A scandal in Russia

The forth anniversary of the Caucasian war was celebrated with a film showing how great Russia had forced the terrible Georgian aggressor to peace. In all probability this propagandist campaign would have fallen into oblivion. Quite many similar projects appear in Russia. On balance, one film over or under does not make any difference.

The film The Wasted Day shown on the Fifth channel of St. Petersburg looks like a put-up job. Several higher officers of the Russian army, a lot of whom have already retired, tell about the events of the Caucasian war in which they participated.

According to the former Russian Chief of Defense Yury Baluyevsky, the war with Georgia had been prepared long ago and in 2007 they were almost ready for it.

In general, the talks about Tbilisi’s aggression sound quite farfetched. Until August 26, 2008 Russia judicially acknowledged Georgia’s territorial integrity, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia as parts of its territory. Is it possible to aggress on one’s own territory? Then Russia aggressed against Chechnya. Why did it have the right to restore the constitutional order in North Caucasus and why is neighboring Georgia deprived of this right? Maybe, Russia is just lucky not to have an equally powerful state that would like to force it to peace? Therefore, Moscow is terrorizing the allied territories.

However, let’s get back to the film. It turns out that Saakashvili did not plan any aggression, but some people in the Kremlin headed by the national leader were doing something that had led some notorious historical figures to Nurnberg and the Hague. The begetters of this propagandist fudge as well as the authors of the film have not thought about historical turning points due to which this film could prove the charges in a quite serious legal institution in one of the Netherlands’ capitals.

This is what the famous publicist Andrei Illarionov has written in his blog on the website of the radio station Ekho Moskvy. “It turned out that not only Medvedev but Putin as well is dead set on to enter the race for the right to be the first on the defendants’ bench of the future tribunal for triggering off the war.”

The point is not even in the existing plans of aggression against Georgia. Finally, not every plan is carried out. However, the officers with large stars on their shoulder straps have confirmed the well-known fact that the troops were massed at the border beforehand and according to a plan, the maneuver called Caucasian Border had been carried out with a legend used later during the Caucasian war. And what were the Russian railway troops doing when restoring the railway from Adler to Sukhumi without any permission of the Georgian government? It is a display of direct aggression. Let’s recall the departure of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol without warning relevant authorities in Kyiv: our state could have been involved into aggression against another friendly state. Everything could have finished with speechifying of the retired officers but it all was planned and executed with absolutely other purposes.

First of all, in order to whiten themselves. The military and political authorities looked really strange. The minister of defense was on vacation, probably, to confuse the enemy. The prime minister was at the Olympic Games in Beijing (in all probability, for the same reason). In the hottest period of the war the Russian General Staff and its Main Operations Directorate started a move from Arbatskaya Square to Leningradsky Avenue with all their secret documents and plans in case of war. The connection between Moscow and Rostov-on-Don [the headquarters of the North-Caucasian military region is situated there. – Author], Rostov and Vladikavkaz and the command of the 58th army was lost. To be able to call his superiors, the army commander had to borrow a sat-phone from a journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda. As the war correspondent of Nezavisimaya Gazeta Viktor Litovkin wrote, “recalling it is bitter and shameful.”

Andrei Illarionov has also noticed direct falsifications. The former commander of the Russian Army Vladimir Boldyrev smugly told how he “surrounded the First Georgian brigade” and they “left all their arms” and escaped in panic. It is aimed at credulous and uninformed audience. During the hostilities in South Ossetia the First brigade of the Georgian army was in Iraq and came back to Georgia after the warfare had finished. Only Boldyrev knows how his troops could have surrounded it.

It is no coincidence that the generals repeatedly emphasized that the state authorities had been constantly informed. I wonder how they could have been it if the commander had to borrow a sat-phone from a journalist. And what about traffic jams near the Roki Tunnel, awful work of the intelligence emphasized even by the Russian military and lots of other things that do not flatter the Russian army and its preparation.

Second of all and most important, according to the officers, they wasted that day because the authorities delayed the order of invasion. It resulted in victims amongst the civilians and Russian military. Yury Baluyevsky said that the decision had not been made until the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Medvedev. Moreover, according to him, the hostilities did not start without a kick from Putin. The participants of this story did their best to prove what the whole world knows: Vladimir Putin has always been a real head of the country. He had to pretend for a while being the second person in the state. The then president and commander in chief was below the mark waiting for something and being afraid. Open black PR in keeping with the worst traditions of the Russian political life.

Let’s have a look at this film from the Ukrainian point. It is quite interesting as for possible development of our relations.

I would like to draw our readers’ attention to the fact which is not just a time coincidence that after the film had been shown for the first time, the Russian Investigation Committee carried out a so-called investigation and found out that during the Caucasian war the mythical Ukrainian contractors wearing the Russian uniform committed crimes against the civilians. They could have found any other contractors – the world does not lack soldiers of fortune. No, they chose the Ukrainians. Probably, due to the fact that much-vaunted Russian air forces lost too many planes, as for a fast battle. Of course, it is Ukraine’s fault since it had been supplying Georgia with air defense assets. In all probability, the generals heading the heroic army (the Russian army is repeatedly called heroic during the film) would prefer fighting with the unarmed enemy.

The first conclusion to be drawn after watching the film is that the Russian General Staff are developing aggressive plans against their neighbors. The presence of Russian military bases and Russian peacemakers is a pretext for aggression. Moscow seriously discussed that in case of blockade Armenia should break through the Georgian territory towards the Russian military base in Gyumri. Russia thinks that the borders, at least in the CIS space are quite relative. It is interesting that they do not say the same about Lithuania though the Kaliningrad oblast is an enclave. It is clear since Poland and Lithuania are NATO members. Willing or not, Russia has to wind down.

In this concern the position of our country is quite ambiguous. Owing to our authorities, on the Ukrainian territory there is a large group of Russian military, the Black Sea Fleet, with absolutely uncontrolled behavior and unclear plans.

Let’s not go deep into history even though it is not very remote. The Russian ships, including ones from the Black Sea Fleet, wander in the Mediterranean Sea not far from the Syrian shores. Hotheads from Moscow have already suggested interfering into the conflict by landing in Tartus where there is a Russian military base. Thus we can be involved into a conflict with other countries’ goals and interests. Did we think about it when signing the Kharkiv agreements? I don’t think so.

In Transnistria there is a group of Russian military with depots full of arms and ammunition. The conflict has been frozen but it can get hot any time, as soon as Moscow considers it necessary. Who can guarantee that nobody in Moscow will have an idea to break through the territory of Ukraine to Transnistria. This idea is not as unreal as it can seem at first sight. Judging from generals’ stories from the film, we should consider similar developments.

Land-grabbing instinct of the Russian establishment, especially of its chekists’ and generals’ part has not died out. They are always ready to snatch a more dripping roast from those who they consider to be weaker. If they cannot do it with arms, they resort to the inner degradation. They fought with Georgia and in Ukraine they pursue the policy of federalization supported by the fifth column. It consists not of ethnical Russian citizens of Ukraine but of the politicians ready to become the Kremlin’s satraps on the territory given them as a colony. We can see this plan being realized on billboards and city-lights in our cities.

The only thing we can do is to be vigilant and not to rely on the authorities ready for new agreements like Kharkiv or Munich ones to get sops.

COMMENTARY

Misha TAVKHELIDZE, broadcaster of the television channel PIK, one of the leaders of the central coalition “For European Georgia”:

“In one of the books by the historian Viktor Suvorov there is an idea that any operation usually covers another operation that, in its turn, covers the third one whose idea is unknown. I think that this entire story telling that Putin supposedly humiliated Medvedev is the covering operation. It all has been done to draw attention to the film. The idea is to give Russia and, probably, foreign countries the Russian version of the developments of 2008. In fact, it does not have anything to do with the reality. Of course, the Georgian authorities should not react to this film. Putin’s confession has three goals: a) to consolidate the Russian people with the help of the story that the Russian arms have actually defeated NATO’s accomplices; b) to prove that Putin is a macho. This is a part of his image, let’s recall at least his photos with his exposed trunk; c) it is a certain message for the West: “Guys, we do not really care what you think. I do what I want!” However, the West and Georgia realize that Putin is a macho only in the Kremlin and he is afraid of the West since if he goes too far he will have to watch his back.

“I do not think that this film will influence the way the West took the developments of 2008. They know everything perfectly well. Everyone knows what Russia did, what its goals were and if it succeeded or not.

“As for the fact that the Ukrainian contractors fought for Georgia, as the Russian Investigation Committee declared, I would like to thank the Ukrainians I met during those events and after them for the support I had never felt before. It was really touchy. As for the Ukrainian contractors, sure, the Martians and people from the Venus fought for the Georgians, as well as the Americans in Georgian planes… They can write anything in Moscow.”