Читать онлайн "Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism" - Herpen Marcel H. Van - RuLit

Some observers dubbed this policy “re-occupation through passportization.”[10] The EU-sponsored “Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia,” headed by the Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, was also very clear on the illegal nature of Russia’s passport policy, reporting that “the issuance of passports is an act based on governmental authority. To the Mission’s knowledge, the passports were in many cases distributed on the territory of the breakaway entities. To the extent that these acts have been performed in Georgia without Georgia’s explicit consent, Russia has violated the principle of territorial sovereignty.[11]

But it was not only Russian passports that were distributed. The de facto deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia, Maksim Gvindzhia, declared on September 6, 2006, that at that point roughly 80 percent of the population held a dual Abkhaz-Russian citizenship.[12] This means that the Abkhaz government had already started to distribute its own—illegal—passports two years before its independence was recognized by Russia.[13] Because holders of Abkhaz passports could obtain a dual Russian-Abkhaz citizenship (which gave Abkhaz citizens the right to receive Russian pensions and to travel to Russia without restrictions),[14] it became clear that from 2006 Russia was conducting a double track strategy, leaving both options open: either the independence for Abkhazia, or its incorporation into the Russian Federation. The extent to which these options even remained open after the August 2008 war, emerged from declarations by the presidents of the two breakaway provinces on September 11, 2008. According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, “South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said his republic planned to merge with the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia, and become part of Russia, a statement he later withdrew [apparently under pressure from the Kremlin, MHVH]. Meanwhile, Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh said Abkhazia would not pursue to obtain ‘associated territory’ status with Russia, but would seek to join the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and the Russia-Belarus Union State.”[15]

In December 2001 Eduard Kokoity replaced the more moderate South Ossetian independentist President Lyudvig Chibirov. Kokoity was Moscow’s man. A former Komsomol apparatchik and ex-Soviet professional wrestler, Kokoity was accused of links with organized crime.[16] As a member of Aleksandr Dugin’s revisionist International Eurasianist Movement that propagated the reintegration of former parts of the Soviet Union into the Russian Federation,[17] he was never interested in any negotiated compromise with Tbilisi. For Moscow, Kokoity was the right man in the right place to block, definitively, the eventual reintegration of South Ossetia into Georgia, opting for a solution that would make the secession of the region permanent.

It is important to note that this aggressive strategy by Russia toward Georgia started in the years 2000–2002. It was, therefore, neither a reaction to the Rose Revolution nor to Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership: during those years the Georgian president was Eduard Shevardnadze and not Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Rose Revolution had not yet taken place. Also a Georgian NATO membership was not on the political agenda. After the Rose Revolution in 2003, however, the relationship rapidly deteriorated. When, on September 27, 2006, Georgia arrested four Russians diplomats suspected of espionage for the GRU, the Russian military secret service, and extradited them some days later, the Kremlin launched a full-scale economic and diplomatic war. It was a case of pure and deliberate overkill. Russia suspended all air, rail, and road traffic between Russia and Georgia, including the postal services. It stopped issuing visas to Georgians and imposed import bans on Georgian wine and mineral water. Putin declared “that Georgia’s home and foreign politics was similar to that conducted by KGB during Stalin’s times,”[18] which is a surprising remark for a former KGB agent who has never hidden his deep personal pride in being a Chekist. The economic blockade was accompanied by a vehement anti-Georgian campaign within the Russian Federation, targeting the approximately one million Georgians who lived and worked in the country. Georgian businesses in Moscow were raided; illegal immigrants were hunted and expelled. The Russian action clearly constituted a “racist campaign,” wrote Salomé Zourabichvili, who was Georgian foreign minister from 2004 to 2005. “[It was] apparently supported by the official authorities, [and took] the form of a “hunt for the Caucasian” in the streets of Russia’s main cities.”[19] The Moscow police asked schools to provide lists of children with Georgian names in order to check out their parents. The government sponsored raids on Georgian migrant workers and market traders soon started to give off a whiff of ethnic cleansing, which led the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) to start a campaign asking their listeners to wear a badge with the slogan Ya Gruzin (I am a Georgian).[20]

THE LUKEWARM WAR: RUSSIAN PROVOCATIONS AND PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

The second phase, the “lukewarm war,” started soon afterward. In his famous Munich speech of February 10, 2007, Putin had already announced a harder stance toward the West. This was followed by Russia’s first direct military aggression against Georgia one month later, when Russian military helicopters shelled Georgian administration buildings in the Kodori Gorge, a mountainous part in Upper Abkhazia that was still under the control of the Georgian government. However, when shortly after this aggression Russia proposed the closure of its 62nd military base in Akhalkalaki, a small town in South Georgia near the frontier with Armenia, this raised hope in Georgia that the situation would improve. On June 27, 2007, ahead of schedule, the Russians finished the withdrawal of their troops. Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin aide, later turned into a regime critic, said that this unexpected and seemingly cooperative attitude on Russia’s part was, in fact, an integral part of the Russian war preparations. “While it may seem counter-intuitive,” wrote Illarionov, “it became clear in hindsight that Moscow wanted to avoid a situation in which Georgia [in an eventual war] could take Russian bases hostage.”[21] The decree, signed by Putin on July 13, 2007, in which he announced the suspension of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) by December 12, 2007, should be viewed in the same light. When this treaty was signed, it was hailed as “the basis for overall European and North American security, and derivatively, world security, for many decades to come.”[22] Through the treaty the objective of “eliminating the capability of launching a surprise attack [was] completely realized.”[23] An example of an attack that was supposed to be excluded in the future was the “combined-arms surprise attack in Europe like the Nazi blitzkrieg at the beginning of World War II.”[24] Putin, however, unilaterally “suspended” this treaty, a step that was not foreseen in the treaty text.[25] Although the other signatories still continued to apply the CFE Treaty, Putin, in fact, had killed it. He killed it deliberately. Since Russia was no longer bound by the provisions of the Treaty, Putin could remove the limits on the deployment of Russian heavy military equipment in the North Caucasus, thereby giving Russia a free hand to start a war against Georgia.