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 deaclass="underline" 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]
35
Cf. “Medvedev: August War Stopped Georgia’s NATO Membership,”
36
Condoleezza Rice,
39
“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,”
44
Quoted in Stephen Ennis, “Russian Film on Georgia War Fuels Talk of Kremlin Rift,”