Putin's Wars (43 page)

Human Rights Watch accused Russia of having used cluster bombs against civil targets.
^[14]
Cluster munitions contain dozens and sometimes hundreds of smaller submunitions,
or “‘bomblets.” They cause unacceptable suffering because they are spread over a broad
area and kill civilians indiscriminately during strikes. Because many bomblets fail
to explode, these become landmines that kill and maim people months and even years
later. In May 2008, 107 nations agreed to a total ban on cluster munitions. Russia
and Georgia were not among the signatories. According to a report by Human Rights
Watch, on August 12, 2008, Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs on the Georgian
town of Ruisi, which killed three and wounded five civilians. The same day the Russian
army also bombed the market in the center of the town of Gori with cluster bombs.
The bombs were launched with an Iskander missile. Eight civilians were killed, and
dozens were wounded. Among the dead was Stan Storimans, a Dutch TV cameraman.
^[15]
Novaya Gazeta
journalist Yuliya Latynina wrote: “The most precise weapon of Russia, ORTK ‘Iskander,’
already first developed in the 1980s, though only a few examples are today in the
possession of the army, struck Georgia twice: on the oil pipeline Baku-Supsa and on
the market of Gori on which humanitarian goods were being distributed—the Dutch TV
operator Stan Storimans was killed by it. . . . ‘Iskander’ is a high precision weapon,
meaning that either it proved not so precise when it fell on the market, or that the
market was targeted, and in that case it was the first time in history that a high
precision weapon has been used against the civil population.”
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The Dutch government sent a fact-finding commission to Georgia to establish the facts.
In its report
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one could read that the bombardment took place after military and police units
of Georgia had already left the town. The bomb clearly targeted the civilian population.
At 10:45 a.m. there were twenty explosions in the air, as well as on the ground. Each
explosion spread a huge number of small 5mm metal balls. One of these hit and killed
Storimans. He was killed by submunitions of a cluster bomb launched with a Russian
Iskander SS-26 missile. In a letter to the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch minister of
foreign affairs, Maxime Verhagen, wrote that although the use of cluster bombs was
not yet forbidden, “parties in a situation of an armed conflict should always make
a sharp distinction between military and civilian targets,” and, “taking into account
that on August 12 the Georgian military and police had left Gori, the Russian forces
should have abstained from using [these weapons]. In light of this I find the conclusion
of the investigatory committee very serious and I have explained this to the Russian
authorities.”
^[18]
Three days after the attack on Gori, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy
chief of Russia’s general staff, categorically denied that such weapons had ever been
used in Georgia. “We never use cluster bombs,” he said. “There is no need to do so.”
^[19]
Moreover, the unequivocal findings of the fact-finding commission of the Dutch
Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not change the Kremlin’s version of the facts. Commenting
on the death of Storimans the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry not only
denied the use of cluster bombs, but he went even further and “asserted that there
was not enough evidence to conclude that Storimans had been killed as a result of
the use of [any] weapons by the Russian side.”
^[20]
In November 2008, some weeks after the publication of the Dutch report, Human Rights
Watch wrote: “Russia has continued to deny using cluster munitions in Georgia, but
Human Rights Watch finds the evidence to be overwhelming. Human Rights Watch believes
that Russia’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas was indiscriminate, and
therefore in violation of international humanitarian law.”
^[21]

There are two opposing conceptions concerning lies. The first is attributed to Vladimir
Ilyich Lenin, who is reputed to have said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
There is another one, attributed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said:
“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” It is clear that the Russian leadership
has a preference for Lenin’s approach. Even faced with unequivocal evidence it continues
to deny the facts. Apart from unfounded accusations against Georgia of genocide and
the denial of its own use of cluster bombs, the war in Georgia was preceded and accompanied
by open lies, misinformation (for instance, about “uncontrollable” South Ossetian
militias), and active disinformation,
^[22]
all reminiscent of the old Soviet style. In this way Russia almost succeeded in
hiding the most important fact: that this was not a “Russian-Georgian war,” but a
Russian war against Georgia
in Georgia.
There was not a single Georgian soldier that crossed the Russian frontier at any point.
The Georgian troops that went into South Ossetia did not cross international frontiers,
but intervened in their own country, no different from Russian troops intervening
in Chechnya. It was Russian and not Georgian troops that crossed the border of another,
sovereign country, in breach of the principles of international law.

The Kremlin’s passport offensive, practiced since 2002, by which Russia “created”
its own citizens in a neighboring country, was not only an aggressive and clearly
hostile act, it was already in itself a violation of international law and a preparation
for the armed attack that would follow some years later. On August 8, 2008, President
Medvedev said: “I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they
are.”
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And RIA Novosti wrote that “Russia had repeatedly warned Georgia that it would
resort to force to protect its citizens, which most South Ossetian residents are.”
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Several authors have made comparisons with 1938. In 1994 Zbigniew Brzezinski had
already written: “The outspoken president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, went
as far as to state publicly . . . that “any talk about the protection of Russians
living in Kazakhstan reminds one of the times of Hitler, who also started off with
the question of protecting Sudeten Germans.”
^[25]
Comparisons with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, might, on first
sight, seem exaggerated. Unfortunately, they are not. There are so many similarities
that the Czechoslovak case could almost have functioned as a blueprint for the events
in Georgia. Germany also started by considering a group of inhabitants of a neighboring
country as its own citizens. It financed the political party of the Sudeten Germans,
the Sudeten German Party (SdP) led by Konrad Henlein, and supported local militias
that committed terrorist acts. “The Sudeten Germans kept 40,000 men, in the shape
of free corps, on a war footing.”
^[26]
The Abkhazian army, led by Russian officers, included up to ten thousand soldiers.
Additionally there were Abkhazian and South Ossetian private militias of ten thousand
to fifteen thousand men. This brought the armed militias inside Georgia to a total
of up to twenty-five thousand men.
^[27]
In Czechoslovakia the militias caused trouble and made mischief and asked to be
incorporated into the Reich
.
In the end Germany annexed the Sudetenland. This annexation was only the first step
in the further dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. In Georgia a similar scenario took
place. Russia trained and armed the militias, let them provoke and attack Georgia,
and when there came a Georgian response, Russia came to the rescue of “its own citizens.”
Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin aide, called the Russian war against Georgia “one
of the most serious international crises for at least the last 30 years.” According
to him,

This crisis has brought:

1. The first massive use of the military forces by Russia or the former Soviet Union
   outside its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan . .
   . ;
   

2. The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s
   intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;
   

3. The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral
   changes in internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early
   1940s. Particular similarities of these events and the roles being played this year
   by some international players with the events and roles played by some international
   players in 1938 are especially troubling.”
   ^[28]
   

The role of the players in 1938 is well-known. One of the leading
dramatis personae
in this period was Neville Chamberlain. “On 27 September 1938 he openly confessed
to his horror at the idea of going to war ‘because of a quarrel in a far-away country
between people of whom we know nothing.’”
^[29]
Europeans had to pay a heavy toll for their disregard of the interests of a new,
small, and faraway country. At that time they did not realize that not only the interests
of this small country were at stake, but also the foundations of the existing international
order of their time. For many Europeans the war in 2008 in Georgia was equally “a
quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” After the war
Russia was only symbolically sanctioned. Even the most obvious measures were not taken.
“But why has Russia not been suspended from the Council of Europe, an organisation
based on respect for human rights?” asked the
Financial Times.
^[30]
Indeed, why not? As in 1938, Europeans could—later—regret their lukewarm response.
^[31]

As could be expected, after the war Russia got the support of Kremlin-friendly Western
experts. One of them was Hélène Carrère d’Encausse,
doyenne
of the French Kremlin watchers (although more a specialist on tsarist history than
on modern Russian politics). Over the years Carrère d’Encausse has developed a warm
personal relationship with the Russian leadership. As a regular participant in the
seminars of the Valdai Club—sometimes referred to as Putin’s fan club—she received
on November 4, 2009, from the hands of President Medvedev the Russian Order of Honor.
She was also a prominent guest at the State Dinner, organized on March 2, 2010, on
the occasion of Medvedev’s official visit to France. In her book
La Russie entre deux mondes
(Russia between Two Worlds), she wrote that the rebellion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
when it started, certainly was “illegitimate and should have been ended.” However,
she continued, “the military defeat calls this pretention into question and modifies
slightly the geography of the lost territories, still reducing that [part] which is
controlled by Tbilisi.”
^[32]
Why the military defeat of Georgia against an aggressor would call into question
Georgia’s right to have its national integrity restored is not indicated. Further
in the text she refers to “the two separatist States.” The word “States” is written
with a capital S in the text.
^[33]
According to their status in international law the correct title would have been:
the two separatist “entities” or “provinces.” Apparently the author had no principal
objections to the “independence” of the two provinces, but, on the contrary, fully
condoned the Russian land grab.
^[34]

On November 21, 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the headquarters of
the 58th Army in Vladikavkaz. This was the army that led the invasion of Georgia in
August 2008. He gave a speech in which the official Kremlin version of the war—that
it was “a humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide in South Ossetia”—was put
into a broader context. While emphasizing that the intervention was a necessary “peace-enforcement
operation,” he mentioned a second and quite different objective: “to curb the threat
which was coming at the time from the territory of Georgia.” “If we had faltered in
2008,” Medvedev said, “[the] geopolitical arrangement would be different now and a
number of countries in respect of which attempts were made to artificially drag them
into the North Atlantic Alliance, would have probably been there [in NATO] now.”
^[35]
It took the Kremlin three years to unveil the
real
reason for its intervention: to stop Georgia’s eventual NATO membership. Stopping
NATO membership necessitated, however, for the Kremlin a second objective: a regime
change in Tbilisi. In her memoirs the former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice,
revealed how the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, called her in August 2008
and shamelessly proposed a regime change in Tbilisi as a condition for a Russian troop
withdrawal. “The other demand,” said Lavrov to Rice, “is just between us. Misha Saakashvili
has to go.”
^[36]
“I couldn’t believe my ears,” wrote Rice, “and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis.”
^[37]
Condoleezza Rice refused to negotiate the removal of a democratically elected president.
When Lavrov repeated that it was “just between us” and asked her not to talk to others
about his demand, this was similarly rejected by her. It was clear that the objective
of regime change was not something that just popped up during the negotiations. It
had been prepared months, and probably years, before. It was, apparently, apart from
the dismemberment of Georgia, the
real
reason for the Russian invasion.

In his memoirs Tony Blair wrote about a visit to Russia at the end of April 2003.
“Vladimir Putin launched into a vitriolic attack at the press conference,” wrote Blair,
“really using the British as surrogates for the U.S., and then afterwards at dinner
we had a tense, and at times heated, discussion [on the Iraq war]. He was convinced
the U.S. was set on a unilateralist course, not for a good practical purpose but as
a matter of principle. Time and again, he would say, ‘Suppose we act against Georgia,
which is a base for terrorism against Russia—what would you say if we took Georgia
out?’”
^[38]
It is telling that Putin at that time gave exactly
this
example. The project was, apparently, already in 2003 on the mind of the Kremlin’s
master. There are other facts that support this interpretation. On August 7, 2013,
on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili,
in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in
Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told
Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration
of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think
for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your
territories for your geopolitical orientation . . . . And it meant ‘we will chop off
your territories anyway.’”
^[39]
Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with
South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked
at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will
be much, much, much worse.’”
^[40]