvali two days before the war began.
The active preparation for participation in the war by Cossack militias from Russia before the outbreak of war.
The incursion of regular Russian troops into South Ossetia before the outbreak of war.
According to Wesley K. Clark and Peter L. Levin, “Russia has already perpetrated denial-of-service attacks against entire countries, including Estonia, in the spring of 2007—an attack that blocked the Web sites of several banks and the prime minister’s Web site—and Georgia, during the war of August 2008. In fact, shortly before the violence erupted, Georgia’s government claimed that a number of state computers had been commandeered by Russian hackers and that the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been forced to relocate its Web site to Blogger, a free service run by Google.”[1] In the case of Georgia this would mean that the Russian cyber war already started before the hostilities began.
The Russian 58th Army is Russia’s main military force in the North Caucasus. In the weeks before the invasion it conducted major exercises with the code name “Kavkaz-2008” (Caucasus 2008). These exercises took place in North Ossetia, just north of the Georgian border. It was a combined forces exercise in which the Russian air force and the Black Sea Fleet also took part. The official reason for the exercise was to improve the army’s preparedness to fight terrorism. However, “such a force was hardly of great utility in fighting terrorists in the mountains, but it was ideal for a conventional invasion of a neighbor. In fact, this exercise was a trial run for the invasion about to take place. . . . It was de facto a war game to invade Georgia.”[2] When, on August 2, the exercise officially ended, the troops did not return to their barracks, but remained deployed in the frontier region with Georgia. According to Andrey Illarionov, “the build-up culminated with the amassing of 80,000 regular troops and paramilitaries close to the Georgian border, at least 60,000 of which participated in the August war.”[3]
The evacuation of the population of Tskhinvali was already wholly completed before the outbreak of the hostilities. Up to four thousand South Ossetians had crossed the border to neighboring North Ossetia in the Russian Federation. This exodus, meticulously prepared and organized by the authorities, was not a collective summer holiday, as President Kokoity wanted to make out. It was a preventive measure in a war of which the South Ossetian authorities—including the minister of defense, the Russian General Vasily Lunev (who would soon become the commander-in-chief of the attacking Russian 58th Army), already knew that it was going to take place.
Said-Husein Tsarnaev, a journalist with the press agencies RIA Novosti and Reuters, arrived in Tskhinvali on August 4. He was very surprised when he entered the lobby of his hotel in this small provincial town in an isolated and desolate region, far from Moscow, and found the lobby invaded by a crowd of Russian journalists. “We’ve arrived in Tskhinvali three days prior to the attack on the city . . .,” he wrote later, “we’ve got accommodation in the hotel ‘Alan.’ At once, I’ve noticed about fifty journalists of leading TV channels and newspapers gathered in the hotel. I have experience with two Chechen campaigns and such a crowd of colleagues at the headquarters of peacekeeping forces I took as a disturbing signal.”[4] It was, indeed, a disturbing signal. What were these journalists—many of whom were celebrated Russian star reporters—doing in Tskhinvali, an outpost in the Caucasus, in the first days of August 2008? Who brought them there? What for? And why had the Russian government closed Tskhinvali to non-Russian reporters (except two journalists from Ukraine)? Russian websites have since published lists of the journalists’ names.[5] And, indeed, the fine fleur of the Russian media was present. The journalists represented almost every prominent paper, magazine, and news agency, including Izvestia, Novoe Vremya, Moskovskiy Komsomolets, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Regnum, ITAR-TASS, and RIA Novosti, not to forget the most important Russian television channels: NTV, REN TV, TVTS, TV Channel “Rossiya,” TV Channel “Mir,” as well as the First and the Fifth TV Channel. Some of the journalists had already arrived on August 2, others on August 5 and 6. Why were they there, in Tskhinvali, a deserted ghost town left by its inhabitants for “holidays” in the Russian Federation? The journalists were obviously waiting for something to happen. They were waiting for what?
On August 6—two days before the start of the hostilities—the pro-Kremlin paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta published an article with the title “Don Cossacks Prepare to Defend the People of South Ossetia against Georgian Aggression.”[6] The Cossacks are fighters who historically played an important role in defending the frontiers of the Russian empire. After having been repressed by the communists, their hosts (locally organized groups) made a glorious comeback in the Russian Federation, and they have fought as mercenaries in many conflicts in the post-Soviet states. In the article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta the ataman (leader) of the Don Cossacks announced that Cossack fighters were preparing to go to South Ossetia. He said that “Cossacks from the whole of Southern Russia were united in their effort to help the unrecognized republic.”[7] The question is why the Cossack militias were actively preparing to fight in South Ossetia on August 6, yet the war that broke out one day later was represented by the Kremlin as a complete surprise.
The sixth event, however, was the most significant. It was the entry of regular Russian troops into Georgia through the Roki tunnel. Russian troop movements must already have started on August 6, the day before the hostilities began. The Georgian government had intercepted cell-phone conversations between South Ossetian border guards saying that Russian border guards had taken over the control of the Roki tunnel at the Georgian side and that a Russian military column had passed through at about four o’clock in the morning. How many troops had gone through was not clear. The name of a Russian colonel who was in charge was mentioned. He commanded a unit of the 58th Army that was not authorized to be in Georgia. The Georgian peacekeeping commander in South Ossetia, Brigadier General Mamuka Kurashvili, phoned the Russian supreme commander of the mixed (Russian-Georgian) peacekeeping forces, Major General Marat Kulakhmetov, asking for an explanation. Kulakhmetov promised to call back, but did not do so. Thereupon President Saakashvili sent an envoy, Temuri Yakobashvili, to Tskhinvali to talk to a Russian diplomat, Yury Popov. Popov, however, did not show up. The reason he later gave was that his car had a flat tire and he didn’t have a spare one. The only Russian official Yakobashvili was able to meet in a deserted Tskhinvali was General Kulakhmetov. The Russian general proposed that Georgia declare a unilateral ceasefire. During the conversation he told Yakobashvili that he was fed up with the Ossetian separatists, who, according to him, had become uncontrollable, apparently suggesting that the Russians would eventually take a neutral stance if Tbilisi were to attack the separatists.[8]
A Slow-Motion Annexation?
The Georgians did not fall in this trap. They followed Kulakhmetov’s advice and declared a unilateral ceasefire on August 7 at 6:40 p.m. The only response was an intensified shelling from 8:30 p.m. of the Georgian villages north of Tskhinvali by South Ossetian militias.[9] At 10:30 p.m. two Georgian peacekeepers were killed and six wounded. Saakashvili received new intelligence reports, transmitted by an American satellite, that a column of 150 Russian tanks had entered the Roki tunnel.[10] Saakashvili found himself confronted by a situation in which Russian troops and heavy equipment were being brought illegally into South Ossetia, gradually building up enough military potential for a direct attack on Georgia. Saakashvili’s efforts to call President Medvedev had no success. On the evening of August 7 Saakashvili was facing a dilemma: allow Russia’s military infiltration of Russia into South Ossetia to continue, and thereby permitting Russia to complete a huge military buildup, and enabling it to crush the Georgian army, or to act.
Ronald D. Asmus has described the extremely stressful and precarious situation in which the Georgian leadership found itself in the late hours of August 7, 2008. “They all believed Georgia was being invaded in a kind of slow-motion, incremental way.”[11] “Moscow,” he wrote, “was trying to de facto annex these two disputed enclaves bit by bit in slow motion—testing to see if the West would protest and daring Tbilisi to try to stop them.”[12] It was also clear that Moscow would have no difficulty in finding an adequate casus belli to invade the territory of Georgia proper in order to reach its ultimate goal: to topple Saakashvili and bring about a regime change in Tbilisi. Waiting for the Russian troops to choose the right moment for attack meant that Georgia would leave the initiative to the other side. Considering the great inequality in manpower and military equipment[13] it would be an easy walkover for the Russians with disastrous consequences for Georgia. Confronted with the continuing incursion by Russian forces into South Ossetia and the intensified shelling of the Georgian villages north of Tskhinvali, at 11:30 p.m. Saakashvili ordered his troops to enter South Ossetia in order to occupy Tskhinvali and stop the advance of the Russian troops. “Did Saakashvili fall into a trap?” asked Svante Cornell and S. Frederick Starr.[14] They concluded: “Maybe so, but . . . even if he had not, a pretext would have been found to proceed with the campaign as it had been planned.”[15] Indeed, Saakashvili’s decision to attack was a case of a desperate, last minute forward defense, the ultimate trump card Georgia had at its disposal to avoid of being overrun by its huge neighbor. By blocking or preventing a Russian assault, the Georgian leadership—fully aware of the fact that Georgia could never win the war—hoped to win time, thereby enabling the United States and the EU to intervene and find a diplomatic solution.
Some commentators have stressed the fact that the Georgians did not mention the presence of Russian troops in South Ossetia before August 8. This was the case, for instance, with Eric Fournier, the French ambassador in Tbilisi. However, Jonathan Littell brought more clarity in this case when he visited Georgia in October 2008.
Nobody has talked publicly about Russian tanks before 8 August. But, in private, it is more complicated: whilst the Ambassador of France in Tbilisi categorically affirms: “The Georgians have never called their European allies to inform them: ‘The Russians are attacking us,’ Matthew Byrza, a high American diplomat in charge of the Georgian dossier since the start of the Bush administration, explains to me: That the Georgians were more open with us than with the Europeans is normal because of our privileged relationship. Eka Tkechelachvili, their Minister of Foreign Affairs, has called me at 11.30h [Tbilisi time] and said to me: ‘The Russians are entering into South Ossetia with tanks and more than 1,000 men, we have no choice, we are ending the ceasefire. . . .’ The Georgians were convinced that that really happened.”[16]
It is self-evident that the ambassador of France, one of the leading countries that some months earlier blocked Georgia’s Membership Action Plan for NATO, was not the first one on the list to be called by Saakashvili on that fateful evening.
The Central Question: Did Russian Troops Enter South Ossetia Before the War?
The Kremlin has always denied that Russian troops entered South Ossetia before the war. However, despite these denials there are many indications to the contrary that cast doubt on the Kremlin’s official version and vindicate the Georgian version. On August 7, for instance, one day before the war started, the Abkhaz separatist leader Sergey Bagapsh appeared on the Russian TV channel Rossiya, declaring: “I have spoken to the President of South Ossetia. It [the situation] has more or less stabilized now. A battalion from the North Caucasus District has entered the area.”[17] This declaration, confirming the presence of Russian troops in South Ossetia before the war, was not the only one. On August 15, 2008, the regional Russian paper Permskie Novosti published an article with the title “Soldiers from Perm Were in the Epicentre of the War.” In this article is reproduced a telephone call by a soldier of the 58th Army, which had invaded Georgia. The soldier told his parents: “We have been there [in South Ossetia] since August 7. Yeah, our whole 58th Army.”[18] In the article was also mentioned that on August 7 the mobile phones of the soldiers were “muted.”[19] Another indication of the early entry of Russian troops into South Ossetia could be found in an article in Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star), the paper of the Russian army, published on September 11, 2008. In this article army Captain Denis Sidristiy, who received the Order for Courage for his personal heroism during the war, gave the following account of the events: “We were on exercise [Kavkaz-2008]. Relatively not far from the capital of South Ossetia. . . . After the planned exercises we remained in the camp, but on August 7 came the order to go to Tskhinvali.”[20] Sidristiy confirmed that he witnessed during the night of August 7 to 8 the shelling of Tskhinvali by the Georgian army, which would only have been possible after crossing the high Caucasus mountains and when he was already inside South Ossetia. When the article was cited by other media,[21] the interview disappeared suddenly from the website to reappear again with editorial changes that specified the times of the day. The order to march to South Ossetia came now “on 7 August in the night” and captain Sidristiy saw the shelling of Tskhinvali “on 8 August in the morning.”[22] However, these sudden changes to the captain’s memory might have been too blatant: soon afterward the editor of the Krasnaya Zvezda decided to remove the article altogether.[23]
Notes
1.
Wesley K. Clark and Peter L. Levin, “Securing the Information Highway: How to Enhance the United States’ Electronic Defenses,” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 6, (November/December 2009), 3.
2.
Asmus, A Little War That Shook the World, 21.
3.
Valentina Pop, “Saakashvili Saved Georgia from Coup, Former Putin Aide Says,” interview with Andrey Illarionov, EU Observer (October 14, 2008).
4.
Quoted in Illarionov, “The Russian Leadership’s Preparations for War, 1999–2008,” 83.
5.
“Tskhinvalskiy Pul Spiskom,” December 4, 2008. This list gives thirty-one names. http://davnym-davno.livejournal.com/6488.html.
6.
“Donskie kazaki gotovy vstat na zashchitu naroda Yuzhnoy Osetii ot gruzinskoy agressii,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 6, 2008. http://www.ng.ru/regions/2008-08-06/1_kazaki.html.
7.
“Donskie kazaki gotovy vstat na zashchitu naroda Yuzhnoy Osetii ot gruzinskoy agressii.”
8.
Cf. Marie Jégo, Alexandre Billette, Natalie Nougayrède, Sophie Shihab, and Piotr Smolar, “Autopsie d’un conflit,” Le Monde (August 31–September 1, 2008). In secret reports from the US embassy in Tbilisi sent to the state department and subsequently published by WikiLeaks, this version of the facts was confirmed: “Putin has said to him [Saakashvili] that he does not care about South Ossetia, as long as Georgia avoids a massacre and solves the problem quietly.” (“La Géorgie, grande perdante du rapprochement russo-américain,” Le Monde (December 3, 2010).) This trap is also intimated by Salomé Zourabishvili, a former Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has become a fierce critic of Saakashvili. According to her the Russians must have given an unofficial green light to Georgia to intervene in South Ossetia to fight the local militias, which Moscow said it “could no longer control.” Zourabichvili even speaks of the possibility of a “tacit agreement.” (Zourabichvili, La tragédie géorgienne 2003–2008: de la révolution des Roses à la guerre, 317.) But even if such an improbable tacit agreement could have existed, the fact remains that at the very moment that Saakashvili ordered his attack he no longer had any illusions about the Russian response. We must also remember that this was not the first time the Kremlin had tried to disseminate active disinformation by suggesting that there was disagreement between themselves and the leadership of the self-proclaimed republics. Putin, for instance, when visiting Paris at the end of May 2008, said to his French interlocutors that he agreed with a Georgian peace plan that would grant Abkhazia great autonomy—a position contradicting Putin’s earlier positions. When the Abkhaz “President” Bagapsh visited Paris one month later, Bagapsh said: “Putin can agree with this plan, but we don’t and we never will do,” suggesting a difference of opinion between a “cooperative” Russian government and the “radical” separatists. (Cf. Piotr Smolar, “L’Abkhazie rejette la responsabilité de la crise sur les autorités géorgiennes,” Le Monde (June 22–23, 2008).)
9.
This shelling of Georgian villages inside South Ossetia by South Ossetian militias had already started on August 2. According to Martin Malek, “On August 5 a tripartite monitoring group, which included Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers and representatives of Russian peacekeeping forces in the region, issued a report. This document, signed by the commander of the Russian ‘peacekeepers’ in the region, General Marat Kulakhmetov, stated that there was evidence of attacks against several ethnic Georgian villages. It also claimed that South Ossetian separatists were using heavy weapons against the Georgian villages, which was prohibited by a 1992 ceasefire agreement.” (Martin Malek, “Georgia & Russia: The ‘Unkown’ Prelude to the ‘Five Day War,’” Caucasian Review of International Affairs 3, no. 2 (Spring 2009.) http://cria-online.org/7_10.html.)
10.
Jégo et al., “Autopsie d’un conflit.”
11.
Asmus, A Little War that Shook the World, 31.
12.
Asmus, A Little War that Shook the World, 25.
13.
Felgenhauer estimated the Georgian army to be seventeen-thousand-strong, supported by up to five thousand police officers (two thousand of Georgia’s elite 1st Infantry Brigade were deployed in Iraq. They were flown back but arrived after the war was over). The overall number of Russian troops that took part in the war in Georgia in August 2008 was approximately forty thousand. They were supported by ten thousand to fifteen thousand separatist militias. This makes the power ratio 2.5:1—illustrating the clear numerical superiority of the Russian forces, even without including differences in equipment. (Cf. Pavel Felgenhauer, “After August 7: The Escalation of the Russia-Georgia War,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Cornell and Starr, 170–173.)
14.
Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, “Introduction,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Cornell and Starr, 9.
15.
Cornell and Starr, “Introduction.”
16.
Jonathan Littell, “Carnet de route,” Le Monde 2 (October 4, 2008), 18. This version of the facts was confirmed in a testimony before Congress, made by Dan Fried, at that time Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, who said the Georgians “believed at the time—that they thought the Russian forces were coming through the Roki tunnel (linking Russia with South Ossetia) and they were in imminent danger.” (Daniel Dombey, “Congress Attacks Stance on Georgia,” Financial Times (September 11, 2008).)
17.
Quoted by Malek, “Georgia & Russia: The ‘Unkown’ Prelude to the ‘Five Day War.’”
18.
Quoted in “Soldaty govoryat, chto pribyli v Yuzhnuyu Osetiyu eshche 7 Avgusta” (Soldiers Say That They Were Already on August 7 in South Ossetia), Polit.ru, (September 10, 2008). http://www.polit.ru/news/2008/09/10/seven/print/.
19.
“Soldaty govoryat, chto pribyli v Yuzhnuyu Osetiyu eshche 7 Avgusta.”
20.
The article was quoted on the same day by the news agency Newsru.com. The agency concluded: “Thus the captain was on the Southern side of the Caucasus ridge, already on Georgian territory, and saw the shelling of Tskhinvali and the position of the peacekeepers during the night of August 8.” (“SMI: Rossiyskie voyska voshli v Yuzhnuyu Osetiyu eshche do nachala boevykh deystviy,” NEWSru.com (September 11, 2008).)
21.
“S saita ‘Krasnoy Zvezdy’ udaleno intervyu kapitana Sidristogo o vtorzhenii Rossiyskikh voysk v Yu O do napadeniya Gruzii,” NEWSru.com (September 15, 2008).
22.
“S saita ‘Krasnoy Zvezdy’ udaleno intervyu kapitana Sidristogo o vtorzhenii Rossiyskikh voysk v Yu O do napadeniya Gruzii.”
23.
The story of the changed and subsequently removed article in Krasnaya Zvezda raised doubts for even the German magazine Der Spiegel, which after the war published an article extremely critical of Saakashvili (he was called “the choleric ruler of Tbilisi”). “Did Moscow’s deployment start, after all, earlier than it was until now admitted?” asked the authors. (Ralf Beste, Uwe Klussmann, Cordula Meyer, Christian Neef, Matthias Schepp, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, and Holger Stark, “Wettlauf zum Tunnel,” Der Spiegel no. 38 (September 15, 2008), 132. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-60135192.html.)
Chapter 15
The War with Georgia, Part III
The Propaganda War
After the opening of the hostilities the Russian propaganda machine immediately swung fully into action, helped by the massive presence in Tskhinvali of the reporters and cameramen from the national TV channels and print media, who had arrived days before the events started. The Russian press agencies began publishing stories of the atrocities supposedly committed by the Georgians against the South Ossetian civil population. A prominent place in these stories was reserved for the accusation that Georgia had committed in South Ossetia a genocide.
Russia Accuses Georgia of Genocide
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev himself took the lead, declaring on August 11: “The ferocity with which the actions of the Georgian side were carried out cannot be called anything else but genocide, because they acquired a mass character and were directed against individuals, the civilian population, peacekeepers who carried out their functions of maintaining peace.”[1] The Russian ambassador in Tskhinvali mentioned that “at least 2,000 people were killed in Tskhinvali.”[2] In a fact sheet by the news agency RIA Novosti, issued one month later, this number had shrunk to 1,500 civilians. It was announced that “Russian prosecutors, on orders from President Dmitry Medvedev, are currently gathering evidence to support allegations of genocide committed by Georgia against South Ossetians.”[3] By August 21, this commission had already made a first estimate of 133 civilians killed by the Georgian forces.[4] When, on December 23, 2008, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation at last published the final results of its inquiry, instead of 2,000 victims in Tskhinvali alone, the Committee found a total of 162 civilian victims for the whole of South Ossetia.[5] However, the false, Soviet-style accusations directed at the Georgian government were never officially revoked, and until today the accusations of genocide find a prominent place in official and unofficial Russian publications on the war with Georgia.
Apparently, these accusations were prepared in advance by the Russian leadership to construct a semblance of similarity between NATO’s humanitarian intervention in Kosovo and Russia’s intervention in Georgia.[6] The accusations against Georgia were extremely cynical, taking into account the abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya, where in two wars at least 10 percent of the population had been killed. Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya of the human rights group Memorial commented: “Talking about the right for independence, about genocide and the war crimes of Mr Saakashvili, Russia’s leaders are perhaps forgetting about the tens of thousands of civilians who were killed by Russia’s bombardment of Grozny and who were executed, cleansed, and tortured by the Russian military in Chechnya.”[7] The Kremlin’s accusations were a clear case of what Robert Amsterdam in a striking comparison has called “the Doppelgänger Theory”: “the Kremlin’s habit of charging their critics with the very activities in which they themselves engage.”[8] It was, by the way, not the first time Georgia was accused of genocide. Already in 1993 Vladimir Zhirinovsky wrote: “Today Georgia is killing Abkhazians, Ossetians, and Europe keeps silent. . . . There are not many Abkhazians, but they are a people, they want to live on their land and in freedom. But they [the Georgians] are taking this right away. This is a genocide, this is racism and it is happening today. Who is going to stop this?”[9] Especially the accusation of “racism” was particularly unexpected, coming from a politician, who, in the same book, only some pages earlier, compared immigrants from the South with tarakany—cockroaches.
The Kremlin has made a habit of accusing others of crimes of which it has been accused of itself. Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya mentioned already the massive, indiscriminate bombardments of Grozny in the winter of 1999–2000 with thousands of victims amongst the civil population of Chechnya. These bombardments and other atrocities committed in Chechnya made another prominent Russian human rights activist, Sergey Kovalyov, write: “What is new this time around is that Russian society as a whole is prepared to carry out genocide. Cruelty and violence are no longer rejected.”[10]
Ethnic Cleansing and Cluster Bombs
The cynical accusations of genocide, made by the Kremlin, were followed by accusations by Georgia that it was Russia that had practiced ethnic cleansing. The dirty work in this case was mostly done by the South Ossetian militias that had followed the advancing Russian army in armored patrol vehicles with covered licence plates. “Refugees from Karaleki and nearby [Georgian] villages,” wrote Luke Harding of The Guardian, “gave the same account: South Ossetian militias that had swept in on August 12, killing, burning, stealing and kidnapping. . . . South Ossetian militias, facilitated by the Russian army, are carrying out the worst ethnic cleansing since the war in former Yugoslavia. Despite the random nature of these attacks, the overall aim is clear: to create a mono-ethnic greater South Ossetia in which Georgians no longer exist.”[11] South Ossetians did not attempt to deny that their aim was ethnic cleansing, they even proclaimed it openly. “We did carry out cleaning operations, yes,” admitted Captain Elrus, the militia leader, when asked by Luke Harding. And why shouldn’t he? Had not South Ossetian president, Eduard Kokoity, in an interview in the Russian paper Kommersant, proudly declared: “We have flattened practically everything there [in the Georgian villages].”[12] In a note of the Georgian government one could read that “deliberate attempts by the Russian government to exaggerate the number of people killed in the conflict also provoked revenge attacks on Georgian villagers.”[13] The Russian lies concerning a genocide committed by Georgians had the perverse effect of inciting South Ossetian militias to kill, rape, and loot Georgian citizens with even more fervor.
Human Rights Watch accused Russia of having used cluster bombs against civil targets.[14] Cluster munitions contain dozens and sometimes hundreds of smaller submunitions, or “‘bomblets.” They cause unacceptable suffering because they are spread over a broad area and kill civilians indiscriminately during strikes. Because many bomblets fail to explode, these become landmines that kill and maim people months and even years later. In May 2008, 107 nations agreed to a total ban on cluster munitions. Russia and Georgia were not among the signatories. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, on August 12, 2008, Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs on the Georgian town of Ruisi, which killed three and wounded five civilians. The same day the Russian army also bombed the market in the center of the town of Gori with cluster bombs. The bombs were launched with an Iskander missile. Eight civilians were killed, and dozens were wounded. Among the dead was Stan Storimans, a Dutch TV cameraman.[15] Novaya Gazeta journalist Yuliya Latynina wrote: “The most precise weapon of Russia, ORTK ‘Iskander,’ already first developed in the 1980s, though only a few examples are today in the possession of the army, struck Georgia twice: on the oil pipeline Baku-Supsa and on the market of Gori on which humanitarian goods were being distributed—the Dutch TV operator Stan Storimans was killed by it. . . . ‘Iskander’ is a high precision weapon, meaning that either it proved not so precise when it fell on the market, or that the market was targeted, and in that case it was the first time in history that a high precision weapon has been used against the civil population.”[16]
The Dutch government sent a fact-finding commission to Georgia to establish the facts. In its report[17] one could read that the bombardment took place after military and police units of Georgia had already left the town. The bomb clearly targeted the civilian population. At 10:45 a.m. there were twenty explosions in the air, as well as on the ground. Each explosion spread a huge number of small 5mm metal balls. One of these hit and killed Storimans. He was killed by submunitions of a cluster bomb launched with a Russian Iskander SS-26 missile. In a letter to the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Maxime Verhagen, wrote that although the use of cluster bombs was not yet forbidden, “parties in a situation of an armed conflict should always make a sharp distinction between military and civilian targets,” and, “taking into account that on August 12 the Georgian military and police had left Gori, the Russian forces should have abstained from using [these weapons]. In light of this I find the conclusion of the investigatory committee very serious and I have explained this to the Russian authorities.”[18] Three days after the attack on Gori, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of Russia’s general staff, categorically denied that such weapons had ever been used in Georgia. “We never use cluster bombs,” he said. “There is no need to do so.”[19] Moreover, the unequivocal findings of the fact-finding commission of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not change the Kremlin’s version of the facts. Commenting on the death of Storimans the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry not only denied the use of cluster bombs, but he went even further and “asserted that there was not enough evidence to conclude that Storimans had been killed as a result of the use of [any] weapons by the Russian side.”[20] In November 2008, some weeks after the publication of the Dutch report, Human Rights Watch wrote: “Russia has continued to deny using cluster munitions in Georgia, but Human Rights Watch finds the evidence to be overwhelming. Human Rights Watch believes that Russia’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas was indiscriminate, and therefore in violation of international humanitarian law.”[21]
Does a Lie Told Often Enough Become a Truth?
The Victim as Aggressor
There are two opposing conceptions concerning lies. The first is attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who is reputed to have said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” There is another one, attributed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said: “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” It is clear that the Russian leadership has a preference for Lenin’s approach. Even faced with unequivocal evidence it continues to deny the facts. Apart from unfounded accusations against Georgia of genocide and the denial of its own use of cluster bombs, the war in Georgia was preceded and accompanied by open lies, misinformation (for instance, about “uncontrollable” South Ossetian militias), and active disinformation,[22] all reminiscent of the old Soviet style. In this way Russia almost succeeded in hiding the most important fact: that this was not a “Russian-Georgian war,” but a Russian war against Georgia in Georgia. There was not a single Georgian soldier that crossed the Russian frontier at any point. The Georgian troops that went into South Ossetia did not cross international frontiers, but intervened in their own country, no different from Russian troops intervening in Chechnya. It was Russian and not Georgian troops that crossed the border of another, sovereign country, in breach of the principles of international law.
The Kremlin’s passport offensive, practiced since 2002, by which Russia “created” its own citizens in a neighboring country, was not only an aggressive and clearly hostile act, it was already in itself a violation of international law and a preparation for the armed attack that would follow some years later. On August 8, 2008, President Medvedev said: “I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are.”[23] And RIA Novosti wrote that “Russia had repeatedly warned Georgia that it would resort to force to protect its citizens, which most South Ossetian residents are.”[24] Several authors have made comparisons with 1938. In 1994 Zbigniew Brzezinski had already written: “The outspoken president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, went as far as to state publicly . . . that “any talk about the protection of Russians living in Kazakhstan reminds one of the times of Hitler, who also started off with the question of protecting Sudeten Germans.”[25] Comparisons with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, might, on first sight, seem exaggerated. Unfortunately, they are not. There are so many similarities that the Czechoslovak case could almost have functioned as a blueprint for the events in Georgia. Germany also started by considering a group of inhabitants of a neighboring country as its own citizens. It financed the political party of the Sudeten Germans, the Sudeten German Party (SdP) led by Konrad Henlein, and supported local militias that committed terrorist acts. “The Sudeten Germans kept 40,000 men, in the shape of free corps, on a war footing.”[26] The Abkhazian army, led by Russian officers, included up to ten thousand soldiers. Additionally there were Abkhazian and South Ossetian private militias of ten thousand to fifteen thousand men. This brought the armed militias inside Georgia to a total of up to twenty-five thousand men.[27] In Czechoslovakia the militias caused trouble and made mischief and asked to be incorporated into the Reich. In the end Germany annexed the Sudetenland. This annexation was only the first step in the further dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. In Georgia a similar scenario took place. Russia trained and armed the militias, let them provoke and attack Georgia, and when there came a Georgian response, Russia came to the rescue of “its own citizens.” Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin aide, called the Russian war against Georgia “one of the most serious international crises for at least the last 30 years.” According to him,
This crisis has brought:
The first massive use of the military forces by Russia or the former Soviet Union outside its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan . . . ;
The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;
The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral changes in internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early 1940s. Particular similarities of these events and the roles being played this year by some international players with the events and roles played by some international players in 1938 are especially troubling.”[28]
The role of the players in 1938 is well-known. One of the leading dramatis personae in this period was Neville Chamberlain. “On 27 September 1938 he openly confessed to his horror at the idea of going to war ‘because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’”[29] Europeans had to pay a heavy toll for their disregard of the interests of a new, small, and faraway country. At that time they did not realize that not only the interests of this small country were at stake, but also the foundations of the existing international order of their time. For many Europeans the war in 2008 in Georgia was equally “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” After the war Russia was only symbolically sanctioned. Even the most obvious measures were not taken. “But why has Russia not been suspended from the Council of Europe, an organisation based on respect for human rights?” asked the Financial Times.[30] Indeed, why not? As in 1938, Europeans could—later—regret their lukewarm response.[31]
As could be expected, after the war Russia got the support of Kremlin-friendly Western experts. One of them was Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, doyenne of the French Kremlin watchers (although more a specialist on tsarist history than on modern Russian politics). Over the years Carrère d’Encausse has developed a warm personal relationship with the Russian leadership. As a regular participant in the seminars of the Valdai Club—sometimes referred to as Putin’s fan club—she received on November 4, 2009, from the hands of President Medvedev the Russian Order of Honor. She was also a prominent guest at the State Dinner, organized on March 2, 2010, on the occasion of Medvedev’s official visit to France. In her book La Russie entre deux mondes (Russia between Two Worlds), she wrote that the rebellion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, when it started, certainly was “illegitimate and should have been ended.” However, she continued, “the military defeat calls this pretention into question and modifies slightly the geography of the lost territories, still reducing that [part] which is controlled by Tbilisi.”[32] Why the military defeat of Georgia against an aggressor would call into question Georgia’s right to have its national integrity restored is not indicated. Further in the text she refers to “the two separatist States.” The word “States” is written with a capital S in the text.[33] According to their status in international law the correct title would have been: the two separatist “entities” or “provinces.” Apparently the author had no principal objections to the “independence” of the two provinces, but, on the contrary, fully condoned the Russian land grab.[34]
The Real Reasons for Moscow’s Land Grab
On November 21, 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the headquarters of the 58th Army in Vladikavkaz. This was the army that led the invasion of Georgia in August 2008. He gave a speech in which the official Kremlin version of the war—that it was “a humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide in South Ossetia”—was put into a broader context. While emphasizing that the intervention was a necessary “peace-enforcement operation,” he mentioned a second and quite different objective: “to curb the threat which was coming at the time from the territory of Georgia.” “If we had faltered in 2008,” Medvedev said, “[the] geopolitical arrangement would be different now and a number of countries in respect of which attempts were made to artificially drag them into the North Atlantic Alliance, would have probably been there [in NATO] now.”[35] It took the Kremlin three years to unveil the real reason for its intervention: to stop Georgia’s eventual NATO membership. Stopping NATO membership necessitated, however, for the Kremlin a second objective: a regime change in Tbilisi. In her memoirs the former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, revealed how the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, called her in August 2008 and shamelessly proposed a regime change in Tbilisi as a condition for a Russian troop withdrawal. “The other demand,” said Lavrov to Rice, “is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.”[36] “I couldn’t believe my ears,” wrote Rice, “and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis.”[37] Condoleezza Rice refused to negotiate the removal of a democratically elected president. When Lavrov repeated that it was “just between us” and asked her not to talk to others about his demand, this was similarly rejected by her. It was clear that the objective of regime change was not something that just popped up during the negotiations. It had been prepared months, and probably years, before. It was, apparently, apart from the dismemberment of Georgia, the real reason for the Russian invasion.
In his memoirs Tony Blair wrote about a visit to Russia at the end of April 2003. “Vladimir Putin launched into a vitriolic attack at the press conference,” wrote Blair, “really using the British as surrogates for the U.S., and then afterwards at dinner we had a tense, and at times heated, discussion [on the Iraq war]. He was convinced the U.S. was set on a unilateralist course, not for a good practical purpose but as a matter of principle. Time and again, he would say, ‘Suppose we act against Georgia, which is a base for terrorism against Russia—what would you say if we took Georgia out?’”[38] It is telling that Putin at that time gave exactly this example. The project was, apparently, already in 2003 on the mind of the Kremlin’s master. There are other facts that support this interpretation. On August 7, 2013, on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili, in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your territories for your geopolitical orientation . . . . And it meant ‘we will chop off your territories anyway.’”[39] Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will be much, much, much worse.’”[40]
This information came in the summer of 2012, a year after, quite unexpectedly, we were allowed already a glimpse inside the Kremlin’s kitchen. On August 5, 2012, a few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary film “8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den” (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube.[41] In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev’s critics, retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff, “a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance.”[42] It is clear that these new facts support the interpretation, defended in this book, that, far from being a spontaneous Russian reaction to rescue its peacekeepers and “prevent a genocide,” the Russian invasion of August 2008 was a carefully planned operation. After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It was prepared “at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007,” he said.[43] Interestingly, Putin also said “that the decision to ‘use the armed forces’ had been considered for three days—from around 5 August,”[44] which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only reacted to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary units were trained to support the Russian invading troops. Pavel Felgenhauer commented:
The “Lost Day” film and the comments by Putin and Medvedev have revealed a great deal: that the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 was indeed a preplanned aggression and that so-called “Russian peacekeepers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in fact the vanguard of the invading forces that were in blatant violation of Russia’s international obligations and were training and arming the separatist forces. The admission by Putin that Ossetian separatist militias acted as an integral part of the Russian military plan transfers legal responsibility for acts of ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians and mass marauding inside and outside of South Ossetia to the Russian military and political leadership. Putin’s admission of the prewar integration of the Ossetian separatist militias into the Russian General Staff war plans puts into question the integrity of the independent European Union war report, written by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini that accused the Georgians of starting the war and attacking Russian “peacekeepers,” which, according to Tagliavini, warranted a Russian military response.[45]
Notes
1.
“Georgia Conflict: Key Statements,” BBC News (August 19, 2008).
2.
“The Georgian War: Minute by Minute, August 9,” Russia Today (August 9, 2008). http://rt.com/news/the-georgian-war-minute-by-minute-august-9/.
3.
“South Ossetia Conflict FAQs,” RIA Novosti (September 17, 2008). http://en.ria.ru/russia/20080917/.
4.
Charles Clover, “Civilian Deaths Put at 133,” Financial Times (August 21, 2008).
5.
“Ustanovlenyy lichnosti 162 pogibshikh zhiteley Yuzhnoy Osetii: SKP RF,” RIA Novosti (December 23, 2008). http://www.rian.ru/society/20081223/157895855.html.
6.
Another example of such a prepared attack was the accusation made immediately after the fighting that Georgia had destroyed protected historical buildings in Tskhinvali. “For Russia’s part, which until now showed little interest in South Ossetia’s cultural heritage, acts of destruction are [used] particularly as an argument to denounce Georgia as a war criminal,” wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (Holm, Kerstin. “Brüder als Barbaren: Russland empört sich über die Zerstörung von Kulturdenkmälern in Südossetien,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (August 16, 2008).)
7.
Quoted in “Put Out Even More Flags,” The Economist (August 30, 2008).
8.
Robert Amsterdam, “Andrei Piontkovsky and the Doppelgänger Theory” (September 26, 2007). http://www.robertamsterdam.com.
9.
Zhirinovsky, Poslednyy brosok na yug, 132.
10.
Kovalev, “Putin’s War.”
11.
Luke Harding, “Russia’s Cruel Intention,” The Guardian (September 1, 2008).
12.
“Eduard Kokoity: My tam prakticheski vyrovnyali vse,” Kommersant (August 15, 2008).
13.
“Russian Invasion of Georgia: The Facts on Ethnic Cleansing of Georgians during the Russian Invasion and Occupation,” Georgia Update website (October 8, 2008). http://georgiaupdate.gov.ge/.
14.
“Georgia: Russian Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians,” Human Rights Watch (August 15, 2008).
15.
The Russian Ministry of Defense denied in a news release on August 16, 2008, that it had used the Iskander missile in South Ossetia. Because the missile landed in Gori, which is situated outside South Ossetia, the Iskander missile may well have been used there. (Cf. “Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia,” Human Rights Watch, New York (January 2009) 113).
16.
Latynina, “200 km. tankov. O rossiysko-gruzinskoy voyne. Chast 2.”
17.
“Verslag onderzoeksmissie Storimans,” Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
18.
“Kamerbrief inzake het verslag van de onderzoekscommissie Storimans,” Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
19.
“Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia,” 113.
20.
Quoted in Nico Hines, “Russia Accused of Dropping Cluster Bombs on Georgian Civilians,” The Times (August 15, 2008).
21.
“Georgia: More Cluster Bomb Damage Than Reported,” Human Rights Watch, (November 4, 2008). Georgia also used cluster bombs in the conflict, but, unlike Russia, it did not deny this. In the same report Human Rights Watch wrote that in the case of Georgia there was probably no intent to hit the civilian population. Georgian Israeli-made M85 cluster bombs did not land in villages as a result of an intentional strike, but probably due to a failure of the (equally Israeli- supplied) Mk-4 rockets that fell down before reaching their goal.
22.
Paul A. Goble makes a useful difference between misinfomation and disinformation. “Misinformation,” he wrote, “the spread of complete false reports is the less serious threat. Typically, reportage that is completely false is not only easily identified but quickly challenged. But disinformation is another matter. . . disinformation almost always involves the careful mixing of obvious truths with falsehoods in a way that many will either find plausible or, at the very least, impossible to check.” (Paul A. Goble, “Defining Victory and Defeat: The Information War Between Russia and Georgia,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Cornell and Starr, 189–90.)
23.
“Georgia Conflict: Key Statements.”
24.
“South Ossetia conflict FAQs,” RIA Novosti (September 17, 2008).
25.
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.
26.
François Paulhac, Les accords de Munich et les origines de la guerre de 1939 (Paris: Vrin, 1998), 139.
27.
Pavel Felgenhauer, “After August 7: The Escalation of the Russia: Georgia War,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Cornell and Starr, 172–173.
28.
Illarionov, “Another Look at the August War,” 1.
29.
Paul Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865–1980 (London: Fontana Press, 1989), 294.
30.
“EU Must be United and Firm on Russia,” Financial Times (September 1, 2008).
31.
On this lukewarm response, see Marcel H. Van Herpen, “Russia, Georgia, and the European Union: The Creeping Finlandization of Europe,” The Cicero Foundation (September 2008). http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Marcel_H_Van_Herpen_Russia_Georgia_and_the_European_Union.pdf.
32.
Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, La Russie entre deux mondes (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2010), 291.
33.
Carrère d’Encausse, La Russie entre deux mondes, 293.
34.
On September 11, 2008, during a meeting of the Valdai Club with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Carrère d’Encausse asked Putin if he would respond positively to Kokoity’s demand for integration of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation. She wrote: “Vladimir Putin answered with the greatest firmness that such a hypothesis was excluded. He explained that if Russia in this specific case was unable to ignore the will of the Ossetian people to be independent, it was firm regarding the principles of respecting the inviolability of existing frontiers. This principle, according to him, applied without exception to the Russian Federation which could not, therefore, welcome into its midst a nation or territory that so desired.” Putin’s double-talk (he is speaking about the “inviolability of existing frontiers” just after having changed the frontiers of Georgia by brutal force) brings her to the—naive—conclusion that “the blunt refusal that was opposed to the Ossetian demand for integration into Russia makes the Russian position clear: the August intervention in Georgia . . . could lead to a settlement of a conflict between Georgia and its separatist minorities, [but] in no case to a dossier that was of interest to Russia.” (Carrère d’Encausse, La Russie entre deux mondes, 298–299.)
35.
Cf. “Medvedev: August War Stopped Georgia’s NATO Membership,” Civil Georgia (November 21, 2011). Cf. also Brian Whitmore, “Medvedev Gets Caught Telling The Truth,” RFE/RL (November 23, 2011).
36.
Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: My Years in Washington (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 688.
37.
Rice, No Higher Honor: My Years in Washington, 688.
38.
Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 447.
39.
“Saakashvili: Georgia Was Ready to Trade NATO for Breakaway Regions,” RFE/RL (August 8, 2013).
40.
“Saakashvili: Georgia Was Ready to Trade NATO for Breakaway Regions.”
41.
“8 Avgusta 2008 goda. Poteryannyy den.” http://rutube.ru/video/eddef3b31e4bdff29de4db46ebdd4e44/.
42.
Cf. Pavel Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 9, no. 152 (August 9, 2012).
43.
Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned.”
44.
Quoted in Stephen Ennis, “Russian Film on Georgia War Fuels Talk of Kremlin Rift,” BBC (August 10, 2012).
45.
Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned.”
Chapter 16
Conclusion
After World War II the American diplomat and Russia expert George Kennan wrote: “It would be useful to the Western world to realize that despite all the vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists.”[1] These words were true after World War II, but are they still true today? Could one say, paraphrasing Kennan’s dictum, “that despite all the vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1991—the KGB inspired coup and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union—the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Soviet diplomatists”? This was the central question of this book. Could a great power for which a quasi-permanent, continued, and centuries-long territorial and political expansion has been the natural way of life, suddenly become a “normal,” post-imperial state? If one listens to some analysts, post-Soviet Russia simply had no choice but to adapt to its status of post-imperial country. Alexander Motyl, for instance, wrote:
Despite empire’s long and venerable track record . . . , there are strong reasons to think that empire building is no longer a viable political project. Imperial states have acquired territory in three ways: by marriage, by purchase, and by conquest. Marriage no longer works, as no contemporary ruler (not even a dictator) claims to own the territory he rules. Purchase is a dead end, as all the world’s land is divided among jealous states and oftentimes empowered populations. Conquest is still possible in principle, and the twentieth century is full of instances in which it was attempted in practice. But the limits of conquest are clear, in the aftermath of Iraq if not before. International and most national norms, for example, now hold that the conquest of foreign nations and states almost certainly involves violations of human rights and the principles of self-determination and cultural autonomy, and is therefore illegitimate. Moreover, nation-states are unusually effective vehicles of mass mobilization and resistance, making sustained conquest harder now than in the past . . . . In sum, while history suggests that being or having an empire is a guarantee of longevity, it also shows that acquiring an empire is probably no longer possible.[2]
Motyl wrote these words in 2006, two years before the Russian invasion of Georgia and the dismemberment of this small neighboring country. Another author, who explicitly considered the demise of the Russian empire as definitive, was Manuel Castells. According to Castells,
[T]here will be no reconstruction of the Soviet Union, regardless of who is in power in Russia . . . . I propose, as the most likely, and indeed promising future, the notion of the Commonwealth of Inseparable States (Sojuz Nerazdelimykh Gosudarstv); that is, of a web of institutions flexible and dynamic enough to articulate the autonomy of national identity and the sharing of political instrumentality in the context of the global economy. Otherwise, the affirmation of sheer state power over a fragmented map of historical identities will be a caricature of nineteenth century European nationalism: it will lead in fact to a Commonwealth of Impossible States (Sojuz Nevozmozhnykh Gosudarstv).[3]
Castells wrote these words in 1997, a year in which Russia seemed to have accepted definitively the loss of empire. Moreover, Castells was certainly right that there would be no reconstruction of the Soviet Union, which had disappeared, forever, with its ideological glue: communism. But empires do not need to be communist, as history teaches us. And empires need not be built only in a nineteenth-century way: relying almost exclusively on military power. They can also be built—or rebuilt—in a postmodern way, making use of a smart mix, which not only includes blackmail, pressure, and naked military power, but also financial instruments, economic leverage, and soft power.
We already cited in the introduction Dmitry Trenin, who, in the same vein as the two aforementioned authors, wrote: “The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that had lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan has gone.”[4] Unlike the other authors, who gave their optimistic assessments before the Russian invasion of Georgia, Trenin’s book was published after the invasion of Georgia and after the gas wars with Ukraine in 2006 and 2009. Trenin, who gave his book the title Post-Imperium, added the subtitle A Eurasian Story. He probably did so without any prior knowledge of Putin’s latest geopolitical project: his book was published before Putin wrote his famous Izvestia article in which he announced the formation of a Eurasian Union[5] and also before the summit on December 19, 2011, during which the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, officially launched the project of the Eurasian Union. Paradoxically—and ironically—Trenin added Putin’s latest, and most important imperial project as a subtitle to a book in which he argued that Russia had definitively lost its imperial drive.
The Crucial Year 1997
Looking back however, it was not the year 2011—the year in which Putin launched his project of the Eurasian Union—which was crucial to Russia’s new course, nor was it the year 1999, when Putin became acting president. In retrospect, the crucial year was 1997. In this year Russia stood at a crossroads. On May 27, 1997, after long hesitation, President Yeltsin signed the “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” In this act the Russian Federation committed itself to a set of common principles. Among these principles was featured the “respect for sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security.”[6] The Kremlin’s recognition of the inherent right of all states “to choose the means to ensure their own security” was a major step forward on the road to a post-imperial state. It was the recognition of the sovereign right of both the post-Soviet states and the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe to choose their own alliances, including the right to become a member of NATO. In the same year—in July 1997—at the Madrid NATO summit, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were invited to join the Alliance.
Reactions in the West were more than positive. In an article with the title “From Empire to Nation State,” Chrystia Freeland wrote in the Financial Times: “After devoting five centuries to imperial expansion, Russia seems abruptly to have reconciled itself to a diminished global role.”[7] She quoted Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Studies, who said: “This spring was a turning point in Russia’s choice between being an imperial power and a nation state. It marked a strong decision to reject empire.”[8] And he added: “The really surprising thing is that the negative reaction to the loss has not been stronger.”[9] However, the Russian advance toward a democratic, post-imperial state during Boris Yeltsin’s second presidential term was not as straightforward as these enthusiastic comments seemed to suggest. Russia’s progress resembled rather the dancing procession of Echternach, in which three steps forward are preceded and followed by two steps backward. This is because, in the same year—on April 2, 1997—Yeltsin signed with the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko a Union Treaty leading to a Union State of Russia and Belarus. The signing of the treaty, wrote the Financial Times, “drew rare praise for Mr. Yeltsin from his Communist and nationalist opponents.”[10] This praise was no surprise, because the initiative put Russia on a quite different track: that of a neoimperial state. The French paper Le Monde referred to a debate in the Russian government between “occidentalists,” wanting to join the European democratic mainstream, and “Slavophiles,” wanting to build a Slavic Union under the aegis of Russia. The first group included two deputy prime ministers: Boris Nemtsov and Anatoly Chubais, and the leader of the liberal Yabloko fraction, Grigory Yavlinsky.[11] The second group included not only ultranationalists, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the communist Gennady Zyuganov, but also Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.[12] Primakov, who would shortly afterward become prime minister, was the former head of the SVR, the external intelligence service, a follow-up organization to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Primakov was described by Ronald Asmus as someone, who “had made his career by standing up to the West—‘the man who could say Nyet.’”[13] He “saw his job as masking Russian weakness while rebuilding Moscow’s strength. By his desk, he kept a small bust of Prince Alexandr Gorchakov, a 19th-century Russian Foreign Minister under Czar Alexander II who had presided over Russia’s recovery from its total defeat in the Crimean war. Partnership with the U.S. was not part of his lexicon.”[14]
In an editorial Le Monde wrote at that time that the treaty on the Union State between Yeltsin and Lukashenko “emphasizes in the first place the permanent desire of the Kremlin to gather around it the former Soviet republics, at least the Slavic ones. Everything suggests that Ukraine will be next to bear the brunt of the Russian pressure: already dependent of her ‘big brother’ for her energy, she finds herself surrounded on three sides by Russian garrisons.”[15] This commentary was, indeed, farsighted. The objective to bring Ukraine back in its orbit would become the overriding motive behind the Kremlin’s policies in the next decade. The choice facing Russia in 1997 was the choice between becoming a “normal,” democratic nation state, living in peace with its neighbors, or becoming—again—an empire. In the crucial year, 1997, the Founding Act with NATO pointed in the direction of the former, the Union Treaty with Belarus toward the latter. It was as though both initiatives mimicked the Russian coat of arms: the double-headed eagle whose heads face in two opposite directions. It was clear from the beginning that these two strategies could not be reconciled. As soon as 1994 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “In not being an empire, Russia stands a chance of becoming, like France or Britain or earlier post-Ottoman Turkey, a normal state.”[16] He added the warning: “If not openly imperial, the current objectives of Russian policy are at the very least proto-imperial. That policy may not yet be aiming explicitly at a formal imperial restoration, but it does little to restrain the strong imperial impulse that continues to motivate large segments of the state bureaucracy, especially the military, as well as the public.”[17] Brzezinski’s caution was certainly justified. It was shared by the Russian liberal politician Yegor Gaidar, who was Yeltsin’s prime minister from June 15, 1992, to December 14, 1992. Referring to the years 1918–1922—when the Red Army, in only four years, reconquered most of the lost tsarist territories—he wrote: “Russia is unique in restoring a failed empire.”[18]
Putin’s project for a Eurasian Union is the Kremlin’s latest attempt to reintegrate the post-Soviet space. According to Jeremy Smith, a professor of Russian history at the University of Eastern Finland, “It is less clear what economic advantages Russia gains from the Union, given that so much of its trade is orientated to Europe, China, and elsewhere.”[19] According to Smith, “this has fuelled the suspicion that the whole project is a way of enhancing Russian regional hegemony and, in the most alarmist interpretations, moving toward the recreation of some form of the USSR. . . . Critics of the project maintain that, like the European Union, pressures for political integration will follow close upon the heels of economic integration, with the major difference that there will be a clear hegemonic power, Russia, dominating the Union.”[20] One must add here one important reservation: the project of the Eurasian Union was not launched to recreate the Soviet Union, and the objective is not to reintegrate the Central Asian states into Russia proper. Its real and overriding objective is preventing Ukraine from establishing closer relations with the European Union and NATO, bringing this country definitively and irreversibly back into the orbit of its Slavic “brother country” Russia. This objective is openly admitted. Fyodor Lukyanov, for instance, a prominent Russian political scientist, wrote in a comment on Putin’s Eurasia article: “The paradox of the Eurasian Union is that its primary goal is not Eurasia. Its most desired object is Ukraine.”[21] Lukyanov considered membership of Ukraine—a country of 45 million—an economic necessity to make the Eurasian Union work. He also mentioned that “the growth of xenophobia [in Russia] . . . means that building an integrationist unification with the Central Asian countries will be accompanied by increased tensions. Ukraine is, in this sense, the ideal partner, together with Belarus, in as much as it immediately brings a sense of ‘Slavicness’ to the created structure.”[22] Lukyanov spoke further, tellingly, of an “attempt to bring together what is profitable [the Slavic countries] and dissociate oneself from ‘ballast’ [i.e., the Central Asian countries].”[23]
The Kremlin’s Obsession with Ukraine
During the Russia-NATO Council session in Bucharest in April 2008, Putin called Ukraine “a complex state formation. If the NATO issue is added there,” he said, “along with other problems, this may bring Ukraine to the verge of existence as a sovereign state.”[24] Later during the same summit, in a discussion with U.S. President George Bush, Putin said that Ukraine was “not a real country.” This is clearly light-years away from the “common principles” laid down in the Founding Act, signed by Russia and the members of NATO in 1997, in which Russia had recognized the inherent right of all countries “to choose the means to ensure their own security.” Putin’s declaration was a scarcely veiled threat that Russia would intervene if Ukraine decided to join NATO. Doubts on Ukraine’s viability as a sovereign state were expressed on many occasions by leading Russians. On March 16, 2009, the Kremlin ideologue Gleb Pavlovsky wrote in the Russkiy Zhurnal, a Russian online magazine of which he is the owner, an article titled: “Will Ukraine Lose Its Sovereignty?”[25] This article was followed four days later by an interview with Sergey Karaganov, the éminence grise of the Russian foreign policy community and head of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. This article had the title: “No One Needs Monsters. Desovereignization of Ukraine.”[26] Karaganov depicted Ukraine as a failed state that was in a process of “passive desovereignization.” The process was, however, not only “passive.” Karaganov warned that “Russia will not want to see absolutely ungovernable territories close by.”[27] Yuriy Shcherbak, former Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, wrote in response: “In military language it is called the ideological-propagandistic support of the future operation on capturing the territory of a sovereign state.”[28] In fact, Russian politicians continued to denounce Ukraine as an “artificial” country that had no right to exist. At the height of the financial crisis Valery Fadeyev, editor of the political journal Ekspert, wrote: “Ukraine is cheap, we can buy it.”[29] It sounded less aggressive, almost as a joke, but it expressed the same contempt for Russia’s neighbor and its status as an independent, sovereign state.
In the Russian war of nerves with Ukraine Kirill, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, also played an important role. From July 27 to August 5, 2009, Kirill visited Ukraine. His tour brought him not only to the pro-Russian eastern part, but equally to the western part of the country. One of his objectives was to suppress the pro-independence mood of the local church.[30] Kirill talked a lot about the “common heritage” and the “common destination” of Ukraine and Russia. However, his intervention went further than simply delivering a spiritual message. According to Pavel Korduban, “One of his [Kirill’s] chief ideologists, Andrey Kuraev, was more outspoken, threatening Ukraine with a civil war should a single church fully independent from Moscow ever be established.”[31] Olexandr Paliy, a historian at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, commented: “We’ve seen more of a Russian state official than a religious figure. . . . The Church is being used as an instrument in the Kremlin’s game.”[32] Oleh Medvedev, adviser of Yulia Tymoshenko, then Ukrainian prime minister, was more outspoken. He described Kirill’s tour “as a visit of an imperialist who preached the neo-imperialist Russian World doctrine.”[33] When the archives of the KGB were opened after the demise of the Soviet Union, also a file on Kirill was found, indicating that he had worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov.”[34] It is, therefore, no surprise that the patriarch is working hand in hand with the Kremlin. Under Putin the Russian Orthodox Church has acquired the status of a semiofficial state church and the relations between the hierarchy and the political leadership have become even closer than in tsarist times. How close the relationship between the Moscow patriarchate and the Kremlin has become was particularly evident when, immediately after his visit to Ukraine, Kirill went to the Kremlin to report to President Medvedev.
Kirill’s visit in the summer of 2009 was clearly part of a broader psychological and political offensive. Some weeks after Kirill’s visit President Medvedev published a video blog and an open letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on the Russian presidential website. On this video Medvedev was overlooking the Black Sea where one could see two frigates menacingly on the horizon. Medvedev was dressed in black. The Economist even spoke of an “ominous black.”[35] Being dressed intimidatingly in threatening black had become a part of the symbolism used by the Kremlin when it addressed—directly or indirectly—the Ukrainian leadership, as if to emphasize that between the two countries normal, civilized, diplomatic relations no longer existed. Some observers, such as Brzezinski, made comparisons with the black clothing of Mussolini.[36] Others made comparisons with the oprichniki, the secret police of Ivan the Terrible, who were also dressed in black. Medvedev’s open letter was a reaction to the expulsion by Ukraine of two Russian diplomats, accused of undermining activities. “We are more than just neighbors,” wrote Medvedev in his open letter, “our ties are those of brothers.”[37] He went on, citing Gogol, that “there are no bonds more sacred than the bonds of brotherhood.” After this declaration of brotherly love there followed a list of complaints concerning Ukraine’s support for Georgian President Saakashvili and the “overt distortion of complex and difficult episodes in our common history, the tragic events of the great famine in the Soviet Union, and an interpretation of the Great Patriotic War as some kind of confrontation between two totalitarian systems.”[38] Medvedev’s letter explicitly referred to Patriarch Kirill’s visit to Ukraine, which was considered “an event of great significance.” “I had a meeting with the Patriarch following the visit,” wrote Medvedev, “and he shared my impressions and said many cordial words. We both are of the same opinion that the two fraternal peoples may not be separated as they share [a] common historical and spiritual heritage.” Such a message from the Kremlin master that the two “fraternal peoples” may not be separated was not reassuring for worried Ukrainians, who shortly before had read articles in the Russian media, announcing Ukraine’s imminent “desovereignization.” Special attention should also be paid here to the language of Medvedev’s message. The use of fraternal and paternal metaphors has a long tradition in Russia. “We have a good idea of what Stalin has in mind,” wrote Richard Sennett, “when he declares ‘I am your father.’ He is going to force other people to do his bidding; he asserts his right to do so because he is the collective father. After a while people will habitually obey; the habit of obedience is discipline.”[39] Using the “brother” metaphor Medvedev spoke as the older brother to the smaller, younger brother, implicitly claiming authority over the other. As Sennett rightly observed: “Metaphors are put to oppressive uses.”[40]
Medvedev concluded his open letter with the words that “there can be no doubt that the multifaceted ties between Russia and Ukraine will resume on a fundamentally different level—that of strategic partnership—and this moment will not be long in coming.”[41] These words could be perceived by the Ukrainians as an unveiled threat, because the “strategic partnership” the Kremlin wanted to establish with Ukraine would certainly include a restriction of Ukraine’s freedom of choice over its security arrangements, a freedom that nevertheless figured prominently in the Founding Act of 1997. Since the election of the more Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 the Russian pressure on Ukraine has not subsided. On the contrary: Russian pressure on Ukraine to join the Customs Union and Eurasian Union has only increased. The Kremlin uses both carrot and stick. The carrot is represented by a Russian offer to sell its gas to Ukraine for $160 per cubic meter instead of $425—a discount of more than 62 percent![42] The stick consists of a potential restriction of the number of Ukrainian migrant workers in Russia, estimated at between two and three million per year.[43] The Russian authorities have already announced that from January 2015 citizens from the CIS countries need foreign passports to travel to Russia.[44] The Russian pressure, however, also takes the form of outright blackmail. An example of the latter is the so called “Yamal-Europe Two” project—a proposal, made on April 3, 2013, by Putin and Gazprom’s CEO Aleksey Miller to Poland, to build a new gas pipeline over Polish territory to Slovakia. This project, aimed “to demonstrate that Moscow can shift gas export volumes into new bypass pipelines, away from Ukraine’s gas transit system to Europe, eventually nullifying the system’s value.”[45] This proposal was experienced by the Ukrainians as a direct attack. Some weeks later, on April 25, 2013, Putin, in a televised phone-in session in Moscow, went so far as to issue a warning that if Ukraine did not join the Eurasian Union it faced the potential “de-industrialisation” of multiple sectors within its economy.”[46]
In the meantime negotiations between Ukraine and the European Union on an Association Agreement have reached a decisive phase. On March 30, 2012—after five years of intensive negotiations—the chief negotiators of the EU and Ukraine initialed the text of the Association Agreement, which included setting up a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). The text was hailed by some as “the most extensive international legal document in the entire history of Ukraine and the most extensive international agreement with a third country ever concluded by the European Union.”[47] Unfortunately, however, due to election fraud and selective justice (the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), the EU decided to delay the signing of the agreement. Although association with the EU would be in the long-term interest of Ukraine, eventually raising the prospect of EU membership, it is not certain that the Ukrainian government would make the necessary efforts to take up this opportunity. Russia, which does not formulate conditions of democratic governance or human rights, makes things much easier for Yanukovych. Moreover, the benefits (lower energy prices) are immediate. It is still an open question whether Ukraine will be able to resist the Russian pressure. On May 22, 2013, the Ukrainian government signed a memorandum applying for observer status in the Russia-dominated Customs Union.[48] Ukraine considers association with the EU compatible with a similar relationship with the Customs Union/Eurasian Union. However, this is not the case for Moscow. The Kremlin put enormous pressure on Viktor Yanukovych to shelve an Association Agreement with the EU, which the Ukrainian president planned to sign in Vilnius on November 28, 2013. The Kremlin’s blackmail was successful. Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement—the result of six years of hard, protracted negotiations—in exchange for the Kremlin’s offer of a $15 billion loan and a discount in the price of Russian gas. Yanukovych met with mass protests at home. The protesters were not reassured by his statement that a Ukrainian membership of the Eurasian Union was not (yet) on the agenda. It is clear, however, that most European governments, treating the relationship with Ukraine as a technocratic problem, have massively underestimated the important geopolitical implications of Ukraine’s choice. However, it is not sure that this is also the case for Moscow. If Ukraine were to opt for deeper integration into the European Union, a Georgian scenario could not be excluded, in which the Kremlin could provoke riots in Eastern Ukraine or the Crimea, where many Russian passport holders live. This would offer Russia a pretext for intervening in Ukraine in order “to protect its nationals” and dismember the country. Unfortunately, such a scenario cannot be excluded. It is a corollary of the five principles of Russian foreign policy, formulated by President Medvedev on August 31, 2008. The fourth principle he mentioned was “protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be.”[49] It leaves the door open for military adventures throughout Russia’s “neighborhood.”
In 1992 Brzezinski warned: “The crucial issue here . . . is the future stability and independence of Ukraine.”[50] In 2012—twenty years later—in his book Strategic Vision, Brzezinski repeated this warning, writing: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”[51] Brzezinski’s warning is, more than ever, still relevant today. It is not without reason that Polish analysts especially, or analysts of Polish origin, warn about the dangers of Russia’s new imperialism.[52] Their country was, in the twentieth century (and in the centuries before), the main victim in Europe of the aggression from the imperialist powers, which dismembered and occupied the country. When the Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was asked: “Can you imagine any kind of renewed geopolitical conflict to your west in your lifetime?” he answered “I have a vivid imagination, but no, I cannot imagine an armed conflict between us and Germany.”[53] When asked: “Does your imagination extend to the possibility of a future conflict to the east?” he answered: “Our relations with Russia, like yours [U.S.A.], are pragmatic but brittle. And unfortunately, after the war between Russia and Georgia, I’m afraid conflict in Europe is imaginable.”[54] Another East European politician, Czech President Vaclav Havel, expressed the same concern sixteen years earlier: “I have said it so often: if the West does not stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West.”[55] This is a warning that should be taken seriously.
Notes
1.
Kennan, “Russia: Seven Years Later,” in Memoirs 1925–1950, 519.
2.
Alexander J. Motyl, “Empire Falls,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 4 (July-August 2006).
3.
Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Volume II: The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 42.
4.
Trenin, Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story, 233.
5.
Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya.”
6.
“Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_25468.htm.
7.
Chrystia Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State,” Financial Times (July 10, 1997).
8.
Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State.”
9.
Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State.”
10.
John Thornhill, “Russia Signs Union Treaty with Belarus,” Financial Times (April 4, 1997).
11.
Grigory Yavlinsky criticized the Union Treaty with the following words: “You cannot talk about negotiating integration with a state where there is political repression and the conditions for the normal existence of the opposition are ruled out and the work of the media is restricted.” (Quoted in John Thornhill, “Belarus Link Alarms Russian Liberals,” Financial Times (April 2, 1997).)
12.
Sophie Shihab, “M. Eltsine cherche à minimiser les conséquences de l’ “union” entre la Russie et la Biélorussie,” Le Monde (April 8, 1997).
13.
Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Doors: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 141.
14.
Asmus, Opening NATO’s Doors, 141.
15.
“L’avertissement biélorusse,” Le Monde (April 3, 1997).
16.
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.
17.
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 76.
18.
Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, 17.
19.
Nargis Kassenova, Alexander Libman, and Jeremy Smith, “Discussing the Eurasian Customs Union and Its Impact on Central Asia,” Central Asia Policy Forum 4 (February 2013), 6. http://www.centralasiaprogram.org/images/Policy_Forum_4,_February_2013.pdf.
20.
Kassenova et al., “Discussing the Eurasian Customs Union and Its Impact on Central Asia.”
21.
Fyodor Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot,” Gazeta.ru (November 17, 2011).
22.
Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot.”
23.
Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot.”
24.
“What Precisely Vladimir Putin Said at Bucharest,” Zerkalo Nedeli (April 25, 2008). http://www.mw.ua/1000:1600/62750/.
25.
Gleb Pavlovsky, “Will Ukraine Lose Its Sovereignty?” Russkiy Zhurnal (March 16, 2009). http://www.russ.ru.
26.
“No One Needs Monsters: Desovereignization of Ukraine,” Interview with Sergey Karaganov, Russkiy Zhurnal (March 20, 2009). http://www.russ.ru.
27.
“No One Needs Monsters: Desovereignization of Ukraine.”
28.
Yuriy Shcherbak, “Ukraine as a Failed State: Myths and Reality,” The Weekly Digest 15, Kyiv (May 26, 2009).
29.
Quoted in Nicu Popescu and Andrew Wilson, “The Limits of Enlargement-Lite: European and Russian Power in the Troubled Neighbourhood,” Policy paper (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, June 2009), 29.
30.
Since 1992 there has existed in Ukraine, alongside the official Orthodox Church that recognizes the Patriarch of Moscow, a rival independent Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UPTs-KP), led by Patriarch Filaret.
31.
Pavel Korduban, “Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill Visits Ukraine,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6, no.155 (August 12, 2009), 5.
32.
James Marson, “Faith or Politics? The Russian Patriarch Ends Ukraine Visit,” Time (August 4, 2009).
33.
Korduban, “Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill Visits Ukraine.”
34.
Cf. Hélène Blanc and Renata Lesnik, Les prédateurs du Kremlin [1917 –2009] (Paris: Seuil, 2009), 263.
35.
“Dear Viktor, You’re Dead, Love Dmitry,” The Economist (August 22, 2009).
36.
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “Dressed all in black, including a black turtleneck sweater—a color scheme once favored by Benito Mussolini—the former KGB lieutenant colonel and now president, Vladimir Putin, addressed thousands of enthusiastic young supporters filling a Moscow sport stadium on November 21, 2007.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Putin’s Choice,” The Washington Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Spring 2008), 95.)
37.
Dmitry Medvedev, “Relations between Russia and Ukraine: A New Era Must Begin,” President of Russia Official Web Portal, August 11, 2009. Available at http://eng.kremlin.ru/text/speeches/2009/08/11/0832_type207221_220745.shtml.
38.
Medvedev, “Relations between Russia and Ukraine: A New Era Must Begin.”
39.
Richard Sennett, Authority (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 89.
40.
Sennett, Authority, 79.
41.
Medvedev, “Relations between Russia and Ukraine: A New Era Must Begin.”
42.
“Ukraina ne stanet nablyudatelem pri TS do 2015 g.,” kapital.kz (May 20, 2013).
43.
Cf. Oleg Varfolomeyev, “Ukraine Seeks Both Association Deal with EU and Observer Status in Customs Union,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 10, no. 101 (May 29, 2013).
44.
Cf. Fyodor Lukyanov, “Imperiya sdala passport,” Rossiya v Globalnoy Politike (December 13, 2012).
45.
Vladimir Socor, “Will Poland Consider a Gas Deal with Russia at Ukraine’s Expense?” Eurasia Daily Monitor 10, no. 67 (April 10, 2013).
46.
Cf. Devin Ackles and Luke Rodeheffer, “Eurasian Paper Tigers,” New Eastern Europe (June 24, 2013).
47.
Oleksandr Sushko, et al., “EU-Ukraine Association Agreement: Guideline for Reforms,” Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, KAS Policy Paper, no. 20 (Kyiv, 2012), 6.
48.
Margarita Lyutova, “Ukraina stanet nablyudatelem v Evraziyskom Soyuze ne ranee 2015 goda,” Vedomosti (May 20, 2013).
49.
“Interview given by Dmitry Medvedev to Television Channels Channel One, Rossia, NTV,” Sochi (August 31, 2008). President of Russia Official Web Portal. http://www.kremlin.ru/text/speeches/2008/08/31/ (emphasis mine).
50.
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 80.
51.
Brzezinski, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, 95.
52.
Another analyst of Polish origin, Janusz Bugajski, also warned that “Russia under Putin has evolved into an imperial project . . . . The Russian regime defines its national interests at the expense of its neighbors, whose statehood is considered secondary or subsidiary and whose borders may not be permanent.” Cf. Janusz Bugajski, “Russia’s Pragmatic Reimperialization,” Caucasian Review of International Affairs 4, no.1, (Winter 2010). http://www.cria-online.org/10_2.html.
53.
“The Polish Model: A Conversation With Radek Sikorski,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 3 (May/June 2013), 5–6.
54.
“The Polish Model: A Conversation With Radek Sikorski,” 6.
55.
Vaclav Havel, “L’alliance euro-américaine doit s’approfondir en s’élargissant,” Le Monde (May 21, 1997).
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