Georgia and Russia agree on basics around Sarkozy deal

Kurt Bassuener August 12th, 2008

The BBC is now reporting that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accepted the six-point plan brokered by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and accepted by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier today.  Yet apparently there are details agreed by Russia that Saakashvili would not accept - including talks on the future status of Abkhazia - and “deleted.”  Sarkozy says the current deal will be reviewed by the EU, of which France currenty holds the presidency, and the UN. 

Medvedev orders halt - but Georgia denies that operations cease

Kurt Bassuener August 12th, 2008

Earlier today, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced a halt to Russian operations in Georgia just before the arrival of French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Moscow. “The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored. The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised…You know, the difference between lunatics and other people is that when they smell blood it is very difficult to stop them. So you have to use surgery.”

The Russian and French Presidents announced a six-point plan to end the hostilities, withdraw forces to prewar positions, and open international talks on the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Of the deal, French President Sarkozy said:

“We don’t yet have peace. But we have a provisional cessation of hostilities. And everyone should be aware that this is considerable progress. There is still much work to be done….What we want is to secure the best result.”

Sarkozy is to present the plan in person in Tbilisi. 

Russia had already made clear that it wanted Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili out.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today, before the Medvedev announcement: “It would be best if he left…I don’t think Russia will feel like talking with Mr. Saakashvili after what he did to our citizens.”

On the actual effect in Tskhinvali, which was Russia’s cited reason for its massive attack, it does appear that the damage was severe, but casualties could not be confirmed.

Georgia claimed that aerial bombardment and artillery shelling continued after Medvedev’s order was delivered. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in a press conference this afternoon also claimed that he was receiving reports of civilians being interned at camps in Kurta and Vladikavkaz, and of summary executions of ethnic Georgians.  Georgia has also announced it will leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, a group of former Soviet republics dominated by Moscow.  Georgia has also initiated a case against Russia at the International Criminal Court.  At a rally today attended by an estimated 150,000, Saakashvili vowed that Russia would someday pay:

“I promise you today, that I’ll remind them of everything they have done and one day we will win”

Interestingly, Slovene Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel spotlighted the difficulty of arriving at a common EU position on the war. 

“The old EU members have rather moderate positions (towards Russia) while the younger ones, having had experiences with Russia in the past, feel more strongly.”

Reports today state that the President of Ukraine - Viktor Yushchenko, Poland - Lech Kaczynski, and their Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues were en route to Tbilisi.  President Kaczynski, who initiated the flight, said:

“This means the solidarity of five states with the nation that has fallen victim to aggression…We may say that the Russian state has once again shown its face, its true face…We are saddened by that but we must accept the facts of life.”

Even more worthy of note is the long list of assessments on the American position before the current war began - Dan Froomkin’s web column on the Washington Post site covers this in detail, referencing a report by Jonathan Landay of McClatchy papers that the US had discouraged action by Georgia, but thought it had a tacit understanding with Moscow that any reaction would be focused solely on South Ossetia:

“Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday…”

“But in the end, the warnings failed to stop the Georgian president — a Bush favorite — from launching an attack last week. . . .

“Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province’s capital, Tskhinvali…”

“At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

“‘We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,’ [a] State Department official said. ‘We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not.”

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Tom de Waal gives a plausible litany of the rapied downward spiral in his article: “South Ossetia - an Avoidable Catastrophe.”

It remains to be see whether Georgia accepts the terms of the cease fire deal arrived at by Medvedev and Sarkozy, but it seems given the correlation of forces, he has little alternative.

NATO ambassaadors met today in Brussels with Georgia’s representative to the alliance, and according the US Ambassador Kurt Volker, “Given the events in Georgia, many allies expressed the  sentiments that there cannot be business as usual with Russia.”  Yet NATO’s Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated that the “Bucharest communique” from the April NATO summit remains valid.  At that meeting, German and France shot down and effort by the US to formally invite Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, though it stated that one day they would be members.

Has Russia overplayed its hand?

Eric Witte August 11th, 2008

Over at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Andrew Wilson mourns the European Union’s disunity over Georgia prior to the outbreak of war. 

I think Wilson strikes the right balance in attributing the eruption of fighting to a mix of Mikheil Saakashvili’s blundering and Russia’s provocation:

“The South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali is surprisingly close to Tbilisi. But a quick campaign made no sense from Saakashvili’s position of weakness. He may have built up his armed forces with American help since 2004, but his most important assets are moral, although his image as the leader of a beleaguered democracy was already tarnished by his suppression of anti-government demonstrations in Tbilisi last November.

Saakashvili may have thought the Olympics Games would give him cover, especially as Putin was in Beijing and Russia hosts the next Winter Games just over the border in Sochi in 2014. But this only made him look duplicitous, especially as he announced a ceasefire just before launching the invasion.

The Georgian may therefore already be losing the all-important propaganda war. The Russians always thought Saakashvili would be easy to provoke and have been prodding and jabbing since the spring. A minority of Nato states may argue that the conflict increases the case for Georgian membership, but in others, scepticism is more likely to grow.”

But Wilson argues that it’s not only Georgia that has overplayed its hand.  Russia has as well:

“Both sides risk serious collateral damage: the Georgians to their Nato and EU ambitions, the Russians to President Medvedev’s proposals for a new security treaty in Europe and to their relations with the incoming US president. […] Both sides have miscalculated, but, for all the talk of “genocide”, both have incentives to step back from the brink.”

I’m much less optimistic that Russia has miscalculated in this situation.  I don’t see how prospects for a new security treaty in Europe or the vague lure of getting off to a good start with the new U.S. president will be enough to offset Russia’s interest in ousting a pesky pro-western leader on its border, re-asserting control over its “near abroad” and increasing its grip over Europe’s energy supplies.  Regarding the U.S. relationship, Ronald Asmus and Richard Holbrooke may be correct that Russia intends to oust Saakashvili before the American election so that ties can be perceived as being on the mend again by the time of the January 20 presidential inaguration.

Wilson calls on the EU to work with NATO, the OSCE, UN and U.S. to push for a truly international peacekeeping force.  From the context, he seems to mean that this force would replace the Russian-led “peacekeeping missions” in the two disputed regions.  From Moscow’s position of power right now, I find it hard to imagine any such concession. 

Putin’s master plan - all upsides for Moscow

Kurt Bassuener August 11th, 2008

Al Jazeera English just reported that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili just signed a ceasefire agreement with the French and Finnish Foreign Ministers, Bernard Kouchner and Alexander Stubb.  It has reportedly already been rejected by Russia.  The two men are now touring bomb damage in Gori on live TV with their Georgian counterpart.  They reportedly had to duck and cover from a Russian bombing sortie.

How much traction he will get with it is far from clear.  This action by Russia, while given a pretext by the Tskhinvali operation by the Georgians, was clearly in the works for some time, given the weight of force applied and the wide spread area of operations.  As Eric Witte noted earlier, the Russian government has been open about the desire to see Saakashvili ousted.  Vitali Churkin, the Russian UN Ambassador, said the following yesterday in a sharp exchange with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, accused Moscow of seeking “regime change” in Georgia and resisting attempts to make peace after days of deadly fighting.

“Is your government’s objective regime change in Georgia, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Georgia?” Khalilzad asked Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador.

Churkin said “regime change is an American expression. We do not use such an expression”.

But he added: “But sometimes there are occasions, and we know from history, that there are different leaders who come to power, either democratically or semi-democratically, and they become an obstacle.”

Putin, who is clearly and literally calling the shots, has only upsides from this increasingly ambitious attack within Georgia.  He bet - correctly - that there would be no active military response from the outside (and none is foreseeable).  He managed to paint Saakashvili as rash and irresponsible.  He is betting that ultimately Georgian domestic support for the government will wane as Russia continues its assault.  And he’s betting that this war will not only reduce the likelihood of Georgia getting into NATO, but reduce NATO and American credibility in Russia’s “near abroad” and beyond.  The US and NATO may come to be seen as an unreliable ally.

Georgians have asked what their troop deployment to Iraq got them, now that the US is not intervening in Georgia.  This is a fair and understandable question.   The term “ally” has been devalued in the past seven years through the Bush administration’s “with us or against us” approach, and expectation that NATO applicants should send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq - the latter a war none of these countries had a voice in choosing.  Allies are supposed to consult and listen to each other, and take each other’s interests into account before engaging in a conflict.  It is doubtful that Saakashvili did so before he sent troops into Tskhinvali.  Neither Tblisi or Washington had apparently planned for this eventuality, despite it being foreseeable. 

All the opprobrium of the international community has not made a dent in Russia’s plan to crush Georgia. 

Where are the red lines for Russia?

Eric Witte August 11th, 2008

As Russia pushes its ground forces into central Georgia, it’s not clear what its ultimate goals are.  According to Washington, Russia has made clear that it seeks to remove Mikheil Saakashvili.  Will Moscow stop there?  There’s a distinct danger that Vladimir Putin (and it seems fairly clear in all of this that from his prime minister’s perch, he’s still calling the shots) could try to move beyond sidelining the pro-western leadership of Georgia and look for a reason to turn on Ukraine.  For the West so far, it’s not clear what exactly can be done about Georgia without risking war with Russia.  The U.S. may try to fly back the 2,000 Georgian troops in Iraq, but what difference would that make - assuming Russia even allows the transport flight to land?  Russia will have 2,000 more targets: not much more than a speed bump. 

Looking past Georgia, perhaps NATO should think ahead and establish a clear red line with regard to Ukraine.  That way, it is Russia that would have to actively risk militarily provoking the West in order to expand the war into Ukraine, not the West having to decide following a potential Russian assault on Ukraine whether it wants to actively risk war with Russia.  

This wouldn’t do anything for Georgia, but could help to avoid worst-case scenarios. 

Russia defiantly continues its attacks in Georgia

Kurt Bassuener August 10th, 2008

The conflict that began in the Georgian breakaway enclave of South Ossetia on August 7 shows no sign of ending, with Russian aircraft bombarding targets well outside the conflict zone - outside the capital, in the Black Sea port of Poti, and in the city immediately south of South Ossetia, Gori, which had been a staging area for the Georgian effort to re-establish sovereignty over South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali.  Some of the best reporting comes from Al Jazeera English’s Jonah Hull, who has been in the conflict zone since before Saakashvili’s effort to retake South Ossetia, by interviewing refugees moving into North Ossetia, in Russia.  His footage of civilian casualties in Gori yesterday was bracing.

The conflict has now expanded to Georgia’s other separatist area, Abkhazia, which has called for UN military observers to leave, and has mobilized its armed forces to approach its self-declared borders and itself declared a state of war, citing an “obligation” to support South Ossetia.  Georgia claims thousands Russian troops have landed in Abkhazia, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, based at Sevastopol in Ukraine’s Crimea, is establishing a blockade off the Georgian coast - though Moscow denies this is the case.

Georgia is calling for a ceasefire, but Russia has not yet taken them up on it, apparently aiming to secure both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Georgia declares that is is withdrawing its forces from Tskhinvali, but Russia disputes this - a BBC correspondent claimed that there was still some combat going on.  US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad claimed that Russian forces were preventing the withdrawal of the Georgian troops.  Russia is demanding a unilateral withdrawal of Georgian forces from South Ossetia and a signed agreemement with South Ossetia of non-aggression as conditions for a cease fire.  Russian UN Ambassador Vitali Churkin was in rare form in the UNSC today, asking whether 2000 civilian casualties and tens of thousands of refugees constituted a genocide, and mused whether the Georgians thought Russian peacekeepers in a pre-conflict joint force would have “run away” like those in Srebrenica…

In his speech to announce a state of war yesterday, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called on the West to assist Georgia with acts, not words, and repeatedly cited Georgian democracy and international values.  Russia, too, is citing international standards, claiming this operation is “peace enforcement” and ”humanitarian intervention,” using terms to mimic those employed in 1999 with regard to the NATO operation in Kosovo.  Vitali Churkin made this link directly in rebutting Khalilzad’s criticism of attacks outside the conflict zone, citing bombing of Belgrade in 1999.

Russia seems to have been waiting for a pretext to “teach Georgia a lesson” for some time, annoyed by its persistent efforts to get into NATO and the EU, and citing Kosovo as a precedent for its intervention.  Prime Minister Putin is firmly in charge, arriving directly in North Ossetia from the Olympics in Beijing to command the operation.  He may even be aiming to get Saakashvili ousted from within.  That does not look in the immediate offing. 

But what does seem clear is that Saakashvili dramatically miscalculated his position when he attempted to seize Tskhinvali, and gave Russia the rope to hang him with.  His calls for international support are being met only in the diplomatic realm, but it is hard to see what else he could have expected when picking a fight with his much stronger and increasingly assertive neighbor.  Far from drawing closer to the EU and NATO, the war that Georgia has stumbled into makes these goals that much less likely.

Yet without a doubt, calling the Russian military action “disproportionate” is accurate.  Putin senses there is no external will to resist his drive, and he’s certainly correct.  But the Russian war in Georgia may have the opposite consequence than Putin intended, convincing other neighbors of the need to get into binding arrangements with the West, rather than deterring them.