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

On March 6, 2008, Russia took another unilateral step when it lifted the sanctions on Abkhazia that had been agreed by the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1996. It was Russia’s answer to the declaration of independence by Kosovo in February 2008, and it would be the opening shot in the war of nerves between Russia, with its South Ossetian and Abkhazian proxies, and Georgia. It was, however, after the Bucharest NATO summit of April 2–4, 2008, that Russia’s Cold War against Georgia really began to warm up. Without a doubt the refusal of France and Germany to grant Georgia (and Ukraine) a Membership Action Plan (MAP) during the summit was instrumental in Russia adopting a more aggressive stance toward its small neighbor, whose vulnerability had been suddenly exposed after being snubbed by these two leading EU countries.[26]

In hindsight, it was after the Bucharest summit that the preparations for a military confrontation began in earnest. President Mikheil Saakashvili had already warned that this would happen. “If we don’t get [the MAP],” he said, “that’s exactly when they [the Russians] are going to start all kinds of troubles.”[27] He was proved to be right. The NATO summit affirmed that Georgia and Ukraine would, one day, “become members of NATO.” “But because the summit did not provide for a mechanism to achieve this purpose, explicitly rejecting the Membership Action Plans that would fulfill this function,” wrote David J. Smith, “Putin read NATO’s fudge for what it was. In other words, the West will continue its dalliance without seriousness of purpose.”[28] “NATO’s failure to approve a Georgian MAP at the April 2008 summit,” wrote Vladimir Socor, “emboldened Russia to escalate military operations against Georgia.”[29] The lifting of the sanctions against the breakaway regions was followed by a decree by President Putin in April 2008 instructing the Russian government to cooperate with the de facto authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to recognize some documents issued by them.[30] It was the first official step made by Russia to recognize the two breakaway entities. The new relationship, established by Russia with these provinces after April 2008, “was virtually identical to that which existed between Moscow and the federal territories within Russian proper. Georgia noted that Putin’s order amounted to Russia’s full annexation of the two Georgian regions.”[31] An imminent annexation was also revealed by the presence of high-ranking Russian FSB officers in the South Ossetian “government.”[32]

The Russian political analyst Alexander Golts wrote: “Tbilisi had every reason to consider what had happened as a preparation for annexation.”[33] One of the consequences of the lifting of the sanctions was that it legalized the theft by Russians of Georgian property: “Russians have been investing, especially in real estate along the coast, though much of this property belonged, before the 1990s war, to Georgians who have not been able to return and for whom no compensation mechanism exists.”[34] Mart Laar, former prime minister of Estonia, wrote an alarming article in the Financial Times. He spoke about “a creeping annexation” and warned: “This will incorporate the two territories into the Russian legal space.”[35] He added: “Ignoring Moscow’s Soviet-style land-grab would intensify strife in the south Caucasus.” “In 1937,” Laar warned, “Hitler agitated for the rights of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia; in 1938, he annexed Sudetenland into the Reich, purging it of non-Germans. In Abkhazia, most Georgians, Armenians, Estonians, Greeks and Russians—perhaps 500,000 in all—are already gone.” He concluded: “Western political autism is irresponsible. The west must awake and unite, not to oppose Russia or support Georgia, but to stand up for its ideals.”

Nobody, however, listened. US President George W. Bush, in the last year of his presidency and extremely unpopular, was a lame duck, and the leading European states let economic interests prevail over uncomfortable principles. During the same period the Kremlin strengthened the self-declared “governments” of the breakaway provinces by bringing in more of its own people. An important appointment was that of the Russian General Vasily Lunev, a former deputy commander-in-chief of the Siberian Military District. On March 1, 2008, he became minister of defense of South Ossetia, a region with only sixty thousand inhabitants. In normal conditions this would have been more than a degradation: rather an exile. In this case, however, in view of the coming war, it was an important promotion. And on August 9, 2008, General Vasily Lunev’s secret real function became clear, when he was appointed commander-in-chief of the 58th Army of the North Caucasian Military District, the army that led the invasion into Georgia.[36]

A new step in the process of escalation was taken on April 20, 2008, when a Georgian Israeli-made Hermes-450 reconnaissance drone was shot down above Abkhazia. The Russian government attributed this act to “Abkhaz militias.”[37] This explanation was ridiculed by Novaya Gazeta journalist Yuliya Latynina, who wrote, “Apparently, in the near future small, but proud Abkhazia will have its own space armies.”[38] The Georgian government was able to produce video evidence of the attack that was filmed by the unmanned drone seconds before it was shot down. It showed a Russian MiG-29 fighter attacking the drone with a missile and then flying back in the direction of Russia. Russia said the video was a fake, but a UN report, published one month later, concluded that the video evidence was authentic.[39] In the same week in which the drone was shot down, Pavel Felgenhauer reported that “Sergei Shamba, the head of [the] Abkhazian foreign ministry, made a statement about the intention of capturing part of Georgian territory for making a certain ‘buffer zone.’ Apparently, it is planned to banish local population from there.”[40] These aggressive declarations hinting at further annexations of Georgian territory coupled with ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants were accompanied by accusations at the address of Georgia that Georgia prepared an attack. Georgia’s “aggressiveness” was also used as a pretext for transferring on April 29, 2008, an additional Russian military contingent of what were called mirotvorcheskie sily (peacekeepers) to Abkhazia. Felgenhauer commented: “People in the Staff of airborne troops stated that it’s not ‘additional peacemakers,’ but a battalion of 400 soldiers with regular ammunition, including heavy material, anti-aircraft means and artillery (which is not allowed for peacemakers) that was brought into Abkhazia without any prior arrangement with the Georgian side.”[41] This move was a flagrant violation of the 1994 cease-fire agreement that had ended the war between Georgian and Abkhaz fighters.

On May 31, 2008, a further step on the escalation ladder was taken when four hundred soldiers of Russia’s railway forces illegally entered Abkhazia and started to repair the railway connection between Sukhumi, Abkhazia’s capital, and Ochamchire in south Abkhazia, near the frontier with Georgia proper. The railway along the Abkhazian coast connects Abkhazia in the North with the Russian town of Sochi. It is the only railway connection linking Georgia with Russia. The official reason given for this troop activity was a ruling by the—newly elected—Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, “on rendering humanitarian aid to the republic.”[42] NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pronounced the deployment to be “clearly in contravention of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and “an escalating action by Russia.”[43] He said the troops should be withdrawn. The Georgian government indicated the real reason for the repairs: the preparation for a Russian attack on Georgia. “Nobody needs to bring Railway Forces to the territory of another country, if a military intervention is not being prepared,” declared Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze.[44] Due to the poor road system the Russian army, as a rule, transports its troops and tanks by rail. The troops finished their work at the end of July, only a few days before the war started.