It was just a year ago when the five-day war between Russia and Georgia broke out. On the eve of the anniversary, Kommersant's Olga Allenova visited Georgia and South Ossetia to see how the situation has changed over the past year.
"SAAKASHVILI SOLD US ALL OUT"
For almost two months, the biggest attraction on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi was the dozens of numbered cages lining the middle of the square in front of the parliament. I arrived at that square several days before US Vice President Joe Biden was due to visit Georgia. All of the cages were empty, with the exception of cages on the end where men were sleeping on wooden bunks. One of the occupants, Nugzar Tuayev, a refugee from the village of Tamarasheni in South Ossetia, called the square "Gaza Strip": "Everybody calls us that because they know we won't surrender." After the war, Nugzar was offered the chance to live in a cottage built for refugees outside Tbilisi, but he refused: "I had a real home, built by my grandfather. I don't need this shack."
Nugzar considers the Georgian President his arch-enemy:
"Saakashvili has sold us all out."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because he didn't fight to the end. He just sold all our villages and homes."
This - and not the fact that the Georgian President sent troops into South Ossetia on August 7 and consequently dragged the country into a devastating war - is the main complaint of ordinary Georgians about their President. The Georgian opposition came to a different conclusion and offered its own explanation for the August war. In the Republican Party's office, the think tank of the increasingly powerful political bloc the For Georgia alliance, they say that Mikheil Saakashvili was simply "taken for a ride" a year ago when the war started.
"We're convinced that Saakashvili was told that he would be given South Ossetia," explained one of the bloc's leaders, David Berdzenishvili. "He thought: ‘I'll take Tskhinvali, put Sanakoyev there, and then I'll give Abkhazia to Russia in return, and everybody will be happy'. They had already prepared grandstands for celebrations in Tskhinvali. But he was flat-out betrayed. Anybody who was hoping that Putin would let him seize Tskhinvali and drive out the Russian peacekeepers and residents while the whole world was watching had to have been an idiot. The Russian Government is very committed to the idea of Russia as a great power getting up from its knees. Saakashvili has never understood Russia. And he underestimated Putin."
According to the Republicans, another "fateful" mistake of President Saakashvili is his attitude towards his own people, who he has tried to "change by force". Mr Berdzenishvili describes this approach as pseudo-liberal and sees the Georgian President as an instrument of the American Freedom Institute, which has produced many prominent Georgian leaders, such as Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Bokeria and parliamentary majority member David Darchiashvili.
"These people from the Freedom Institute decided to change the Georgian people within a few years and they used Saakashvili to do that," Mr Berdzenishvili maintained. "They decided to simply replace the people. For them, the older generation, with its links to Russia and the Russian environment, is just people from the past who should be swept into the dustbin of history. All the Soviets should be swept into the dustbin of history."
In the opposition member's opinion, all the former Soviet intelligentsia joined opposition rallies because they felt they were being ignored by the authorities. "At the time that independence was proclaimed, 400,000 people were card-carrying Party members", he explained. "It's not that they actually believed in communism. But like all Soviet people, they realised that without a party card one couldn't do much, couldn't even become a foreman in a factory, for example. Saakashvili referred to all these people as people who were simply being flushed down the toilet. In practice, he took homes away from actors, grandmasters and world champions. In the past, the city hall had been building homes for these people and now they were using all sorts of legal loopholes to take them away just to demonstrate that these people no longer have any authority or influence to wield in Georgia. It was a disastrous approach. Yes, the Soviet way of life is a burden Georgia must get rid of, but not by demolishing homes or carrying out reprisals."
In spite of President Saakashvili's "fateful" mistakes, however, the opposition has left the streets. On the same day Joseph Biden arrived, police removed the cages on Rustaveli Avenue and nobody put up any fight. The moderate opposition had its eyes on next year's local elections, which they hoped would be the first step towards toppling Saakashvili. "Saakashvili was elected chairman of the Tbilisi City Council back in 2002, so he's well aware that being the head of the Tbilisi Government is a stepping stone to becoming the head of state", said David Berdzenishvili. "If Saakashvili doesn't call an early parliamentary election, then there will be elections in Tbilisi and two power centres will form: the President and the Tbilisi Mayor. These two power centres will vie for control of parliament. It happened in 2002-2003. It's a long road, but it's one that has already been covered in Georgia."
"The radical opposition has its own road. It still claims that it'll try to force the President to resign by staging street protests. One radical opposition leader told me in private: ‘If Misha (Saakashvili) hangs on for even a year, the Russians will destroy Georgia. The war is not really over because Putin hasn't forced Saakashvili out of power yet. Until Misha goes, the Russians will plot all kinds of stunts here, including military ones."
The radical opposition's main problem, of course, is that it can't voice any of these opinions out loud. "If anyone actually says this out loud, we‘ll immediately be accused of doing exactly what the Russians want," my interlocutor explained.
In the Georgian political milieu, fear of being suspected of pro-Russian sentiments is so great that it seriously hinders the opposition. Many in Georgia are already well-aware that the opposition is powerless to unseat Saakashvili. The opposition has turned out to be less determined than the radical electorate expected it to be and in turn it has lost society's support. Saakashvili has already realised that he's stronger than his opponents. This was made quite clear to him by the US Vice President, who paid a two-day visit to Georgia to demonstrate Washington's willingness to support the Georgian President throughout his presidential term ending in 2013. After Biden's visit, the Georgian authorities spoke of military and economic aid the US had promised to Tbilisi, notably $4.5 billion and new types of weapons and tracking systems for watching the border between South Ossetia and Georgia. The only condition the US has set for President Saakashvili involves political moves to promote democracy in the country. And judging by the sentiments in the moderate opposition's ranks, Saakashvili is ready and willing for that. The most promising opposition candidate, Irakly Alasania, told Vlast that he was certain the Georgian President would not only change the electoral law but also allow early local and even parliamentary elections.
After the US Vice President's visit, there was a great deal of talk in Tbilisi about American military observers joining the EU monitoring mission in Georgia as early as September. This is particularly important, since Tbilisi is convinced that if Americans make their presence in Georgia official, Washington will gain the right to interfere in military conflicts on the country's soil, the same right that Russia exercised last year when it entered into war with Georgia because Georgians had attacked a Russian peacekeeping battalion. The Europeans have no objections to the Americans' presence in the EU monitoring mission: the July meeting of EU foreign ministers decided to consider the issue of expanding the mission as early as this autumn.
Thus, today's official Tbilisi is practically back to where it was before August of last year: American support and the opposition's weakness have helped Mikheil Saakashvili gain a strong foothold in his position.
"PUTIN WILL FIND A REASON TO GO INTO TBILISI"
One year ago, the retired Gagloyev's, a married couple living in Tskhinvali, spent three days lying on the corridor floor in their small flat on the fifth floor: Zaurbek is an invalid, and Lyusya, a petite woman, is not physically capable of carrying her husband on her back.
"Everyone hid in the basement, but we stayed behind", Lyusya said. "Of course I was scared. We were bombed for two days. There was a hole in the roof. Zaurbek wanted me to go into the basement. But I couldn't. What would I tell people after that?"
After the war, it was decided to repair the roof at 128th Lenin Street. The local Authority for the Implementation of Priority National Projects of the Republic of South Ossetia removed it and then took three weeks to replace it. Over the course of these three weeks, the house flooded with rain and Lyusya was forced to place bowls and pans all over the flat in an attempt to collect the water. The three-week battle with rain almost made Zaurbek forget about the war with Georgia.
The promised massive reconstruction of damaged housing in South Ossetia never started, which is still a cause of resentment among the locals. Even Dmitry Medvedev was stunned by the city's economic disarray when he visited Tskhinvali in July. On the eve of the anniversary, Moscow replaced the Republic's Prime Minister by ordering Kokoity to appoint Vadim Brovtsev, director of the Chelyabinsk construction company CJSC Vermiculit, as the head of Government, President Kokoity, a man who had purged all his political rivals in the aftermath of the war (the most prominent among them, Albert Dzhussoyev, head of the construction corporation Stroiprogress which is laying a gas pipeline from Russia to South Ossetia, faces imprisonment for tax evasion) to become an uncontested ruler with control over all the financial flows from Moscow, was forced to yield. He even promised to share some of his power with the new Prime Minister.
On the eve of the war's anniversary, however, the power struggle in South Ossetia and the suspended work on restoring housing was not what the locals were losing sleep over. They were far more concerned over the almost daily gunfire that had picked up in South Ossetia last week. The recent mortar attack drove just about everyone in Tskhinvali into their basements. According to the EU monitoring mission's subsequent investigation, Tskhinvali was not shelled by Georgia. Yet, since observers were not allowed into Tskhinvali, they couldn't draw a final conclusion about what ignited the new flare-up in the conflict. Tskhinvali accused the observers of being biased and the Georgian authorities of attempting to destabilise the conflict zone in order to attract American observers to the region.
Several days after the shelling, President Kokoity declared that it was necessary to take back from Georgia the Tru Gorge, a ravine that belonged to South Ossetia in Soviet times. A day later, Russian border guards entered the Georgian village of Kveshy and tried to install boundary pillars there.
Tbilisi saw this as an attempt of a new provocation. "As long as Saakashvili is in power, Putin will not desist," a group of Georgian political scientists explained. They see President Kokoity as Vladimir Putin's stooge. "Even if Saakashvili controls his nerves this time and refrains from sending soldiers to Tskhinvali, Putin will find a pretext to go into Tbilisi."
Mikheil Saakashvili is quite certain that there will be no war because the US has already expressed its opposition to one. In the Georgian President's opinion, Joe Biden's historic visit to Tbilisi and Washington's obvious support for Georgia "disrupted Putin's plans to finally occupy Georgia." Five days before the anniversary of the war, Mikheil Saakashvili sounded rather upbeat when he told journalists: "I'm still in office in spite of Vladimir Putin's solemn affirmations that I should be hanged by certain parts of my body in order to crush Georgia's national identity."
"RUSSIA WANTS SAAKASHVILI TO LOSE HIS TEMPER"
The situation in South Ossetia and Georgia on the eve of the anniversary of August's war caused serious concern in the West. Washington formed a task force to monitor the Georgian situation and American satellites covered all of Georgia's territory. According to Georgian Ambassador to the US Batu Kutelia, the White House even pulled some members of the Security Council and the General Staff away from their summer holidays. Increasingly frequent provocations in the conflict zone and tough statements from the Russian Defence Ministry - two of which were made just last week - have been stirring up fears in the West. A week before the anniversary of the war, the Defence Ministry declared that if "Georgian provocations continue" the Russian authorities "reserve the right to protect the population and Russian servicemen by using all forces and means available". On August 5, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn announced that "Georgia is preparing for new aggression in the Caucasus." In the General's opinion, the Georgian authorities are staging acts of provocation in the conflict zone to divert their own people from internal problems and depict Russia as an enemy. They are receiving encouragement from "foreign countries" that are helping "the Georgian regime restore its military through financing and the supply of various weapons". Moscow is implying that unless the US stops supporting Saakashvili, war may break out at any moment in the region. General Nogovitsyn's warning was heard in Washington - on the same day US Vice President Joe Biden called Mikheil Saakashvili and urged him to display "the utmost restraint".
"The Americans believe that deliberate provocations are coming from the South Ossetian side and that Russia wants Saakashvili to lose his temper", our source in the Georgian parliament indicated. "This is understandable: Georgia has been the arena of a war between Russia and the US for quite some time, and as long as Saakashvili is in power as the President of Georgia, Russia is losing this war. The only way Russia can get rid of him is by military means. But Putin can't move his troops into Georgia just like that; he needs a reason. Which is exactly why the Americans keep warning us not to provide the Russians with even the slightest pretext. The last time around, Saakashvili's nerves took over and he ordered a special operation in South Ossetia, where the fire on Georgian villages was coming from, and thus gave the Russians an excuse to send in their troops."
Events to commemorate the victims of August's war were held in South Ossetia and Georgia last week. According to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, 162 civilians died in South Ossetia. In Georgia, according to the Georgian Health Ministry, the toll stood at 228 civilians. The situation on both sides of the border on the eve of the anniversary suggests that this may not be the final toll.
"WE HAVE TAKEN A SERIES OF MEASURES, JUST IN CASE"
On the eve of the anniversary of the war, the two sides launched a verbal tirade on each other.
Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office Alexander Bastrykin at a press conference in Moscow on July 3rd: "That military commanders of the Georgian Army at the level of brigade generals are guilty of committing crimes has been documented. We have provided ample proof of genocide and the murder of a large number of civilians."
Georgian Parliament Speaker David Bakradze at the July 13th meeting of the Georgian Parliament's Bureau: "The Russian President's demonstrative visit to Tskhinvali is a move directed against Georgia and its statehood."
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the July 14th meeting to review the results of the Caucasus-2009 military exercise in Novorossiysk: "We had to give a tough but effective response. I think that lesson will long be remembered by those who are trying to change the existing order, trying to solve their personal problems by violent means."
Vice Speaker of the Georgian parliament Paata Davitaya, while addressing parliament on July 21: "The neighbouring country is continuing its aggression and doing everything it can to call Georgian sovereignty into question. We are effectively in a state of war with Russia."
The Russian Defence Ministry's Press Service on the RF Defence Ministry website, August 1: "Over the past several days, the Georgian side has fired on the city of Tskhinval and its suburbs several times. In the event of further provocations... the Defence Ministry of Russia maintains the right to use all its forces and means available to protect the citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia and Russian servicemen."
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in an interview with Reuters on August 2nd: "The question is, is there anyone in the world who wants a new war involving Russia to break out in Europe? The answer is obvious - no."
Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Grigory Karasin in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta on August 4th: "On the eve of the anniversary of the events in August 2008, the Georgian leadership is staging various ‘events' in the Caucasus on the border with South Ossetia: they contain an obviously provocative character."
Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Anatoly Nogovitsyn at a press conference in Moscow on August 5th: "Georgia is an aggressor. The Georgian leadership must be punished for this... We don't see any military threats, but we've taken some measures, just in case, and why not? If we see any aggression, the response will be adequate."
Georgian Deputy Prime Minister Temur Yakobashvili at a press conference in Tbilisi on August 6th: "We've decided to declassify a number of documents. This report will prove that the Russian Federation perpetrated large-scale aggression against Georgia."
"THOUSANDS OF RUSSIAN SOLDIERS HAVE ENTRENCHED THEMSELVES IN SOVEREIGN GEORGIAN TERRITORY"
In last year's military conflict, the US sided with Georgia. The tone of the statements made at the meeting of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Europe on August 4, 2009 sheds some light on what America's stance is a year on.
From a speech by Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. Department of State: "Georgia is cooperating fully with the EU monitoring mission. It has signed two agreements... in accordance with which it reports all the movements of the security forces near the administrative borders and allows unscheduled inspections of its military facilities. We call on Russia and the separatists to ensure the same level of international transparency on its side of the administrative border and to allow EU observers to patrol South Ossetia and Abkhazia."
From a speech by Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs:
"A year after the conflict, the security situation in Georgia is still a cause for concern. The violence persists and the capacity of the international community to prevent conflicts and monitor the situation on the ground is limited because the OSCE and UN monitoring group mandates have expired. Moscow continues to tighten its control over the separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. As my colleague (Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon - Vlast) has already stated, thousands of Russian soldiers and security men armed with the latest weapons have entrenched themselves in sovereign Georgian territory. Russia is continuing to build infrastructure... and military bases in both regions. In spite of recognition by Russia and Nicaragua, the separatist regions are in even greater isolation because the global community has refused to answer Russia's call to recognise their independence...
"We deeply regret the termination of the OSCE and UN missions and lack of access to the separatist regions... Russia's refusal to allow these two important missions to continue their work without new mandates recognising the separatist regimes as legitimate is incompatible with the spirit of the Russian commitments signed after the conflict. We once again call on Russia to abide by the Medvedev-Sarkozy ceasefire agreement and introduce an international presence that would ensure the minimum amount of transparency and monitoring required to maintain security in the region."