Putin's Wars (41 page)

Different authors have tried to reconstruct the chain of events leading to the outbreak
of war. In this chain of events there are at least six events that should be considered.
They are, separately, and taken together, a clear indication of Russia’s preparations
for war. These events are as follows:

1. A cyber war, launched by Russian servers before the outbreak of the hostilities, paralyzing
   Georgian government websites. This cyber war must have been prepared well in advance.
   

2. The huge Kavkaz-2008 military exercise conducted near the Georgian border just before
   the outbreak of the war.
   

3. The evacuation of the population of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali before the
   war.
   

4. The surprising presence of a huge group of about fifty Russian journalists from the
   most important Russian press media and TV stations in Tskhinvali two days before the
   war began.
   

5. The active preparation for participation in the war by Cossack militias from Russia
   before the outbreak of war.
   

6. The incursion of regular Russian troops into South Ossetia before the outbreak of
   war.
   

According to Wesley K. Clark and Peter L. Levin, “Russia has already perpetrated denial-of-service
attacks against entire countries, including Estonia, in the spring of 2007—an attack
that blocked the Web sites of several banks and the prime minister’s Web site—and
Georgia, during the war of August 2008. In fact, shortly before the violence erupted,
Georgia’s government claimed that a number of state computers had been commandeered
by Russian hackers and that the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been forced
to relocate its Web site to Blogger, a free service run by Google.”
^[1]
In the case of Georgia this would mean that the Russian cyber war already started
before
the hostilities began.

The Russian 58th Army is Russia’s main military force in the North Caucasus. In the
weeks before the invasion it conducted major exercises with the code name “Kavkaz-2008”
(Caucasus 2008). These exercises took place in North Ossetia, just north of the Georgian
border. It was a combined forces exercise in which the Russian air force and the Black
Sea Fleet also took part. The official reason for the exercise was to improve the
army’s preparedness to fight terrorism. However, “such a force was hardly of great
utility in fighting terrorists in the mountains, but it was ideal for a conventional
invasion of a neighbor. In fact, this exercise was a trial run for the invasion about
to take place. . . . It was de facto a war game to invade Georgia.”
^[2]
When, on August 2, the exercise officially ended, the troops did not return to
their barracks, but remained deployed in the frontier region with Georgia. According
to Andrey Illarionov, “the build-up culminated with the amassing of 80,000 regular
troops and paramilitaries close to the Georgian border, at least 60,000 of which participated
in the August war.”
^[3]

The evacuation of the population of Tskhinvali was already wholly completed
before
the outbreak of the hostilities. Up to four thousand South Ossetians had crossed
the border to neighboring North Ossetia in the Russian Federation. This exodus, meticulously
prepared and organized by the authorities, was not a collective summer holiday, as
President Kokoity wanted to make out. It was a
preventive measure
in a war of which the South Ossetian authorities—including the minister of defense,
the Russian General Vasily Lunev (who would soon become the commander-in-chief of
the attacking Russian 58th Army), already knew that it was going to take place.

Said-Husein Tsarnaev, a journalist with the press agencies RIA Novosti and Reuters,
arrived in Tskhinvali on August 4. He was very surprised when he entered the lobby
of his hotel in this small provincial town in an isolated and desolate region, far
from Moscow, and found the lobby invaded by a crowd of Russian journalists. “We’ve
arrived in Tskhinvali three days prior to the attack on the city . . .,” he wrote
later, “we’ve got accommodation in the hotel ‘Alan.’ At once, I’ve noticed about fifty
journalists of leading TV channels and newspapers gathered in the hotel. I have experience
with two Chechen campaigns and such a crowd of colleagues at the headquarters of peacekeeping
forces I took as a disturbing signal.”
^[4]
It was, indeed, a disturbing signal. What were these journalists—many of whom were
celebrated Russian star reporters—doing in Tskhinvali, an outpost in the Caucasus,
in the first days of August 2008? Who brought them there? What for? And why had the
Russian government closed Tskhinvali to non-Russian reporters (except two journalists
from Ukraine)? Russian websites have since published lists of the journalists’ names.
^[5]
And, indeed, the
fine fleur
of the Russian media was present. The journalists represented almost every prominent
paper, magazine, and news agency, including Izvestia, Novoe Vremya, Moskovskiy Komsomolets,
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Regnum, ITAR-TASS, and RIA Novosti, not to forget the most important
Russian television channels: NTV, REN TV, TVTS, TV Channel “Rossiya,” TV Channel “Mir,”
as well as the First and the Fifth TV Channel. Some of the journalists had already
arrived on August 2, others on August 5 and 6. Why were they there, in Tskhinvali,
a deserted ghost town left by its inhabitants for “holidays” in the Russian Federation?
The journalists were obviously waiting for something to happen. They were waiting
for what?

On August 6—two days before the start of the hostilities—the pro-Kremlin paper
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
published an article with the title “Don Cossacks Prepare to Defend the People of
South Ossetia against Georgian Aggression.”
^[6]
The Cossacks are fighters who historically played an important role in defending
the frontiers of the Russian empire. After having been repressed by the communists,
their hosts (locally organized groups) made a glorious comeback in the Russian Federation,
and they have fought as mercenaries in many conflicts in the post-Soviet states. In
the article in the
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
the ataman (leader) of the Don Cossacks announced that Cossack fighters were preparing
to go to South Ossetia. He said that “Cossacks from the whole of Southern Russia were
united in their effort to help the unrecognized republic.”
^[7]
The question is why the Cossack militias were actively preparing to fight in South
Ossetia on August 6, yet the war that broke out one day later was represented by the
Kremlin as a complete surprise.

The sixth event, however, was the most significant. It was the entry of regular Russian
troops into Georgia through the Roki tunnel. Russian troop movements must already
have started on August 6, the day before the hostilities began. The Georgian government
had intercepted cell-phone conversations between South Ossetian border guards saying
that Russian border guards had taken over the control of the Roki tunnel at the Georgian
side and that a Russian military column had passed through at about four o’clock in
the morning. How many troops had gone through was not clear. The name of a Russian
colonel who was in charge was mentioned. He commanded a unit of the 58th Army that
was not authorized to be in Georgia. The Georgian peacekeeping commander in South
Ossetia, Brigadier General Mamuka Kurashvili, phoned the Russian supreme commander
of the mixed (Russian-Georgian) peacekeeping forces, Major General Marat Kulakhmetov,
asking for an explanation. Kulakhmetov promised to call back, but did not do so. Thereupon
President Saakashvili sent an envoy, Temuri Yakobashvili, to Tskhinvali to talk to
a Russian diplomat, Yury Popov. Popov, however, did not show up. The reason he later
gave was that his car had a flat tire and he didn’t have a spare one. The only Russian
official Yakobashvili was able to meet in a deserted Tskhinvali was General Kulakhmetov.
The Russian general proposed that Georgia declare a unilateral ceasefire. During the
conversation he told Yakobashvili that he was fed up with the Ossetian separatists,
who, according to him, had become uncontrollable, apparently suggesting that the Russians
would eventually take a neutral stance if Tbilisi were to attack the separatists.
^[8]

The Georgians did not fall in this trap. They followed Kulakhmetov’s advice and declared
a unilateral ceasefire on August 7 at 6:40 p.m. The only response was an intensified
shelling from 8:30 p.m. of the Georgian villages north of Tskhinvali by South Ossetian
militias.
^[9]
At 10:30 p.m. two Georgian peacekeepers were killed and six wounded. Saakashvili
received new intelligence reports, transmitted by an American satellite, that a column
of 150 Russian tanks had entered the Roki tunnel.
^[10]
Saakashvili found himself confronted by a situation in which Russian troops and
heavy equipment were being brought illegally into South Ossetia, gradually building
up enough military potential for a direct attack on Georgia. Saakashvili’s efforts
to call President Medvedev had no success. On the evening of August 7 Saakashvili
was facing a dilemma: allow Russia’s military infiltration of Russia into South Ossetia
to continue, and thereby permitting Russia to complete a huge military buildup, and
enabling it to crush the Georgian army, or to act.

Ronald D. Asmus has described the extremely stressful and precarious situation in
which the Georgian leadership found itself in the late hours of August 7, 2008. “They
all believed Georgia was being invaded in a kind of slow-motion, incremental way.”
^[11]
“Moscow,” he wrote, “was trying to de facto annex these two disputed enclaves bit
by bit in slow motion—testing to see if the West would protest and daring Tbilisi
to try to stop them.”
^[12]
It was also clear that Moscow would have no difficulty in finding an adequate
casus belli
to invade the territory of Georgia proper in order to reach its ultimate goal: to
topple Saakashvili and bring about a regime change in Tbilisi. Waiting for the Russian
troops to choose the right moment for attack meant that Georgia would leave the initiative
to the other side. Considering the great inequality in manpower and military equipment
^[13]
it would be an easy walkover for the Russians with disastrous consequences for
Georgia. Confronted with the continuing incursion by Russian forces into South Ossetia
and the intensified shelling of the Georgian villages north of Tskhinvali, at 11:30
p.m. Saakashvili ordered his troops to enter South Ossetia in order to occupy Tskhinvali
and stop the advance of the Russian troops. “Did Saakashvili fall into a trap?” asked
Svante Cornell and S. Frederick Starr.
^[14]
They concluded: “Maybe so, but . . . even if he had not, a pretext would have been
found to proceed with the campaign as it had been planned.”
^[15]
Indeed, Saakashvili’s decision to attack was a case of a desperate, last minute
forward defense
, the ultimate trump card Georgia had at its disposal to avoid of being overrun by
its huge neighbor. By blocking or preventing a Russian assault, the Georgian leadership—fully
aware of the fact that Georgia could never win the war—hoped to win
time
, thereby enabling the United States and the EU to intervene and find a diplomatic
solution.

Some commentators have stressed the fact that the Georgians did not mention the presence
of Russian troops in South Ossetia before August 8. This was the case, for instance,
with Eric Fournier, the French ambassador in Tbilisi. However, Jonathan Littell brought
more clarity in this case when he visited Georgia in October 2008.

Nobody has talked publicly about Russian tanks before 8 August. But, in private, it
is more complicated: whilst the Ambassador of France in Tbilisi categorically affirms:
“The Georgians have never called their European allies to inform them: ‘The Russians
are attacking us,’ Matthew Byrza, a high American diplomat in charge of the Georgian
dossier since the start of the Bush administration, explains to me: That the Georgians
were more open with us than with the Europeans is normal because of our privileged
relationship. Eka Tkechelachvili, their Minister of Foreign Affairs, has called me
at 11.30h [Tbilisi time] and said to me: ‘The Russians are entering into South Ossetia
with tanks and more than 1,000 men, we have no choice, we are ending the ceasefire.
. . .’ The Georgians were convinced that that really happened.”
^[16]

It is self-evident that the ambassador of France, one of the leading countries that
some months earlier blocked Georgia’s Membership Action Plan for NATO, was not the
first one on the list to be called by Saakashvili on that fateful evening.

The Kremlin has always denied that Russian troops entered South Ossetia before the
war. However, despite these denials there are many indications to the contrary that
cast doubt on the Kremlin’s official version and vindicate the Georgian version. On
August 7, for instance, one day before the war started, the Abkhaz separatist leader
Sergey Bagapsh appeared on the Russian TV channel
Rossiya
, declaring: “I have spoken to the President of South Ossetia. It [the situation]
has more or less stabilized now. A battalion from the North Caucasus District has
entered the area.”
^[17]
This declaration, confirming the presence of Russian troops in South Ossetia before
the war, was not the only one. On August 15, 2008, the regional Russian paper
Permskie Novosti
published an article with the title “Soldiers from Perm Were in the Epicentre of the
War.” In this article is reproduced a telephone call by a soldier of the 58th Army,
which had invaded Georgia. The soldier told his parents: “We have been there [in South
Ossetia] since August 7. Yeah, our whole 58th Army.”
^[18]
In the article was also mentioned that on August 7 the mobile phones of the soldiers
were “muted.”
^[19]
Another indication of the early entry of Russian troops into South Ossetia could
be found in an article in
Krasnaya Zvezda
(The Red Star), the paper of the Russian army, published on September 11, 2008. In
this article army Captain Denis Sidristiy, who received the Order for Courage for
his personal heroism during the war, gave the following account of the events: “We
were on exercise [Kavkaz-2008]. Relatively not far from the capital of South Ossetia.
. . . After the planned exercises we remained in the camp, but on August 7 came the
order to go to Tskhinvali.”
^[20]
Sidristiy confirmed that he witnessed during the night of August 7 to 8 the shelling
of Tskhinvali by the Georgian army, which would only have been possible after crossing
the high Caucasus mountains and when he was already
inside
South Ossetia. When the article was cited by other media,
^[21]
the interview disappeared suddenly from the website to reappear again with editorial
changes that specified the times of the day. The order to march to South Ossetia came
now “on 7 August in the night” and captain Sidristiy saw the shelling of Tskhinvali
“on 8 August in the morning.”
^[22]
However, these sudden changes to the captain’s memory might have been too blatant:
soon afterward the editor of the
Krasnaya Zvezda
decided to remove the article altogether.
^[23]