Putin's Wars (44 page)
This information came in the summer of 2012, a year after, quite unexpectedly, we
were allowed already a glimpse inside the Kremlin’s kitchen. On August 5, 2012, a
few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary
film “
8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den
” (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube.
[41]
In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev
of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the
other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev’s critics,
retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief
of the General Staff, “a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev
was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military
action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance.”
[42]
It is clear that these new facts support the interpretation, defended in this book,
that, far from being a spontaneous Russian reaction to rescue its peacekeepers and
“prevent a genocide,” the Russian invasion of August 2008 was a carefully planned
operation. After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army
General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It
was prepared “at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007,” he said.
[43]
Interestingly, Putin also said “that the decision to ‘use the armed forces’ had
been considered for three days—from around 5 August,”
[44]
which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only
reacted
to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy
weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary
units were trained to support the Russian invading troops. Pavel Felgenhauer commented:
NotesThe “Lost Day” film and the comments by Putin and Medvedev have revealed a great deal:
that the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 was indeed a preplanned aggression and
that so-called “Russian peacekeepers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in fact the
vanguard of the invading forces that were in blatant violation of Russia’s international
obligations and were training and arming the separatist forces. The admission by Putin
that Ossetian separatist militias acted as an integral part of the Russian military
plan transfers legal responsibility for acts of ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians
and mass marauding inside and outside of South Ossetia to the Russian military and
political leadership. Putin’s admission of the prewar integration of the Ossetian
separatist militias into the Russian General Staff war plans puts into question the
integrity of the independent European Union war report, written by Swiss diplomat
Heidi Tagliavini that accused the Georgians of starting the war and attacking Russian
“peacekeepers,” which, according to Tagliavini, warranted a Russian military response.
[45]
“Georgia Conflict: Key Statements,”
BBC News
(August 19, 2008).
“The Georgian War: Minute by Minute, August 9,”
Russia Today
(August 9, 2008).
http://rt.com/news/the-georgian-war-minute-by-minute-august-9/
.
“South Ossetia Conflict FAQs,”
RIA Novosti
(September 17, 2008).
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20080917/
.
Charles Clover, “Civilian Deaths Put at 133,”
Financial Times
(August 21, 2008).
“Ustanovlenyy lichnosti 162 pogibshikh zhiteley Yuzhnoy Osetii: SKP RF,”
RIA Novosti
(December 23, 2008).
http://www.rian.ru/society/20081223/157895855.html
.
Another example of such a prepared attack was the accusation made immediately after
the fighting that Georgia had destroyed protected historical buildings in Tskhinvali.
“For Russia’s part, which until now showed little interest in South Ossetia’s cultural
heritage, acts of destruction are [used] particularly as an argument to denounce Georgia
as a war criminal,” wrote the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
(Holm, Kerstin. “Brüder als Barbaren: Russland empört sich über die Zerstörung von
Kulturdenkmälern in Südossetien,”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(August 16, 2008).)
Quoted in “Put Out Even More Flags,”
The Economist
(August 30, 2008).
Robert Amsterdam, “Andrei Piontkovsky and the Doppelgänger Theory” (September 26,
2007).
http://www.robertamsterdam.com
.
Zhirinovsky,
Poslednyy brosok na yug
, 132.
Kovalev, “Putin’s War.”
Luke Harding, “Russia’s Cruel Intention,”
The Guardian
(September 1, 2008).
“Eduard Kokoity: My tam prakticheski vyrovnyali vse,”
Kommersant
(August 15, 2008).
“Russian Invasion of Georgia: The Facts on Ethnic Cleansing of Georgians during the
Russian Invasion and Occupation,”
Georgia Update
website (October 8, 2008).
http://georgiaupdate.gov.ge/
.
“Georgia: Russian Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians,”
Human Rights Watch
(August 15, 2008).
The Russian Ministry of Defense denied in a news release on August 16, 2008, that
it had used the Iskander missile in South Ossetia. Because the missile landed in Gori,
which is situated
outside
South Ossetia, the Iskander missile may well have been used there. (Cf. “Up In Flames:
Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia,”
Human Rights Watch
, New York (January 2009) 113).
Latynina, “200 km. tankov. O rossiysko-gruzinskoy voyne. Chast 2.”
“Verslag onderzoeksmissie Storimans,”
Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken
, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
“Kamerbrief inzake het verslag van de onderzoekscommissie Storimans,”
Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken
, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
“Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over
South Ossetia,” 113.
Quoted in Nico Hines, “Russia Accused of Dropping Cluster Bombs on Georgian Civilians,”
The Times
(August 15, 2008).
“Georgia: More Cluster Bomb Damage Than Reported,”
Human Rights Watch
, (November 4, 2008). Georgia also used cluster bombs in the conflict, but, unlike
Russia, it did not deny this. In the same report
Human Rights Watch
wrote that in the case of Georgia there was probably no intent to hit the civilian
population. Georgian Israeli-made M85 cluster bombs did not land in villages as a
result of an intentional strike, but probably due to a failure of the (equally Israeli-
supplied) Mk-4 rockets that fell down before reaching their goal.
Paul A. Goble makes a useful difference between
mis
infomation and
dis
information. “Misinformation,” he wrote, “the spread of complete false reports is
the less serious threat. Typically, reportage that is completely false is not only
easily identified but quickly challenged. But disinformation is another matter. .
. disinformation almost always involves the careful mixing of obvious truths with
falsehoods in a way that many will either find plausible or, at the very least, impossible
to check.” (Paul A. Goble, “Defining Victory and Defeat: The Information War Between
Russia and Georgia,” in
The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia
, eds. Cornell and Starr, 189–90.)
“Georgia Conflict: Key Statements.”
“South Ossetia conflict FAQs,”
RIA Novosti
(September 17, 2008).
Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.
François Paulhac,
Les accords de Munich et les origines de la guerre de 1939
(Paris: Vrin, 1998), 139.
Pavel Felgenhauer, “After August 7: The Escalation of the Russia: Georgia War,” in
The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia
, eds. Cornell and Starr, 172–173.
Illarionov, “Another Look at the August War,” 1.
Paul Kennedy,
The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865–1980
(London: Fontana Press, 1989), 294.
“EU Must be United and Firm on Russia,”
Financial Times
(September 1, 2008).
On this lukewarm response, see Marcel H. Van Herpen, “Russia, Georgia, and the European
Union: The Creeping Finlandization of Europe,”
The Cicero Foundation
(September 2008).
http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Marcel_H_Van_Herpen_Russia_Georgia_and_the_European_Union.pdf
.
Hélène Carrère d’Encausse,
La Russie entre deux mondes
(Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2010), 291.
Carrère d’Encausse,
La Russie entre deux mondes
, 293.
On September 11, 2008, during a meeting of the Valdai Club with Vladimir Putin in
Sochi, Carrère d’Encausse asked Putin if he would respond positively to Kokoity’s
demand for integration of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation. She wrote: “Vladimir
Putin answered with the greatest firmness that such a hypothesis was excluded. He
explained that if Russia in this specific case was unable to ignore the will of the
Ossetian people to be independent, it was firm regarding the principles of respecting
the inviolability of existing frontiers. This principle, according to him, applied
without exception to the Russian Federation which could not, therefore, welcome into
its midst a nation or territory that so desired.” Putin’s double-talk (he is speaking
about the “inviolability of existing frontiers” just after having
changed
the frontiers of Georgia by brutal force) brings her to the—naive—conclusion that
“the blunt refusal that was opposed to the Ossetian demand for integration into Russia
makes the Russian position clear: the August intervention in Georgia . . . could lead
to a settlement of a conflict between Georgia and its separatist minorities, [but]
in no case to a dossier that was of interest to Russia.” (Carrère d’Encausse,
La Russie entre deux mondes
, 298–299.)
Cf. “Medvedev: August War Stopped Georgia’s NATO Membership,”
Civil Georgia
(November 21, 2011). Cf. also Brian Whitmore, “Medvedev Gets Caught Telling The Truth,”
RFE/RL
(November 23, 2011).
Condoleezza Rice,
No Higher Honor: My Years in Washington
(London: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 688.
Rice,
No Higher Honor: My Years in Washington
, 688.
Tony Blair,
A Journey: My Political Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 447.
“Saakashvili: Georgia Was Ready to Trade NATO for Breakaway Regions,”
RFE/RL
(August 8, 2013).
“Saakashvili: Georgia Was Ready to Trade NATO for Breakaway Regions.”
“8 Avgusta 2008 goda. Poteryannyy den.” http://rutube.ru/video/eddef3b31e4bdff29de4db46ebdd4e44/.
Cf. Pavel Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned,”
Eurasia Daily Monitor
9, no. 152 (August 9, 2012).
Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned.”
Quoted in Stephen Ennis, “Russian Film on Georgia War Fuels Talk of Kremlin Rift,”
BBC
(August 10, 2012).
Felgenhauer, “Putin Confirms the Invasion of Georgia Was Preplanned.”
After World War II the American diplomat and Russia expert George Kennan wrote: “It
would be useful to the Western world to realize that despite all the vicissitudes
by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the men in the Kremlin have
never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion
which had once commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists.”
[1]
These words were true after World War II, but are they still true today? Could
one say, paraphrasing Kennan’s dictum, “that despite all the vicissitudes by which
Russia has been afflicted since August 1991—the KGB inspired coup and the subsequent
demise of the Soviet Union—the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith
in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself
so strongly to Soviet diplomatists”? This was the central question of this book. Could
a great power for which a quasi-permanent, continued, and centuries-long territorial
and political expansion has been the natural way of life, suddenly become a “normal,”
post-imperial state? If one listens to some analysts, post-Soviet Russia simply had
no choice but to adapt to its status of post-imperial country. Alexander Motyl, for
instance, wrote: