Strongman (34 page)

That the Georgians attacked first, and that it was an attempt not to repulse a Russian attack but to retake South Ossetia, is also confirmed by a conversation the Polish foreign minister
Radoslaw Sikorski had with his Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili the day before the attack on Tskhinvali. ‘Eka called me and said they were going to establish constitutional authority
over South Ossetia. What I understood was that they were moving in. I warned her not to overplay their hand and to be very careful, because allowing yourself to be provoked would have dire
consequences.’
²²

The fact that President Medvedev was on holiday on a Volga riverboat, Prime Minister Putin was in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games and foreign minister Lavrov was in the middle of
Russia (four-and-a-half-hours’ flight from Moscow), and all had to rush back to Moscow to deal with the crisis, also suggests that Russia was taken by surprise and did not instigate the
attack – even though its army was clearly well prepared to respond.

So why did this war erupt when it did? Only a week or so earlier, Georgia’s leaders had been on holiday. Their best troops were serving in Iraq. Although Saakashvili wished to regain the
lost territories, he appeared to be giving diplomacy a last chance. As late as 7 August, Georgia’s negotiator, Temuri Yakobashvili, even went to Tskhinvali for planned talks that failed to
materialise (because the South Ossetian side refused to take part and the Russian special envoy failed to arrive, saying he had a flat tyre). Russia, it is true, had been sabre-rattling – but
mainly to dissuade Georgia from attacking rather than because it was contemplating an attack itself; Moscow in fact had little to gain from attacking Georgia and had never (despite claims to the
contrary) shown any desire to annexe or even recognise the two regions. Its clobbering of Georgia and subsequent recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent ‘states’ should
not be seen as retrospective proof that this was what it intended to do all along.

It seems to me that right up until the eve of battle neither side was seriously planning to go to war (though both were preparing for it). That would mean that the fatal decision was taken at
the last minute by Saakashvili and his closest advisers. Perhaps they felt that the world’s eyes were on the Olympics in Beijing; perhaps they weighed up everything they had heard from the
Americans recently and decided that, on balance, they would have their support; perhaps they really were given intelligence (even if it was false) that the Russians were already streaming through
the Roki tunnel; perhaps they saw the failure of the Russians and South Ossetians to turn up for talks with their negotiator as an ominous sign, and Medvedev’s evasiveness and hint that
‘things could get worse’ as a threat; perhaps they jumped at what they thought was an unexpected opportunity to retake South Ossetia. Whatever the reasons, the decision confirmed the
worst fears of Saakashvili’s American and other Western colleagues – who liked him, respected him, loved his democratic credentials, but were very alive to his unpredictability, his
impulsiveness, even his instability. One of the enduring images of the war is of Saakashvili, recorded by a BBC camera as he waited to go on air for a live broadcast, nervously stuffing the end of
his tie into his mouth. The Russians leapt on this as proof of his ‘insanity’. But many of his Western colleagues also had their doubts. When Angela Merkel had talks with him as a peace
settlement was being thrashed out, he was extremely agitated, drank from an empty glass and knocked a bottle of water across the table.

One senior American official (extremely close to Saakashvili) witnessed a top-level get-together in Tbilisi, after midnight, a few weeks before the war: ‘My impression was just –
what a rip-roaring and disorganised way to make really important decisions. But it is the Georgian way – it is at least how that group does things. I mean, they weren’t drunk, they
weren’t juvenile or stupid, they were just kind of shooting the breeze. I came in and they said, “You say we don’t have an interagency coordination process, well this is how we do
it. Would you like some wine?” ’

Though it was Georgia, in the end, that lit the touch-paper, it was Russia that found itself in the dock for the conflagration. Partly, this was because views were coloured by the initial
international television coverage of the war, which showed little, if any, of the Georgian bombing and destruction of Tskhinvali and a great deal of the subsequent Russian bombing of Gori. That in
turn happened because the Russians kept journalists out of South Ossetia, whereas the Georgians positively encouraged the press to go to Gori. The BBC’s foreign editor, Jon Williams, noted in
a blog: ‘It’s not been safe enough to travel from Tbilisi to the town of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, the scene, say the Russians, of destruction at the hands of the Georgians. Not
until Wednesday – six days after the first shots were fired – was a BBC team able to get in to see what had happened for themselves, and then only in the company of Russian
officials.’

The role of PR advisers in the war has been much written about, and much exaggerated. Georgia’s principal asset was President Saakashvili himself, who gave a constant stream of interviews,
in fluent English and French – without, I fancy, much encouragement from his Western PR team. Moscow, on the other hand, steadfastly resisted the urgings of its PR advisers to allow
journalists to travel to South Ossetia, and only belatedly began to offer English-speaking interviewees to stations such as the BBC and CNN.

But the main reason for the opprobrium heaped upon Russia rather than Georgia was because – whatever the circumstances – it invaded a neighbouring, independent country. It did this
in order to prevent that country from doing something absolutely legitimate under international law – restoring (albeit in brutal fashion) its territorial integrity in precisely the same way
as Russia had restored its rights over Chechnya. The Russian leadership was incapable of seeing this parallel. It accused the West of tolerating Georgia’s aggression, forgetting that the West
had by and large also tolerated Russia’s much more brutal assault on Chechnya. Both cases were seen by the West as internal affairs. Attacking a foreign country is different. As the Russian
journalist Andrei Kolesnikov of
Novaya gazeta
put it, ‘Russia behaved as if it were the mother country and Georgia was its remote, rebellious province.’

The result was the dismemberment of Georgia, a sovereign state, and the permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, mainly Georgians, from their homes on land that they and their
ancestors had inhabited for centuries. In the case of Abkhazia, the Russians effectively handed the territory, now ‘ethnically cleansed’ of Georgians, to a tiny nation who prior to 1991
had comprised just one-fifth of the population.
²³
One-sixth of Georgia’s territory is now occupied by Russian troops.

In Beijing, only hours after the Georgian assault began, Vladimir Putin met both President Bush and President Sarkozy. Both tried to caution restraint in Russia’s response, and both were
rebuffed. Putin was no longer commander-in-chief, but he acted as if he was. Sarkozy introduced Putin to his son, Louis, who received a warm hug – but that was the last of Putin’s
friendly gestures. Sarkozy’s aide, Jean-David Levitte, recalls his boss’s attempt at peacemaking. ‘He said to President Putin, “Listen, I currently hold the presidency of
the EU and I can make the EU do everything possible to stop this war, a war that would be a catastrophe for Russia, for Europe, and for Russian and European cooperation. But for that, Vladimir, I
need 48 hours.” The answer? “Nyet.” So President Sarkozy said, “Hang on, Vladimir, do you realise what’s at stake here? At least give me 24 hours.” “Nyet,
impossible.” The president said, “Well, give me until 8pm.” “Nyet.” ’
²⁴

It was President Medvedev, though, who took the decision to send in Russian forces. He claims, somewhat improbably, that he did not even discuss the matter with Putin for 24 hours, due to the
absence of a secure line to Beijing. Medvedev says that he was woken by the defence minister to be told of the attack on Tskhinvali, but hoped it was just a provocation. It was only when he was
told that a tent full of Russian peacekeepers had been hit, killing them all, that he gave the order to counterattack. Anyone who believed that Medvedev was a ‘softie’ compared to the
strongman Putin would be mistaken. It was the president (he says) who ordered the invasion – without even consulting his Security Council. The Council did eventually meet, and supported the
decision, but this was still before Putin arrived back from China. Eventually Putin returned, flew to Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, to see the situation on the ground for himself, and then to
Sochi, where he finally met Medvedev to discuss the situation.
²⁵

On the second day of the war, Russian bombers flew 120 sorties, aiming to destroy Georgia’s defence infrastructure – including all the shiny new hardware acquired from the USA,
Israel and Ukraine.

The next day Condoleezza Rice, who had just started a vacation with her aunt and sister at the luxury Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, called Sergei Lavrov and demanded an end to the
invasion. The conversation became a major bone of contention between the two. Lavrov said the Russians had three conditions: ‘First, the Georgians have to go back to their
barracks.’

Rice said, ‘OK.’

‘Second, they have to sign a non-use-of-force pledge.’

‘OK.’

‘And three, just between us, Saakashvili has to go.’

Rice could not believe her ears: ‘Sergei, the American secretary of state and the Russian foreign minister do not have a private conversation about overthrowing a democratically elected
president.’
²⁶

She decided to go public with what she regarded as a Russian threat of regime change in Georgia. On 10 August the US envoy to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced: ‘Foreign Minister Lavrov
told Secretary Rice that the democratically elected president of Georgia – and I quote – “Saakashvili must go” – end of quote. This is completely unacceptable and
crosses a line.’

Lavrov was incensed. He said in an interview: ‘To announce to the entire world what you have discussed with your partner is not part of our diplomatic practice.’ He did not entirely
deny that he had said it, though, but insisted he merely indicated ‘that we would never deal with him again’.
²⁷

By 11 August the Georgians, having seen Gori bombarded and emptied of its citizens, believed the Russian army was planning to move on the capital, Tbilisi. There was panic in the
president’s chancellery: pictures were taken off the walls, documents stuffed into boxes in readiness for a quick evacuation. Carl Bildt and the American envoy, Matt Bryza, were there,
calculating they had little more than half an hour before the Russians would enter the city.

Saakashvili appealed to President Bush for the help he thought had been promised. ‘I told him, “Look, right now, on your watch, you might see the reversal of the demise of the Soviet
Union. It might be restored right now in my country, and it would be a very sad turn of history – for us certainly, for us it would be the end – but certainly for the US and for the
world.” ’
²⁸

His allegation that Russia was about to enter his capital and reincorporate Georgia into some new version of the Soviet Union could have been seen as either paranoid, manipulative or simply as a
disingenuous attempt to cover up his own calamitous decision to go to war. But Medvedev later indirectly confirmed that, while ‘our mission at the time was to destroy Georgia’s war
machine’, more radical options were considered: ‘Saakashvili should be grateful to me for halting our troops at some point. If they had marched into Tbilisi, Georgia would most likely
have a different president by now.’

The threat was taken seriously in Washington, especially in view of Lavrov’s comment to Rice. Bush convened his national security team. Defence Secretary Robert Gates recalls: ‘There
was a clear feeling on the part of virtually everybody in the situation room that the Russians had flat out committed an aggression against an independent state, and were proceeding to dismember
it.’
²⁹

The Americans even contemplated intervening militarily themselves. According to Secretary of State Rice: ‘There was a little bit of chest beating around the table about what we would do
and about how we could signal the Russians militarily, that this would be a foolhardy thing to do.’

National security adviser Stephen Hadley says: ‘The issue was, do we put in combat power or not? What you needed was ground troops if you were going to save Tbilisi.’
³⁰

But that would have risked conflict between the world’s greatest nuclear powers, and voices such as that of Robert Gates urged caution: ‘I was pretty adamant that we not give weapons
assistance to Saakashvili. My feeling at the time was that the Russians had baited a trap and Saakashvili had walked right into it, and so they were both culpable.’

In the end, the Russians stopped and turned around, and the Americans no longer needed to consider a military response. They did send navy transport planes to Tbilisi airport, and warships
through the Black Sea to the port of Batumi, to deliver humanitarian aid (and even that infuriated the Russians), but the decision was to let diplomacy work. Despite considerable misgivings about
the competence of President Sarkozy, they decided to allow France, which at that point held the rotating presidency of the European Union, to take the lead.

Although the Russians maintained at the time that only Medvedev was involved in the talks with Sarkozy, Putin was there too, predictably playing the hard man. It was during those talks that he
declared, ‘I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls.’ (The Russians denied the report, but Putin has since himself indirectly confirmed that he did use the expression.
³¹
)