Georgia Police Officer Slain Near Russian Checkpoint
September 10, 2008
A Georgian policeman was shot and killed on Wednesday near a Russian checkpoint in Georgia, Georgia’s Interior Ministry said.
The ministry called it the first law enforcement or military casualty since the cease-fire between Russia and Georgia last month.
The incident, which Georgia called an “attack,” occurred in the village of Karaleti — just a few hundred meters south of a Russian checkpoint, the ministry said, adding that the shooting came from the direction of the checkpoint, the ministry said.
The Russian news agency Interfax said Russian peacekeepers and Georgian policemen were searching for an “unidentified gunmen who might have shot and killed a Georgian policeman near the village of Karaleti” and were doing so at Georgia’s request.
Russian officials told Georgia’s Interior Ministry that Russians were not responsible for the death and that the perpetrators might have been South Ossetians, the Georgian Interior Ministry said.
The shooting happened about 12 miles (20 km) south of the disputed Georgian territory of South Ossetia.
The police officer died in a hospital after being shot in the head and the throat.
Georgian officials said they asked the Russian to let them into their checkpoint to investigate but were denied permission. Georgia has called for an investigation by a third party, such as the European Union or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Georgian officials also said they would like to conduct a probe themselves.
On Monday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, current president of the European Union, announced that Russia has agreed to withdraw forces from Georgia — excluding the two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia — within a month.
Russian troops plan to pull out from around the Black Sea port of Poti within the next week.
The EU plans to send 200 international monitors to South Ossetia. International talks on the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will take place in Geneva next month, said, Sarkozy and Medvedev. Video Watch announcement of deal on Russian troop withdrawals. »
advertisement
The Russia-Georgian conflict erupted on August 7 after Georgia’s military moved to secure the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
That sparked the intervention of Russia, which pushed its troops deep into Georgia proper.
Source: CNN, September 2008
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/10/russia.georgia.main/index.html
NATO Takes Count in Georgia
September 10, 2008
A group of NATO experts has arrived in Tbilisi. Kommersant has learned that they will evaluate the losses to the Georgian military infrastructure in its recent conflict with Russia. The alliance is taking inventory before providing Georgia with aid. A decision on the volume and nature of that aid will be made at the visiting session of the NATO council that will be held in Tbilisi next week.
The NATO group’s activities are not being publicized in Georgia. The Georgian Defense Ministry has not released any information on the topic. Kommersant received confirmation from the ministry only that alliance specialists were in the country. “A group of NATO experts are in Georgia to assess losses suffered by the country’s military infrastructure in the conflict,” a ministry spokesman said. “That visit and the negotiations are not for the press.”
Nonetheless, a source in the Georgian Defense Ministry told Kommersant that “The group of experts is not authorized to make any decision in relation aid in restoring the military infrastructure of Georgia.” The source explained that “It is working only on collecting information to be delivered to Brussels. But it can already be said that NATO is providing Georgia with aid to restore its air traffic control system.” That is the radar that was partially destroyed by bombing. Earlier, NATO stated its willingness to include Georgia in its unified air traffic data exchange system.
Kommersant has learned that the NATO experts will also look at military bases in the east and west of the country that were partially or wholly destroyed by bombing and the Russians partially took away the weaponry. “The Russians really did take a lot of weapons away from the Senaki and Gori military bases,” military expert Murman Kuprashvili told Kommersant. “But it was mainly nonfunctional military equipment or equipment that was not used in the operation in South Ossetia.” In particular, the Georgian army lost several thousand machineguns stored at the bases that they were unable to distribute to reservists. A considerable number of heavy armored vehicles were also lost.
“Now we are working with American and other colleagues on an estimate of the damage,” Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia told Kommersant. “Georgia will certainly be provided with material aid for the restoration of its defense capability in full measure.” He added, It is a matter of the restoration of the infrastructure and air defense s of the country and other forms of military-technical aid. Aid in restoring the airports in Marneuli, Senaki, Kopitnari and Vaziani is very important.” Kutelia provided no other specifics. It is known, however, that American senators who visited Tbilisi last week openly stated their plans to provide Georgia antitank weapons and ballistic systems.
The final decision on aid to Georgia from the alliance will be made later. It is expected to be made public during the visiting session of the NATO council in Tbilisi September 15-16. “In spite of the tense situation, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer assured us in the name of all member states that a visiting session of the NATO council will be held in Tbilisi on the level of ambassadors with the secretary general taking part, as promised a year ago,” a Georgian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Kommersant. Continuing cooperation between Georgia and NATO within the “Intensive Partnership” program agreed on at the Bucharest summit will be discussed at the visiting session. In addition, Kommersant has learned, the council will issue a statement on the recent conflict and express its support for Georgian territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Source: Kommersant, September 2008
www.kommersant.com/p1023628/Russia_Georgia_conflict/
Georgian Policeman Shot Dead In Russian ‘Buffer Zone’
September 10, 2008
Georgian policeman has been shot dead near a Russian checkpoint at a buffer zone adjacent to breakaway South Ossetia, Georgian police said.
Police said the officer was shot in the head “from the direction of the Russian checkpoint,” but that Russian forces had denied involvement.
The officer was standing at a Georgian police position several hundred meters from the Russian checkpoint in the village of Karaleti, at the entrance to the buffer zone.
“The Russians said they believe the policeman was shot at by Ossetians and they promised to investigate the incident and punish those responsible,” police spokesman Shota Utiashvili told Reuters.
He said Georgian police did not return fire and that the situation in the area was calm.
Separatist authorities in South Ossetia denied involvement.
“We have nothing to do with this incident,” Irina Gagloyeva, head of the Committee for Press and Information, said by telephone from the breakaway capital Tskhinvali, 30 kilometers north of Karaleti.
Gagloyeva said the closest Ossetian-populated village was four kilometers from the area, and suggested the incident may have been the result of “infighting” between Georgian police and army.
Russia agreed on September 8 to withdraw its soldiers from
“security zones” outside the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within a month.
The troops pushed into undisputed Georgian territory last month having poured over Russia’s southern border into breakaway South Ossetia to repel a Georgian assault mounted to retake the territory from pro-Moscow separatists.
Source: RFE/RL, September 2008
www.rferl.org/content/Georgian_Policeman_Shot_Near_Russian_Post/1197775.html
US Confident of NATO Nod to Georgia, Ukraine: Official
September 8, 2008
The United States is confident that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of the NATO military alliance and sees growing support in Europe for that prospect, a top US administration official said Monday.
Russia’s recognition of Georgian breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia has increased backing for expansion of the 26-member alliance, the official said as US Vice President Dick Cheney held talks with Italian leaders here.
“There may be debates about timing, conditions and so forth, but if anything what has happened in Georgia has probably broadened support within the alliance for the proposition that eventually they ought to be members of NATO,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Cheney last week vowed Washington’s support for Baku, Tbilisi and Kiev during a whistle-stop tour of the region, and urged NATO to unite in order to ward off a return of “line-drawing” in Europe.
He held talks at the weekend with political and business leaders at a conference in Italy — including Israeli President Shimon Peres, former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, and top world oil executives.
The US vice president arrived Sunday in Rome for talks with Italy’s president and prime minister as part of a bid to garner support among Washington’s European allies for a stronger stance against Russia after its five-day war with Georgia last month.
“It is not just a US problem, all of Europe has a stake in how this is handled and whether or not these sovereign independent states remain free and independently sovereign states,” the official said.
“I think it will get resolved. The resolution that was adopted at the Bucharest summit that said Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO represents the thinking of most of our NATO allies.”
At its summit in Bucharest in April, NATO refused to grant Ukraine and Georgia “Membership Action Plan” (MAP) status after French and German opposition, though leaders agreed on a statement saying “that these countries will become members of NATO.”
Russia has opposed inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine, saying that NATO expansion and its support of a planned US anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland is a “strategic error.”
The official reiterated the US view that an expanded NATO would pose no threat to Russia, and vowed that the United States wants a good rapport with Russia despite soaring tensions over Moscow’s action in Georgia.
“We are still very interested in having normal relations with Russia. That hasn’t changed. That is a long term proposition, but obviously we are not happy with what has happened in Georgia.”
Cheney met Sunday with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who has urged Russia to “reexamine” its freeze on relations with NATO. Moscow last month said it would halt military cooperation as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated over the conflict in Georgia.
The US vice president meets Tuesday with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has a warm personal relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and hopes to play a mediating role between Moscow and Europe.
Source: AFP, September 2008
afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iQoJZlxqy8QzR0IGwHBiOSG1MB2A
Georgia Eager to Rebuild Its Defeated Armed Forces
September 3, 2008
Just weeks after Georgia’s military collapsed in panic in the face of the Russian Army, its leaders hope to rebuild and train its armed forces as if another war with Russia is almost inevitable.
Georgia is already drawing up lists of options, including restoring the military to its prewar strength or making it a much larger force with more modern equipment, like air-defense systems, modern antiarmor rockets and night-vision devices.
Officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House confirmed that the Bush administration was examining what would be required to rebuild Georgia’s military, but stressed that no decisions had been made. The choices each pose difficult foreign policy questions.
Georgia’s decision to attack Russian and South Ossetian forces raises questions about the wisdom of further United States investment in the Georgian military, which in any case would further alienate Russia. Not doing so could lead to charges of abandoning Georgia in the face of Russian threats.
In Moscow, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said Tuesday in an interview that he no longer considered President Mikheil Saakashvili to be Georgia’s leader, calling him a “political corpse.”
Georgian statements have hardened as well, even before the army has identified and buried all of its dead.
“Our mission is to protect our country from Russian aggression,” Davit Kezerashvili, Georgia’s 29-year-old defense minister, said in an interview last week when asked what missions the military would be organized to perform. “Large-scale Russian aggression. The largest aggression since the middle of the 20th century.”
Russian officials last week repeatedly expressed concern about the possibility that the United States would undertake a major effort to rebuild Georgia’s military. “The Americans will enter Georgia,” said Dmitri O. Rogozin, Russia’s representative to NATO. “I believe that soon there will be an American military base in Georgia, officially. And not only advisers. There will be a flag, tanks, artillery, aviation, even marines.”
So far the Bush administration has chosen to trumpet its humanitarian efforts in Georgia, and has avoided publicly discussing efforts to study how best to rebuild the Georgian military.
The official silence reflects worries in Washington about tensions between the United States and Russia, officials said, and explains why the Bush administration policy makers and military officers who discussed these efforts did so only after demanding anonymity.
One brief, public discussion of American efforts came last Thursday, when Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that Georgia was “a very important country to us” and that the United States intended to continue the military-to-military relationship.
“It’s going to be very important that the government of Georgia makes some decisions about what they want to do, and then I think the U.S. would be in a position to respond to that,” he said.
Military rebuilding will take years, which means that long-term decisions about American support to Georgia will fall to the next presidential administration.
Republicans and Democrats alike have signaled strong support for Georgia.
Mr. Saakashvili has cultivated close ties to both the McCain and Obama campaigns. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee for vice president, visited Mr. Saakashvili last month, as did Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Mr. McCain has been a vocal proponent of Mr. Saakashvili’s government, and a strong critic of the Kremlin.
Defense officials in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, said that at a minimum they hoped to re-equip the army’s four existing brigades with modern equipment, and increase the size of the country’s air force. Georgia’s military now includes 33,000 active-duty personnel.
Mr. Saakashvili said he also planned to emphasize officer training in the years ahead. “We have no problem with the individual skills of soldiers,” he said in an interview. “We need to do this same thing with the officers.”
Georgia also hopes to acquire an integrated air-defense system that covers the country’s entire airspace, to arm its land forces with modern antiarmor rockets, and to overhaul the military’s communication equipment, much of which was rendered useless by Russian jamming during the brief war.
It also wants to distribute large numbers of night-vision devices to the country’s forces, which could help create parity in the field against the numerical superiority of Russian armored units.
Russia’s military, while able to overpower and scare off the inexperienced Georgian Army, went into battle with aging equipment, including scores of tanks designed in the 1960s, and armored vehicles that broke down in large numbers along Georgia’s roads.
One option, Mr. Kezerashvili said, would include creating up to four more combat brigades. He said that training and equipping new brigades, re-equipping existing forces and installing a modern air-defense network could cost $8 billion to $9 billion.
“Together with Europeans and the United States, we have to rebuild our army and make it stronger, because it is in the common interest,” he said, adding that Russia could attack another neighbor, and must be deterred. “Who will be the next victim? Nobody knows.”
But as Georgia and the West begin to discuss military collaborations, the conversation is informed by the events of last month, in which the Georgian military scattered under fire.
Georgia’s own analysis is straightforward: its principal vulnerabilities, which it said proved decisive, were its comparative weakness to Russian air power and its inability to communicate effectively in combat.
These problems, according to Mr. Kezerashvili and Batu Kutelia, Georgia’s first deputy defense minister, could be remedied with investments in equipment.
“We know 100 percent that we need a very, very sophisticated air-defense system, that is multi-layered, to defend all of our airspace,” Mr. Kutelia said.
But interviews with Western military officers who have experience working with Georgian military forces, including officers in Georgia, Europe and the United States, suggested that Georgia’s military shortfalls were serious and too difficult to change merely by upgrading equipment.
In the recent war, which was over in days, Georgia’s Army fled ahead of the Russian Army’s advance, turning its back and leaving Georgian civilians in an enemy’s path. Its planes did not fly after the first few hours of contact. Its navy was sunk in the harbor, and its patrol boats were hauled away by Russian trucks on trailers.
The information to date suggests that from the beginning of the war to its end, Georgia, which wants to join NATO, fought the war in a manner that undermined its efforts at presenting itself as a potentially serious military partner or power.
Mr. Saakashvili and his advisers also say that even though he has no tactical military experience, he was at one time personally directing important elements of the battle — giving orders over a cellphone and deciding when to move a brigade from western to central Georgia to face the advancing Russian columns.
In the field, there is evidence from an extensive set of witnesses that within 30 minutes of Mr. Saakashvili’s order, Georgia’s military began pounding civilian sections of the city of Tskhinvali, as well as a Russian peacekeeping base there, with heavy barrages of rocket and artillery fire.
The barrages all but ensured a Russian military response, several diplomats, military officers and witnesses said.
After the Russian columns arrived through the Roki Tunnel, and the battle swung quickly into Russia’s favor, Georgia said its attack had been necessary to stop a Russian attack that already had been under way.
To date, however, there has been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.
During the battle, one Western military officer said, it had been obvious that Georgia’s logistical preparations were poor and that its units interfered with each other in the field.
This was in part because there was limited communication between ground forces and commanders, but also because there was almost no coordination between police units and military units, which often had overlapping tasks and crowded one another on the roads.
One senior Western military official said that one of the country’s senior generals had fled the battle in an ambulance, leaving soldiers and his duties behind. Georgia’s Defense Ministry strongly denies this.
No one disputes that the army succumbed to chaos and fear, which reached such proportions that the army fled all the way to the capital, abandoning the city of Gori without preparing a serious defense, and before the Russians had reached it in strength. It littered its retreat with discarded ammunition.
Source: The New York Times, September 2008
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html?pagewanted=2
Putin on Georgia’s Humanitarian Aid, NATO Ships in Black Sea
September 2, 2008
Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, said he was surprised that humanitarian aid was delivered to “aggressors” and not to real victims of the conflict.
“If we are talking about the humanitarian aid it should be provided to the victim of the aggression, which is South Ossetia,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent on September 2. “We do not understand what the U.S. ships are doing on the Georgian shore; but it’s a matter of taste and that’s our American colleague’s decision.”
“Another issue is,” he continued, “why this aid is being delivered with warships armed with modern missile systems.”
He said that Russia’s reaction to presence of the NATO vessels in the Black Sea would be “calm, without any hysteria.” “But there will be a response,” Putin added.
He also brushed off western calls for withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Georgian proper and said: “We have no armed forces in Georgia at all.”
“There are only peacekeepers,” Putin said. “There are only 500 of them … and their only job is to maintain security.”
Source: Civil.Ge, September 2008
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19377
Russia Weighs Response to NATO Ships
September 2, 2008
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says it is weighing its options following the arrival of more NATO vessels in the Black Sea, according to reports.
Russia Monday accused “foreign navy ships” of delivering weapons to Georgia as the European Union met to discuss possible sanctions against Moscow.
Putin, visiting Uzbekistan to promote the launch of a natural gas pipeline Tuesday, said that its response to ships would be “calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer,” the Associated Press reported.
Georgian troops attacked pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia on August 7, triggering the Russian response. Each side offered conflicting figures on how many people died in the fighting.
Russia has not fully withdrawn its troops from Georgia after sending them across the border for what it called peacekeeping operations and what Georgia called an invasion.
Putin also questioned Tuesday the manner in which the United States had delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia.
“We don’t understand what American ships are doing on the Georgian shores, but this is a question of taste, it’s a decision by our American colleagues,” agencies reported Putin as saying.
“The second question is why the humanitarian aid is being delivered on naval vessels armed with the newest rocket systems.”
Earlier Tuesday Russian officials criticized the European Union for threatening to postpone talks on a new political and economic partnership deal.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that a “partnership” with the EU “should not be a hostage to the conflict” over Georgia, AP reported.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the EU would have to re-examine its partnership with Russia if Moscow did not respect a cease-fire agreement.
Sarkozy, whose country holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, also confirmed that he will visit Moscow next week.
“We will be asking Russia to ensure the full and scrupulous respect of the (cease-fire) plan,” he said. “The EU would welcome a real partnership with Russia that is in the interests of all, but it takes two to tango. You have to be two to have a partnership.
“Therefore this crisis means that we have to re-examine our relationship with Russia.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, accused the U.S. of pushing Poland and the ex-Soviet Baltic states to demand tougher sanctions against Russia, AP reported.
“It is clear who the losing side is: the policy pursued by the Polish president and his Baltic co-thinkers,” Rogozin said.
They acted as “the advocates of Washington’s line to undermine pan-European cooperation,” he was quoted as saying.
EU leaders met Monday in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss how to react to Russia’s recognition of the breakaway Georgia regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
Source: CNN, August 2008
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/02/russia.georgia.summit.sanctions/index.html
A New Model Army
September 1, 2008
Russia’s military may be no match for NATO’s. But it doesn’t have to be.
The Russian army on the March is a terrifying sight—part Stalingrad, part Mad Max. In the Georgian town of Gori late last month, Russia’s advance guard rode freshly painted tanks and armored personnel carriers in neat formation, crushing barriers and rolling over the Georgian Army with ease. “Behind the vanguard trailed Chechen and Ossetian irregulars in beards, skullcaps and running shoes, riding dirty Ladas and Soviet ambulances. Russian officials shrugged off reports of looting, calling it a “tradition of war.” Some things, in other words, haven’t changed. But for all that there was no denying that the Russians won with ease—and that in itself shows that something is going right with Russia’s military machine.
Remember that just a decade ago this same Army was humiliated by a gang of Chechen rebels. Now the Russian steamroller is back in business, and able to execute the plans of an increasingly ambitious Kremlin. Last week, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced he was recognizing the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he said that he “wasn’t afraid” of a new cold war. That may have been empty swagger—analysts agree that Russia is still very far from being able to take on NATO. But it is slowly and steadily creating an Army more than capable of dominating its own backyard.
As with most things in Russia today, the change is in part because of the country’s vast new oil wealth. In 2006, then President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a $200 billion military overhaul. Annual budgets were increased to $40 billion a year, up from $15 billion in 2000, when Putin came to power. This money has been used for better training and morale-boosting measures like better pay and perks. Deputy Head of the Russian General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn says that the lessons of defeat in Afghanistan and Chechnya have been obvious for years—but “there were no resources” to capitalize on them. “Now,” he says, “a new era has started.” Russia’s military today is “a reinvented institution and a military force to be reckoned with,” says retired British general Sir Michael Rose.
The architect of the military revolution is Anatoly Serdyukov, a chubby 46-year-old former lawyer who managed a chain of St. Petersburg furniture stores before being recruited by his old friend Putin to reform Russia’s armed forces in February 2007. According to defense analyst Ruslan Pukhov of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, in the year and a half since Serdyukov became Defense minister, the Army has seen “one grandiose scandal after another.” But that’s meant as a compliment: hired to end corruption and inefficiency, Serdyukov has delivered by firing nearly a third of the top officers of the Central Military Administration, selling off billions of dollars worth of land and real estate and launching an anticorruption audit soon after his appointment last year. Just days later, Viktor Vlasov, a general responsible for providing apartments to officers, shot himself with his own engraved Makarov pistol, and dozens of top-level resignations followed, including Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky. Their replacements are considered by analysts to be more forward-thinking, better trained and younger.
Perhaps Serdyukov’s most important move has been to take on the military’s insistence on universal conscription. In reality, only 8 percent of eligible Russian youths have served in recent years, but fines on draft dodgers provided income for corrupt officers, says Ella Polyakova of the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg. The old system was so badly managed that, as the Air Force’s commander in chief, Col. Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov, complained last year, up to a third of recruits were “mentally unfit, drug addicts or imbeciles.”
Serdyukov didn’t scrap conscription altogether, but he reduced compulsory service from 18 months to 12. By 2010 he hopes that 70 percent of Russia’s soldiers will be volunteers. He’s also moved to crack down on egregious abuses, such as officers forcing conscripts into prostitution. “[Serdyukov] has never fought or smelled partianki [foot wraps Russian soldiers wear instead of socks],” says Pukhov. “But he knows that to win modern wars the Russian Army needs brigades of professional soldiers.”
Ossetia showed Serdyukov’s cleaned-up Army in action. Only volunteer soldiers with at least two years’ training were used there. The 58th Army managed to deploy 23,000 troops to the region within 12 hours of the commencement of Georgia’s shelling the Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali—a huge improvement over the 10 days it took Russia to respond when Chechen rebels invaded Dagestan in 1999. According to independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, the quick deployment owed to the fact that the operation had been war-gamed extensively since April. Russian engineers had also repaired railway lines deep into Abkhazia to allow the faster movement of Russian armor.
While the invasion went smoothly, however, the tactics used were old fashioned. Tank columns trundled slowly down a single road—and would have been massacred had they faced a modern Western military. Analysts say that coordination between Russia’s forces was also dismal, with aircraft operating almost independently. The Russians, in addition, inexplicably used Tu-22 strategic bombers for reconnaissance and to strafe ground targets. And communications and field intelligence were less than impressive: one Russian officer asked a NEWSWEEK reporter if she could lend him a Georgian SIM card for his phone; he also asked if she knew where the nearest Georgian front lines were (the latter request was politely declined).
In many ways, however, these shortcomings were beside the point. Today’s Kremlin doesn’t need a world-beating Army—just one that’s better than Moscow’s planned adversaries, namely the weak, post-Soviet states on Russia’s periphery. Much of Serdyukov’s overhaul has been remedial, aimed at facilitating the execution of basic strategies. The Kremlin is in no position to take on NATO. Yet it may not need to. According to a gloomy analysis circulated last week by the NATO college in Rome, “Moscow is likely to see NATO as a paper tiger unable either to provide real support to its partners or to respond to conflict in the wider Euro-Atlantic area.”
That may be overstating things; in terms of cold military force, NATO remains vastly superior, outspending Russia (despite Moscow’s budget boost) by a factor of more than 20. Russia does produce some good hardware, such as the air-defense systems coveted Iran and Syria, and its attack helicopters and fighter-bombers are relatively modern, says Felgenhauer. But “Russian conventional forces are still decades behind most NATO countries,” says one NATO military attaché in Moscow not authorized to speak on the record. Moreover, recent NATO advances in command-and-control systems, the integration of battlefield intelligence with air cover and electronic surveillance “leave Russia standing,” the attaché says.
But if Moscow’s right, it needn’t worry. To regain its old dominion, all Russia need do is get its old military machine up and running again. And the signs are that’s just what it’s done. Steamrollers may not be agile, subtle or fast. But as Georgia showed, they do a very good job crushing most anything that gets in their way.
Source: Newsweek, September 2008
www.newsweek.com/id/156314/page/2
HRW: Georgia Admits Using Cluster Bombs
September 1, 2008
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on September 1 that Georgia had admitted to using cluster bombs during the hostilities in South Ossetia, The Associated Press and AFP reported.
A Georgian Defense Ministry official told Civil.Ge that an official statement on the report was expected later on Monday.
HRW said it had received an official letter from the Georgian Defense Ministry, acknowledging the use of M85 cluster munitions near the Roki Tunnel, which links breakaway South Ossetia to Russia’s North Ossetian Republic.
HRW said on August 15 its researchers had uncovered evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas in Georgia
HRW representatives held a joint news conference with Georgian Interior Ministry officials in Tbilisi on August 21, both warning of the danger of unexploded cluster bombs, left by Russian forces.
“Many people have died because of Russia’s use of cluster munitions in Georgia, even as Moscow denied it had used this barbaric weapon,” Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at HRW, said in a statement on August 21. “Many more people could be killed or wounded unless Russia allows professional de-mining organizations to enter at once to clean the affected areas.”
Source: Civil.Ge, September 2008
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19363
Russia says US May Have Sent Weapons to Georgia
September 1, 2008
Russia is suggesting U.S. ships that brought humanitarian aid to Georgia may have also carried weapons.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said such suspicions are among the motives for Russia’s call for an arms embargo against Georgia.
Nesterenko told a news conference there are “suppositions” that the cargo of U.S. military ships that have brought aid for war-battered Georgia may also have included “military components.”
Nesterenko also said that Russia would welcome an international police presence and more Western military observers in what is now a Russian-controlled zone around South Ossetia, the focus of the war earlier this month. But he indicated it will be a long time before Russia is ready to reduce its military presence.
Russia warned the West on Monday against supporting Georgia’s leadership and called for an arms embargo against the ex-Soviet republic nation until a different government is in place.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks are likely to anger the United States and Europe and enrage Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. He made it clear Moscow wants Saakashvili out of power in Georgia.
“If instead of choosing their national interests and the interests of the Georgian people, the United States and its allies choose the Saakashvili regime, this will be a mistake of truly historic proportions,” he said.
“For a start it would be right to impose an embargo on weapons to this regime, until different authorities turn Georgia a normal state,” he said in an address at Russia’s top foreign policy graduate school.
Lavrov spoke as the European Union prepared for a summit Monday to discuss the Georgia crisis and further relations with Russia.
“Today’s EU summit should clear up a great deal. We hope the choice they make will be based on Europe’s fundamental interests,” he said. He said Russia’s relations with NATO are facing a “moment of truth.”
Russia’s ties to the West have been driven to their lowest point since the Soviet collapse of 1991 by the war last month in Georgia, where Saakashvili angered Moscow by courting the West and seeking NATO membership.
Russia repelled a Georgian offensive against the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia and sent troops, tanks and bombers deep into undisputed Georgian territory, where some still maintain positions. Moscow last week recognized South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent countries.
The U.S. and Europe have accused Russia of using disproportionate force and of violating the terms of a cease-fire that called for the sides to withdraw their forces to pre-conflict positions. They have also denounced Russia’s recognition of the separatist regions, saying Georgia’s borders must remain intact.
Russia says it was provoked. Russian peacekeeping forces were stationed in South Ossetia before the war and Moscow had given most of South Ossetia’s residents Russian passports in recent years, enabling the Kremlin to argue that it was defending its citizens when it responded to Georgia’s Aug. 7 offensive in the separatist province.
“With its reaction to the Georgian aggression, Russia has set a certain standard of responding that fully complies with international law,” Lavrov said. Russian soldiers, he said, followed “our deeply Christian tradition of dying for our friends.”
The reactions of some Western countries to the crisis “illustrates a deficit of morality,” he said. “It’s high time for Europe to get back to simple, non-politicized and non-geopolitical values,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov reserved particular criticism for the United States, which has trained Georgian troops, saying such aid had failed to give the U.S. sufficient leverage to restrain the Georgian government.
Instead, he said, “It encouraged the irresponsible and unpredictable regime in its gambles.”
While Western governments have expressed regret at the Georgian offensive targeting South Ossetia, the Russian call for an arms embargo on a nation still bristling with Russian forces is likely to irritate the U.S. and Europe.
Lavrov’s remarks will likely deepen Georgian suspicions that Russia’s aim throughout the crisis has been to remove the pro-Western Saakashvili from power.
European Union leaders seeking to punish Russia for its war with Georgia and its recognition of independence for two breakaway Georgian provinces have few options and are likely to choose diplomatic pressure to isolate Moscow at their summit Monday.
Lavrov’s implication that continued support for Saakashvili would further undermine relations with Russia were the latest in a bitter back-and-forth between Moscow and the West, with each saying it is up to the other to avoid plunging the world into a new Cold War.
“It’s up to Russia today to make a fundamental choice” and to engage neighbors and partners in settling disputes peacefully,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in a pre-summit letter to EU leaders. “Russia’s commitment to a relationship of understanding and cooperation with the rest of Europe is in doubt.”
Also on Monday, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that member nations are preparing to send hundreds of civilian monitors to Georgia to verify whether Russian forces are complying with a cease-fire agreement.
He said the observers would be deployed initially across areas controlled by Georgian forces.
“We would like to have the … mission deployed soon,” Solana said, adding he hoped EU nations approve the plan in the coming weeks.
Source: The Associated Press, August 2008