Medvedev ‘Would Attack Georgia Even If On NATO Track’
September 12, 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said that even if Georgia were on a firm path to NATO membership, he would not hesitate to attack it under circumstances similar to last month’s conflict.
Speaking to the annual meeting of the Valdai Club, a group of Russia experts, Medvedev also said he believed that Georgia’s August 8 attack on the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia was Russia’s equivalent of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
“Immediately after the events in the Caucasus, it occurred to me that August 8 was for us almost what 9/11 was for the United States,” Medvedev said.
The Kremlin leader again attacked NATO’s plans for further expansion into neighboring Ukraine and Georgia. He said putting these countries on an official track to membership would not help them in the event of another conflict with Russia.
After The Georgian Crisis, The Breaking Of Europe
September 12, 2008
The European Union is in danger of becoming the greatest long-term casualty of the Russian-Georgian conflict.
The EU’s foreign policy apparatus has been exposed as ineffectual, its minor diplomatic victories as nothing more than window-dressing covering up major strategic reverses. The bloc’s vision of peaceful integration through democratic and economic reforms, which enabled it to transform the eastern half of the continent over the past decade, now has a serious question mark hanging over it. August 8 — the day Russian troops entered Georgia — was in a sense Europe’s 9/11, regardless of parallel claims for Russia made by President Dmitry Medvedev.
Alternatively, as Timothy Garton Ash predicts in “The Guardian” of September 11, 8/8 may become shorthand for a very low point in the history of the “liberal international order.” Garton Ash’s liberal world order has, of course, been inextricably intertwined with the rise of the EU as a global actor. Little changed in Russia itself on 8/8, but for Europe, “reality changed,” as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner put it on September 6 after crisis talks in Avignon with his EU counterparts.
In the wake of 8/8, the EU’s illusions of emancipation have been rudely shattered and the bloc’s capabilities found desperately wanting. U.S. security guarantees remain a “vital national interest” for all European countries, one of the EU’s preeminent foreign policy strategists, Robert Cooper, concluded in a recent interview with RFE/RL.
Quite plainly, the EU lacks adequate mechanisms for coping with this kind of crisis. In its efforts to be taken seriously by Russia, it has failed to come up with a realistic strategy to counter Moscow’s aggression.
The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy has turned out to be a institutional fiction. Instead, the EU has had to resort to emergency meetings and ad hoc diplomacy. There was no place, for example, for the bloc’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana at the side of French President Nicolas Sarkozy when the latter traveled to Moscow on August 12 as the head of the country that currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
Worse, the EU is nearly paralyzed by a fragmentation of the will, a condition which was in ample evidence at the EU-Ukraine summit in Paris on September 9. On that occasion, in a feat of extreme verbal contortionism, the EU promised Ukraine everything but a guaranteed prospect of membership. Most EU member states fear Ukraine may already face a real threat from Russia, yet the bloc’s strategic interests were nowhere in sight at the ambassadorial meetings in Brussels preceding the summit, where the Netherlands and other member states skeptical of enlargement argued that giving Ukraine a binding pledge of membership would be too unpopular back home.
Neither has the EU done anything to match the U.S. diplomatic “surge” in which top State Department officials have visited Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, not to mention Georgia. Again, the bloc’s 27 member states have conspicuously failed to marshal the requisite collective resolve.
True, the EU has had some success in mediating an end to the conflict itself. On September 8, Sarkozy returned from a second foray to Moscow with a promise of a phased withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia following the deployment of 200 EU civilian monitors.
The EU has, in fact, been the only outside mediator. Its successes, however, remain questionable. Thus, it is arguable that the EU has in effect allowed Russia to get away with a gross breach of international law and cement its de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The price of Russian withdrawal for Georgia has been the increasing Russian entrenchment in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. EU officials admit privately that Russia is using its checkpoints in Georgia as a disposable bargaining chip in exchange for more permanent gains in the breakaway provinces.
The EU has also allowed itself to become entangled in seemingly endless disputes with Russia over the small print in the terms it has managed to extract, enabling Moscow to play for time and sow confusion. In the latest installment, Russia now says it never promised to pull its troops out of “independent” South Ossetia or Abkhazia, or to allow EU observers into those provinces.
Nicolas Sarkozy went on record on September 8 as saying all Russian troops must withdraw by October 15 to where they were stationed prior to August 8. As this is unlikely to happen, the EU has simply prepared the ground for another standoff next month — something for which Russia appears to have an insatiable appetite.
Meanwhile, South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s secession has become a fait accompli and a dangerous precedent for Russia’s other neighbors, some of them EU member states who take that threat very seriously. Even though Finland has traditionally been difficult to alarm, its president, Tarja Halonen, went on record as telling the French daily “Le Monde” of September 11 that “we cannot rule out a military conflict in our region.” She also pointedly observed to “Helsingin Sanomat” on August 27 that “Finland is one of the few countries in Europe capable of defending itself militarily.”
The scheduled talks in Geneva on October 15 on security and stability in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are likely to become a further bone of contention. Moscow insists that representatives from both republics should attend those talks as equal participants, while the EU has said that cannot be allowed.
The EU is quite simply out of its depth in this crisis and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. There can be little better demonstration of this than the fact — as an EU diplomat told RFE/RL — that the delegation led by Sarkozy felt compelled to ask Medvedev on September 8 whether Russia is planning to unilaterally redraw the borders of any other neighboring countries. The Russian response was to deny any such intention and to affirm that “Russia is not the Soviet Union.”
Source; RFE/RL, September 2008
www.rferl.org/content/The_Breaking_Of_Europe/1199463.html
Diplomat: Russia Stalling Over Georgia Observers
September 12, 2008
Talks with Russia on sending additional international monitors to keep tabs on South Ossetia and Abkhazia collapsed Friday, a senior Western diplomat said, warning that Moscow’s hard-line stance had thrown into question its pledge to withdraw troops.
The official, who has been intimately involved in three weeks of negotiations, accused Russia of stalling for time in an effort to keep observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe out of the two breakaway regions.
“It has become clear that Russia doesn’t want any agreement. I think they’re afraid of what the observers will see,” the diplomat told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the talks.
Putin Defends Russian Attack on Georgia’s Army
September 11, 2008
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin insisted Thursday that Russia has no intention of encroaching on the sovereignty of Georgia after a brief war that left Russian troops in firm control of two breakaway regions.
Putin also aggressively defended the decision to invade Georgia, saying Russia had to act after Georgia attacked South Ossetia on Aug. 7.
“In this situation were we supposed to just wipe away bloody snot and hang our heads?” he asked a visiting group of Western scholars and journalists over lunch.
Putin often uses earthy language when he wants to make a point, and the contents of noses are a favorite image.
Striking out at the West for questioning Russia’s use of overwhelming force, he said Russia could not have been expected to use a “pocket knife” or “sling shot” to counter Georgia’s U.S.-trained army.
“When tanks, multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery are used against us, are we supposed to fire with sling shots?” Putin asked his Western visitors. “What is an adequate use of force?”
But his comments came as an international human rights group said Georgia’s assault was far less deadly than had been asserted.
Fewer than 100 civilians died in South Ossetia during last month’s war, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. Russia and its South Ossetian allies have contended some 1,500 civilians were killed in the region.
Putin also said the West was wrong to claim Russia has imperial ambitions. Russia has “no wish or grounds to encroach on the sovereignty of former Soviet republics,” he said.
Putin spoke as Russia rushed to counter claims that it intended to annex South Ossetia.
Speaking to the same group of Western experts earlier in the day, South Ossetia’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, said that union with Russia was his region’s goal, a statement that threatened to undermine part of Russia’s justification for military intervention.
Kokoity quickly reversed himself.
“I have probably been misunderstood,” he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. “We are not going to relinquish our independence, which we won at the cost of colossal sacrifices, and South Ossetia is not going to become part of Russia.”
Russia recognized South Ossetia as an independent nation, along with another separatist region, Abkhazia, after last month’s war with Georgia over the regions. Both have had de-facto independence for more than a decade since breaking away from Georgian control during fighting in the early 1990s.
Many have expected that Russia would ultimately seek to absorb South Ossetia and unite its residents with their ethnic brethren in North Ossetia. Kokoity acknowledged as much Thursday.
“Yes, many in South Ossetia are talking about reunification with North Ossetia within Russia, and nobody can ban expressing such ideas,” he was quoted as saying.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quick to counter Kokoity’s initial statement.
“South Ossetia is not intending to link up with anybody,” he told reporters in Warsaw, Poland. “They have understood that without a declaration of independence, they cannot ensure their own security.”
War broke out after Georgian troops launched an offensive to retake South Ossetia. Russian forces then routed Georgia’s military and drove deep into Georgia.
Russia has agreed to withdraw all its troops from positions outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia within about a month, but has said it will keep 7,600 soldiers inside the two regions.
Russian annexation of South Ossetia would infuriate Georgians, who remain determined to bring both regions under government control.
It would also weaken Russia’s arguments for invading South Ossetia, by giving the impression that Russia had been seeking to absorb South Ossetia all along.
Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, said Thursday that Russia invaded his country to derail its bid to join NATO, a move that angered the Kremlin. He urged the alliance not reject Georgia, warning that showing weakness would encourage further Russian aggression.
“If NATO sends a sign of weakness — and clearly this invasion was intended to deter, to scare NATO away — if NATO gets scared away, then this will be a never-ending story,” Saakashvili said during an interview with The Associated Press.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he is considering setting up peacekeeping missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The possibility, Ban said, comes after “almost daily contact with world leaders” on the Russian occupation of Georgian territory weeks after last month’s five-day war.
Source: The Associated Press, September 2008
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080911/ap_on_re_eu/russia_georgia
Putin: Russia had to Invade Georgia
September 11, 2008
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has harshly defended Russian war in Georgia and he insisted that Russia was not trying to annex former Soviet republics.
Putin said Russia had to take strong military action after Georgia attacked the breakaway province of South Ossetia on August 7.
“In this situation were we supposed to just wipe away bloody snot and hang our heads?” he asked a group of Western foreign policy experts during a meeting in Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea coast. Putin often uses earthy language when he wants to make a point.
Putin said a failure to act would have encouraged turmoil in Russia’s North Caucasus, a patchwork of republics and numerous ethnic groups, including the Chechens.
He struck out at the West for questioning Russia’s use of overwhelming force against its small neighbor.
“When tanks, multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery are used against us, are we supposed to fire with sling shots?” Putin asked his Western visitors. “What is an adequate use of force?”
Putin also said the West was wrong to claim that Russia has imperial ambitions. Russia has “no wish or grounds to encroach on the sovereignty of former Soviet republics,” he said.
Source: CNN, September 2008
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/11/russia.georgia.putin.ap/index.html
Abkhazia Looks to Join Belarus-Russia Alliance
September 11, 2008
President Sergey Bagapsh, of the newly independent republic of Abkhazia, has announced it will apply to join the Union of Russia and Belarus. He also signalled Abkhazia’s intention to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
“After signing the required agreements and documents we will make an application to join as a union state. If the CIS expands, we are ready to join it, as well as the CSTO,” said Bagapsh.
He made the announcement at a Sochi press conference attended by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Russia recognised the independence of Abkhazia on August 26. Belarus has yet to do so, but the country’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has said he will consider the matter after the Belarus elections at the end of September. Belarus must recognize Abkhazia as an independent state before it can admit it into any political alliance.
The Union of Russia and Belarus functions as a platform for economic and political harmonisation between the two nations, and has put forward plans for a common currency and customs regime.
Link to Story:
www.russiatoday.com/news/news/30272
Link to Video:
www.russiatoday.com/news/news/30272/video
Source: Russia Today, September 2008
South Ossetia May Intend to Join RF
September 11, 2008
South Ossetia intends to become part of Russia, the republic’s president, Eduard Kokoity, told the international Valdai Club. “We do not intend to make an independent Ossetia,” Kokoity said. Rather, he explained, South Ossetia will unite with North Ossetia. Kokoity stated that the West promised to recognize an independent Tskhinvali, if an independent Ossetia was created from the North, which is part of Russia, and the South.
“Western experts, political scientists, proposed that we convince North Ossetia to secede from Russia. They promised recognition before Kosovo,” Kokoity said. He did not answer a foreign journalist’s question about how long South Ossetia would be able to remain independent, preferring to say that the most important thing for North and South Ossetia is the restoration of historical justice.
“It is more a humanitarian problem than a political problem,” Kokoity said, adding that the unification of North and South Ossetia is the only way to preserve the nation. “I would be very glad if we were part of Russia,” he said.
Later, according to the Interfax information agency, Kokoity contradicted himself and stated that South Ossetia will remain independent. A number of South Ossetian officials have said that the republic will become part of Russia within several years.
Source: Kommersant, September 2008
www.kommersant.com/p-13194/Russia_Georgia_South_Ossetia_conflict/
Abkhazia Expects Deal On Russian Military Bases
September 11, 2008
Abkhazia will sign an agreement with Moscow establishing Russian military bases in the province following its decision to break away from Georgia, its leader has said.
President Sergei Bagapsh criticized Georgia’s efforts to join NATO, saying this would threaten the whole northern Caucasus region, and said Abkhazia might join the loose Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
“We will enter into a military agreement with the Russian Federation to protect ourselves against aggression,” Bagapsh told reporters in Sochi, a Black Sea resort in Russia. “It will be an agreement about the deployment of military bases on the territory of Abkhazia. After a political agreement we will sign a military agreement about bases, also in our sea ports.”
Helsinki Commission Casts Critical Eye On Russia’s ‘Power Politics’
September 11, 2008
Calling it “one of the most important hearings the Helsinki Commission is conducting this year,” U.S. Senator Ben Cardin led an inquiry into what Russia’s invasion of Georgia means for U.S.-Russian relations and European security.
Cardin (Democrat-Maryland) is co-chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, an independent government agency that monitors compliance with the agreements of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The commission held a hearing in Washington on September 10 that looked at the Russian invasion of Georgia and “the return of power politics.”
The commission is made up of nine members from the Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the State, Defense, and Commerce departments. Among the questions legislators wanted to know were what leverage the United States has against Russia and whether Russia is sending a larger signal about its intentions toward other countries.
One of Cardin’s first questions for Matt Bryza, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, followed Bryza’s testimony that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was told by her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that by its military action, Russia had hoped to unseat the democratically elected government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli.
Cardin called that “deeply disturbing” and asked whether Georgia’s domestic politics had been destabilized since the crisis began.
‘That’s Not Relevant’
Bryza said the Georgian people, including opposition leaders, have rallied behind their government. He said the United States “categorically rejects” the prospect that Russia might succeed in its goal of destabilizing the Georgian government, but added that the United States has no particular allegiance to Saakashvilli himself.
“I want to make clear that what we support is any democratically elected government of Georgia. Anyone,” Bryza said.
“We may be personally fond of or dislike current leaders in Georgia — that’s not relevant. What matters is that the Georgian people elected this leadership, and it is the Georgian people that must determine the political future of the country. There may be early elections. Who knows? There could be referendum. Whatever the Georgian people decide, in consultation with their elective leaders, is fine by the United States government, as long as it is the Georgian people deciding.”
Cardin also wanted to know whether Russia’s aggression toward Georgia signaled a change in its policy toward its other former republics, and he asked in particular about Ukraine.
Bryza said that in Ukraine, “all eyes are on Crimea,” the Black Sea peninsula where ethnic Russians outnumber Ukrainians and where many residents have been receiving hastily issued Russian passports over the past month. In Moscow, there has been talk recently that former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was wrong to cede the region to Ukraine.
Bryza said the United States “can only hope that those statements are no more than bluster.”
‘Serious Damage’
But on the question of what the United States could do if they prove to be more than that, Bryza echoed other White House officials who have said Russia is already paying a high cost for its actions. He said the country has lost $20 billion in investment since the Georgian invasion and suffered “serious reputational damage.” Any additional leverage the United States might have, he said, remains to be seen.
“We have leverage that can play itself out in a whole series of ways, in terms of reputation, in terms of economics, and you could go beyond that in terms of other measure that are being considered,” Bryza said.
“But for now, we don’t want to be sounding like we’re wagging our finger, raising threats. We don’t want to burn bridges. We want to escalate, if need be, prudently, whatever leverage we might employ, but always with the hope and the anticipation that at some point Russia will recognize the costs are simply too high of continuing on this path.”
Also appearing before the Helsinki Commission was Paul Goble, the director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. He told lawmakers “what has happened in Georgia was a disaster that was waiting to happen and that can be repeated elsewhere across the former Soviet space.”
“The reality,” Goble continued, “is that the border system that was created in Soviet times was intended to create tension and to justify authoritarianism. In 1991, the United States welcomed the end of authoritarianism but also said the borders could never change because we were concerned that that could tear things apart. The consequence of that was to delay this problem, but it is going to be a worse future, not a better one.”
Goble said across Eurasia, groups of ethnic minorities are “trapped” in countries they don’t feel a part of, and as a result, border tensions are rising in many places.
He advised U.S. lawmakers to consider adopting new foreign policies. One, to not recognize borders that are changed by force. Two, to expand U.S. ties to people of the post-Soviet region through the development of more exports. And three, to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the right of nations to self-determination.
Inviolability Of Borders
A representative from Russia had been invited to testify at the hearing but declined. Representing Georgia was David Bakradze, the speaker of the Georgian parliament, who told the panel that what is happening in Georgia is bigger than the fate of one small country because it “challenges basic principles of international security.”
By using military force in an attempt to change another country’s government, he said, Russia has threatened the cornerstone of European security — the inviolability of borders. Bakradze said the invasion had also strengthened Russia’s monopoly over European energy supplies.
He asked the panel to consider what kind of an international partner Russia would make, given that it has broken its own agreement to withdraw its forces from Georgia.
“I mean, how can Russia — able to make a decision to send tanks and troops to a neighboring country — be a reliable partner for the United States? Or for Europe?” he asked.
“So this is a fundamental question. How can Russia, which signs an agreement to withdraw from Georgia — and I refer to the six-point agreement — and confirms that the presidential signature is there, and they will implement this, and it is still not implemented. It was signed 29 days ago and still it is not implemented. How can Russia, which does not respect the signature of its own president, which doesn’t respect its own commitment, which does not respect international law, how can Russia be a reliable partner for the United States or for anybody else?”
Act Of War
Under questioning about why Saakashvilli had gone against “specific” U.S. advice not to engage Russia militarily, Bakradze confirmed that U.S. officials had warned Georgian leaders not to respond to Russian provocations. But he said that, to his knowledge, the United States never specifically advised against a Georgian move against Tskhinvalli, the capital of South Ossetia, because “there was never a plan to do so.”
At a certain point, Bakradze said, the provocations became an act of war that Georgia had to respond to, and he offered evidence that he said proves Russian tanks and troops entered Georgian territory on August 7 through the Roki Tunnel, the only road connecting North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation, to South Ossetia.
“At this point, this is still not public, but we have radio interceptions confirming Russian troops entering Georgian territory in the evening of August 7,” Bakradze said.
Bakradze called that “the turning point” where the Georgian government had to make the decision to defend its territory and respond.
Source: RFE/RL, September 2008
www.rferl.org/content/Helsinki_Commission_Casts_Critical_Eye_On_Russias_Power_Politics/1198019.html
South Ossetia Does Not Want to Join Russia, says Moscow
September 11, 2008
Leader of breakaway Georgian region backtracks on earlier statement of intent to become part of Russian Federation
South Ossetia does not want to become part of Russia, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said today, following a series of contradictory statements from Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian leader.
Kokoity was quoted by news agencies as telling a group of foreign policy experts Georgia’s breakaway province would join Russia. He later retracted the comments in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.
In trying to clear up matters during a visit to Warsaw, Lavrov later said: “South Ossetia doesn’t wish to join up with anyone.”