Putin's Wars (39 page)

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.

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.

In July Russia further increased the pressure. On July 3, 2008, an assassination attempt
was made on Dmitry Sanakoev, head of the Tbilisi-backed interim administration of
South Ossetia, which still controlled about one third of the territory, including
some villages north of the separatist capital Tskhinvali. Throughout the month of
July new incidents took place.

On July 9 Moscow demonstratively acknowledged that four Russian Air Force planes had
flown a mission over South Ossetia. That action sought to deter Georgia from flying
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), thus blinding Tbilisi to Russian and proxy military
movements in the area. A series of roadside bomb blasts targeted Georgian police patrols.
During the second half of July and the first days of August, Russian-commanded Ossetian
troops under the authority of (Russian-led) South Ossetian authorities fired repeatedly
at Georgian-controlled villages, forcing Georgian police to fire back defensively.
^[45]

For informed observers it was clear that the wheels of war were turning. On July 5,
2008, a publication in the Russian online paper Forum.msk.ru titled “Russia is on
the verge of a great Caucasian war,”
^[46]
quoted Pavel Felgenhauer, who predicted the outbreak of a war with Georgia. “The
most important fact is,” Felgenhauer said, “that around Putin’s circle the decision
has already been taken to start a war with Georgia in August.” The chief editor of
the paper, Anatoly Baranov, just returning from the North Caucasus where he had spoken
with Russian officers stationed in Rostov-on-Don, wrote: “The army wants to fight
. . . . They see in the war the solution to internal political problems, the consolidation
of the nation, a purge of the elites, in general everything that is positive.”
^[47]
On August 3, four days before the outbreak of the war, the Georgian internet portal
Gruziya Online
(Georgia Online), wrote that five battalions of the Russian 58th Army had passed through
the Roki tunnel, a 6-kilometer tunnel that is the only direct road connection between
Russia and South Ossetia.
^[48]
The same day the Russian deputy minister of defense, Nikolay Pankov, was in Tskhinvali
and conducted secret talks with the separatist South Ossetian “President” Kokoity
and other leaders of his government. An even more disquieting fact, reported by the
Internet paper, was that the evacuation of women and children from Tskhinvali had
begun. Four thousand people were said to have been evacuated. When Kokoity was asked
about it, he “declared that they had not evacuated the children, but sent them on
holiday.”
^[49]
A few days later, on August 7, the master of this announced war, Vladimir Putin,
was to board the plane in Moscow to attend, together with other world leaders, the
opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.