Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

In The Hague, exchanges are taking place in a legal battle between Georgia and Russia which threatens to become something of a saga.  Two years ago Tbilisi charged Moscow with a derogation of its duty to eliminate ‘all forms of racial discrimination‘, under the UN’s 1965 International Convention . The allegation is that Russia’s armed forces engaged in violent discrimination, alongside ’separatist militia and foreign mercenaries’ in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, through at least three separate phases, between 1990 and 2008. When these proceedings  (PDF) were instigated, in August 2008, Tbilisi effectively asked the UN’s judicial organ to endorse its casus belli, at the same time as its invasion of South Ossetia was met with resistance and Russian tanks pushed its forces back into Georgia proper. A provisional ruling, delivered in the aftermath of the conflict, called on both sides to do all they could to eliminate racial discrimination and urged restraint.   These ...

“It’s real basic irony, but still you can get a hoot”.  The quote from the comedian, Bill Hicks, came to mind reading this month’s Standpoint. Former BBC correspondent William Horsley has decided that the problem with Europe is that it isn’t sufficiently Russophobe (I paraphrase). Anyway, hark at these gems. “Russian leaders were emboldened to break new bounds in August 2008 when they sent some 30,000 troops into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the would-be breakaway parts of Georgia.” Setting aside the obvious omission of any context to this statement for the time being (there’s more), ’would-be breakaway parts of Georgia’?  Two regions which have never, NOT AT ANY TIME, been successfully administered from Tbilisi as part of a post-Soviet, unitary, independent Georgia.  I’d say that puts them squarely in the ’breakaway’ category without any qualification. “In what independent analysts have shown to have been a premeditated use of overwhelming military force.” By Georg...

President Medvedev talks to President Bagapsh in Sukhumi. Two years ago this weekend Georgian shells started to rain down on South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali.  The robust military action which Russia took to defend the contested breakaway republic is still a matter of controversy. However, the European Union’s fact-finding report confirmed , unequivocally, that acts of aggression from Georgia marked the beginning of the conflict.  The document bolstered the case for governments in the US and EU to reconsider their reflexive backing for President Saakashvili. The regime in Tbilisi continues to show, periodically, an authoritarian bent, and its behaviour is still  e rratic.  Saakashvili’s military gamble, which briefly threatened to push the US into direct confrontation with Russia , now looks like a massive miscalculation. His government is, rightly, treated with more caution by foreign allies, particularly in Washington, where pressing the ’reset button...

Abkhazia goes to the polls on Saturday in order to elect its president and the contest is likely to be dominated by two contenders who last went head to head four years ago. Sergei Bagapsh is the current incumbent and Raul Khadzhimba is his main challenger and the current prime minister. The Black Sea region, which traditionally attracted Soviet officials seeking rest and recuperation, is ostensibly identical in status to South Ossetia. Its independence is recognised by Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The rest of the world considers it part of Georgia. However, whilst prevailing opinion in Tskhinvali favours eventual absorption into the Russian Federation, and unification of the southern and northern parts of Ossetia, in Sukhumi there is a more complicated relationship with Abkhazia’s Moscow patron. Leaders insist that they are animated, not by an aspiration to reunify with Russia, but by the desire to achieve full independence for Abkhazia. In the previous election the Kremlin...

The IIFFMCG’s report on the conflict in Georgia runs to more than 1,000 pages (the Guardian provides a synopsis with excerpts it regards as critical). It is the most detailed examination, to date, of the war which erupted last summer. Although each side’s conduct, before, during and after the events of August 2008, is criticised in the document, it substantiates, unequivocally, the view that President Saakashvili’s adventurism was the immediate precipitant of conflict. . Perhaps the report might infuse with more caution those who continue to advocate the regime in Tbilisi, as if it were a bastion of freedom, democracy and good sense. Not only did Saakashvili provoke a war with Russia. He then lied to the world, in an attempt to persuade international opinion that Moscow had actually been the aggressor. The Georgian president offers partnership which is unreliable and untrustworthy. The Russian authorities, having been presented with their pretext by Saakashvili, responded disp...

Exactly one year has elapsed since President Saakashvili ordered his troops to retake Georgia’s breakaway region, South Ossetia, by force of arms. Russia, whose citizens form a majority of the territory’s population, responded by driving Georgian forces back beyond the Ossetian boundary and deep into Georgia proper. Its president’s military adventurism has provided further impetus to increasingly strident political opposition within the former Soviet republic. Realist foreign policy observers within the EU and US have begun to scrutinise the Georgian leader’s democratic credentials with more care. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have sought, and gained, Russian recognition for unilateral declarations of independence. By any sensible criteria, Saakashvili has presided over a tactical and strategic disaster for his country, yet, in today’s Guardian he marks the anniversary of his invasion with a self-valedictory article , portraying his regime as a bastion of freedom which will drive for...

In a disconcerting echo of events last summer, allegations and counter allegations are accompanying increased tensions in Georgia. An incident at an army base outside Tbilisi, termed a ‘mutiny’ by the Georgian government, has, predictably, been interpreted quite differently by opposition parties. Meanwhile, Russian troops have begun, openly, to patrol the borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as Nato prepares to conduct manoeuvres, in a country which only last year embarked on a bout of military adventurism and which lies directly at Russia’s southern border. It is, evidently, impossible to disentangle truth from allegation at this stage. We know that a battalion of troops, including its officers, has been accused of refusing orders. Saakashvili has claimed that the episode is part of a coup attempt, orchestrated by Russia, which intended his assassination. There is little evidence offered to back up his assertion. What we can say, with some certainty, is that opposition to th...

In an essay considering the chances of successful reconciliation between Russia and Georgia, Ivan Sukhov keeps his most interesting contention for the final paragraph. “Georgia, like most post-Soviet nations, is a country where the concept of nationality is crucial. A national agenda for Georgians is barely compatible with the thesis of a Georgia for everyone (i.e. for Georgians, Abkhazians, Ossetians, and for all other citizens regardless of their ethnicity). This is not a problem specific to Georgia. It is characteristic of almost all the post-Soviet nations, including Russia itself in many ways.” It is useful to read Sukhov’s piece in conjunction with a further Open Democracy article , which examines another post-Soviet state struggling to come to terms with ethnic division, Moldova. Transdniestria, Moldova’s own breakaway region, shares characteristics with South Ossetia. Although as Andrey Kalikh observes, the chances that serious violence will develop there remain slim. Howev...

‘Three Thousand Versts’ has previously touched upon a new willingness within Georgia to question its government’s military adventurism in South Ossetia. The Caucasian state’s last ambassador to Moscow has been one high profile critic of President Saakashvili’s regime and its belligerent attitude towards Russia. In an article on Open Democracy, Ambassador Kitsmarishvili argues that Tbilisi should follow Barack Obama’s example and seek to ‘reset’ its relations with the Kremlin. The pertinent question for Georgians is whether their government will eventually replicate the new trend toward diplomacy emanating from the White House. If it does not, the popular clamour against Saakashvili will surely continue to grow. Otherwise Georgia risks becoming increasingly isolated, as the international community draws the conclusion that its authorities ‘prefer the language of force, pressure and confrontation between the superpowers’. With bilateralism and diplomacy becoming the preferred means ...

Thomas de Vaal, author of the definitive book on Armenian – Azerbaijani conflict, has an acutely observed article in this month’s Prospect examining how Georgia’s politics might be changing, to the detriment of those who led the country into war (subs required). De Vaal examines the baleful effect Saakashvili’s military adventurism has had on communities straddling the border between South Ossetia and Georgia proper. He concludes that in order to stabilise arrangements in these areas Georgia will have to tone down assertions of sovereignty, instead concentrating on the rights of its people, in order to facilitate the opening of contested borders and return of displaced peoples. There is pathos in de Vaal’s tales of divided but intertwined communities. In 1991, during the first attempt to coerce South Ossetia into a separate Georgia and reverse the autonomy it enjoyed as part of the Soviet Union, Georgian villagers from Meghvriskhevi stopped militias from looting the adjacent Osset...

Russian president Dmitri Medvedev has recognised unilateral declarations of independence by both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, some 15 years after the republics broke away from Georgia. Very clearly it is a deplorable thing when the internationally recognised territorial integrity of a state is disregarded. The dismemberment of a state, or the attempted dismemberment of a state, cannot be applauded. However, whilst two wrongs do not make a right, it has been pointed out several times on this site that Kosovo formed a precedent which would encourage separatist regions to declare independence, and, specifically in the cases of several frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union, would encourage Russia to respond by affording recognition of its own. Saakishvili’s attempt to bombard South Ossetians into accepting his government’s sovereignty provided a pretext for Russia to harden its support for independence in the two regions. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are illegal states which shou...

Sean’s Russian Blog carries two wonderful pieces which raise an important point about the war in Georgia which seems increasingly to have been missed in its coverage – what about the South Ossetians? “How quickly the South Ossetian War has become more about Russia and the United States, East and West, George Bush and Vladimir Putin, than about the poor South Ossetians caught in the middle.” In a searing indictment of Georgia’s president Saakashvilli, Sean examines the roots of South Ossetian aversion to Georgian hegemony. Of course paradoxical Soviet attitudes to ethnic self-government played a part. On one hand they carved out administrative regions on the basis of titular ethnic nationality, on the other hand they did a slapdash and arbitrary job. “When the Bolsheviks drew up its Republics, Autonomous Regions, and autonomous oblasts in 1936, the North Caucuses was an artificially crafted mosaic where political borders ran counter to (emergent) ethnic ones.” The frozen conflict wh...

The breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia has become a crucible for dispute between the Russian and Georgian governments. The region has retained de facto independence from Georgia since the early 90s. Following Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence and its acceptance by NATO, Russia has strengthened ties with South Ossetia and its status is underpinned by the presence of Russian ‘peacekeepers’. It would appear today that the situation has escalated and war between Georgia and Russia is close. According to some reports it is already underway. Georgia has launched a full scale assault on the republic in an attempt to wrest control back from the separatists. 15 civilians and 3 Russian peacekeepers have been killed in these actions. In response it appears that Russian warplanes have struck targets in Georgia. Although Georgia has de jure claims to sovereignty over South Ossetia, to launch such an attack in the present climate was an act of extreme foolhardiness. ...

One of the more surreal moments I have experienced on my travels was when I got into a clapped out Lada taxi in Donetsk and realised that the radio was pumping out Belfast by Boney M. It transpires that further east in the former Soviet Union the 1970s disco group are to be inflicted on the denizens of disputed South Ossetia in what might be interpreted as psychological warfare from the Georgian authorities.