The New Tsar (61 page)

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t one o’clock on the morning of August 8, the minister of defense, Anatoly Serdyukov, telephoned Medvedev with the news that war had erupted on Russia’s southern flank. The armed forces of Georgia, led by the westernizing Mikheil Saakashvili, had begun an air and ground assault on the country’s breakaway region of South Ossetia. Tensions with South Ossetia and another region, Abkhazia, had flared all year.
Both had split from Georgia during short violent conflicts in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and had remained in a diplomatic limbo ever since, recognized as part of Georgia but in fact independent statelets that sought closer relations—and financing—from Russia, which maintained peacekeeping forces in both regions under the mandate of the United Nations. In the wake of Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008, Putin had increased assistance to the two regions. In one of his last official acts as president, he ordered a reinforcement of troops to the existing Russian peacekeeping mission in Abkhazia to oversee the reconstruction of the railroad that had once connected it to Sochi but since fallen into disrepair. The fate of the regions had become an acute focus of Putin’s last weeks as president following a testy confrontation in Bucharest with President Bush and other NATO leaders debating whether to invite Georgia (and Ukraine) to join the military alliance.

Throughout the summer of 2008, Russia and Georgia traded accusations that the other intended to launch an invasion to resolve what had become known as “frozen conflicts.” Medvedev held a series of meetings with Saakashvili, who also hoped that his presidency would represent a shift from his endless confrontations with Putin that had followed the “Rose Revolution,” including a trade embargo in 2006 prompted by the arrest of four Russian intelligence agents. Saakashvili had proposed political settlements for the two regions, which Medvedev initially seemed amenable to, but when they met in Kazakhstan in July, he sensed that Medvedev was no longer interested in discussing them, as if he had been reined in by other powers in Moscow, that is, by Putin.
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A conflict seemed inevitable, and the Russians had prepared for it thoroughly, though they suspected it would come in Abkhazia, not South Ossetia. The military had already drawn up plans for an intervention; Putin would later say that the plans had been in place as early as the end of 2006. In the summer, on Medvedev’s orders, commanders amassed forces for a large training drill in the Northern Caucasus, within striking distance of either Abkhazia or South Ossetia, a feint that would become a signature of future military operations in Russia.

Nevertheless, Medvedev that night was surprised and skeptical of the urgent report interrupting his river cruise. “We should check this,” he told Serdyukov on the telephone. He thought, “Is Saakashvili completely out of his mind? Maybe it’s just a provocative act, maybe he is stressed,
testing the Ossetians and trying to send us some kind of a message?” He asked the minister to call him back.

Putin had already left Moscow for Beijing where he, not the head of state, planned the next day to attend the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics with dozens of other leaders, including President Bush. Serdyukov called Medvedev back an hour later to say that the reports were true. Georgia had begun an artillery barrage on South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali. “All right,” Medvedev said. “I’ll wait for another update.”

He claimed he could not reach Putin in Beijing on a secure telephone line. That he felt the need to try showed he was uncertain whether to commit Russian forces to battle outside the country’s borders for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. His hesitancy would come to haunt him. Finally Serdyukov called a third time. A rocket had crashed through a tent full of Russian peacekeepers, “killing all of them.” This would prove to be an exaggeration, the first of many that would be uttered in the days that followed,
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but the fact was that Russian troops and their proxies in South Ossetia’s irregular militia were under assault. More than four hours after the rockets began falling in and around Tskhinvali, Medvedev at last issued the orders to go to war.

“Return fire,” he told Serdyukov, and then he rushed to fly back to Moscow.

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y the time Medvedev arrived, Georgian battalions were moving into South Ossetia. Russia aircraft began striking not just inside the region, but in Georgia itself as well, hoping to forestall the advance. The word of the Georgian assault reached Putin in Beijing, and he was enraged—at Saakashvili primarily, but also at Medvedev’s “lack of resolve.”
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Putin, speaking to reporters in the morning, made the first public statement on the crisis in China, vowing that Russia would retaliate for the Georgian incursion. He made repeated calls to Medvedev, who on the morning of August 8 met with his Security Council.
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It was ten o’clock in the morning when Medvedev made his first public statement, well after Putin’s. He declared that Georgia had breached international law and committed an act of aggression that had already cost lives, including those of Russian peacekeeping troops. “Civilians, women, children and old people are dying today in South Ossetia, and the majority of them are citizens of the Russian Federation,” he said. “In accordance with the Constitution
and the federal laws, as President of the Russian Federation it is my duty to protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they may be.”
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By midday, Russian forces surged across the border.

President Bush was also in Beijing when an aide whispered into his ear that a “Russian offensive” had begun in Georgia.
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He was standing in line at a diplomatic reception in the Great Hall of the People to greet China’s president, Hu Jintao. Putin stood a few places ahead of him in line, but protocol mandated that Bush speak to his presidential counterpart first, so he waited until he returned to his hotel to call Medvedev, warning him to halt the counteroffensive. “We’re going to be with them,” Bush told him, referring to the Georgians.

What President Bush did not understand was the extent to which the Russians blamed his administration for the conflict. Even if he had not given a green light to Saakashvili’s plan to seize South Ossetia, as the Russians suspected, Bush had bolstered Saakashvili with military training and the promise of NATO membership at the summit in Bucharest in April, despite Putin’s personal warnings to him that an invitation would provoke Russia. What Saakashvili did not understand was that for all the effort he had used to win over the Americans, praising Bush and dispatching troops to serve in Iraq, neither the United States nor NATO was prepared to come to his aid in a war against Russia. The miscalculation cost Georgia dearly.

In his conversation with Bush, Medvedev compared Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein and told Bush that the Georgians had already killed 1,500 people, a glaring exaggeration.
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It was clear now that Russia had no intention of pulling back. Bush eventually confronted Putin in Beijing at the “Bird Nest” stadium as they awaited the Olympics opening ceremony that night. They sat in the same row of VIP seats and Bush asked his wife and the king of Thailand to slide down so he could sit beside Putin to deliver a warning. With an interpreter leaning in awkwardly, Putin rose from his seat, momentarily looming over him until the taller Bush could stand fully upright, and told him Saakashvili was a war criminal.

“I’ve been warning you Saakashkili was hot-blooded,” Bush said.

“I’m hot-blooded, too,” Putin replied.

Bush later wrote that he had stared back at the man he had met with more times than any other world leader except Tony Blair. He had hoped to forge a new relationship with Russia, one that would overcome the
mutual suspicions of the Cold War, only to realize he had misjudged the man when they first met in Slovenia in 2001.

“No, Vladimir, you’re cold-blooded,” he said.
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fter meeting with Hu Jintao the morning after the opening ceremony, Putin left Beijing and flew back to Russia—not to Moscow, but to the bustling staging ground of Russia’s full invasion force. He arrived on Saturday night at the headquarters of the 58th Army, in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, the Russian republic on the northern slope of the Caucasus that had been sundered from its compatriots on the Georgian side by a decree of Joseph Stalin. It was Putin who appeared on state media receiving the military updates from the generals in uniform on the ground, while Medvedev delivered pallid directions from his Kremlin office. Putin said Georgia, emboldened by its flirtation with the United States and NATO, was seeking to devour South Ossetia and now would lose it forever. “What’s happening in Georgia is genocide,” he said in a fury that overstated the reality on the ground.
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By then Russian tanks had reached Tskhinvali and then pushed forward beyond Ossetia itself toward the Georgian city of Gori, Stalin’s birthplace. Russian warships blockaded the port of Poti, south of the border with Abkhazia. Georgia’s forces, despite years of American equipping and training, crumbled in disarray, unable to effectively communicate because the Russians had jammed or disrupted cell phone coverage, their only means of communication. A humiliated Saakashvili had to plead for help. The United States airlifted two thousand soldiers that Georgia had deployed to Iraq as part of the American war there, and President Bush later sent additional aid and equipment, but he also made it clear that the United States would not come to Georgia’s side militarily. More than a hundred American military advisers who had remained in Georgia after the summer exercise withdrew to avoid becoming entangled in the fighting. With Georgia’s fractured troops retreating in front of a Russian thrust toward the capital, Tbilisi, itself under bombardment, Saakashvili had no choice but to sue for peace.

Putin ostensibly accorded due deference to his protégé as the commander in chief, but the entire system—the bureaucracy, the military, the media—had become so conditioned to his role as paramount leader that it struggled to preserve the appearance that Medvedev was in charge. Putin himself was unable or unwilling to recede into the background,
suggesting instructions in televised meetings during the crisis that Medvedev dutifully passed on. In public, Putin sought to emphasize Medvedev’s preeminent post, but in private he hectored and cajoled his interlocutors, still very much the leader. When the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, flew into Moscow to mediate a ceasefire on August 12, he found Medvedev calm and sanguine, able to negotiate. Putin also attended the meeting, however, and he was bombastic and crude, seething with a ferocity toward Saakashvili that seemed deeply personal.
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Sarkozy pressed the Russians to call off an invasion that now seemed intent on reaching Georgia’s capital and overthrowing its president. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had said as much to Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, demanding Saakashvili’s removal from power as a condition of peace.
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Lavrov also belittled Medvedev in a conversation with the French ambassador, even as the leaders met in the Kremlin to resolve the conflict.
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Sarkozy argued that the world would not accept the toppling of an elected leader, but this only further enraged Putin.

“Saakashvili—I’m going to hang him by the balls,” Putin seethed, startling the French leader.

“Hang him?” he asked.

“Why not?” Putin replied, sounding petulant. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

The only thing that seemed to temper Putin was Sarkozy’s asking him if he wanted to go down in history with a reputation like Bush’s.
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It was early the next morning, after Sarkozy flew to Georgia’s capital to seal Saakashvili’s agreement, when Medvedev announced a ceasefire in the conflict’s fifth day. He appeared alone in the Kremlin and adopted a Putinesque tone to declare that “the aggressor had been punished.” He looked pale and tired. Despite the ceasefire, Russian forces consolidated their positions in the vacuum created by the routed Georgians, while the militias of South Ossetia conducted a campaign of pillaging and looting the homes of Georgian villagers inside the region, often under the eyes of the Russians.
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Two days after the ceasefire, even as Condoleezza Rice flew into Georgia to deliver a pledge of political and humanitarian support from the United States, a Russian armored column pushed eastward toward the capital, stopping only 25 miles from Tbilisi’s city limits. The last Russian troops would not withdraw from Georgian territory for another two months, and even then, they left reinforcements behind in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 26, as the debris of the war was still being cleared, Medvedev announced that Russia would
recognize the two enclaves as independent nations. He and others cited the precedent of Kosovo, whose declaration of independence six months before the Russians had called illegitimate.

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espite some obvious shortcomings by its forces, the war fed a nationalist fervor in Russia, amplified by state media glorifying the actions of the Russian liberators and vilifying the enemy with an intensity not seen since the Great Patriotic War. The glory, however, redounded to Putin as much as Medvedev, since it was clear to everyone that he remained the paramount leader. Medvedev occupied a presidency with diminished authority for the simple reason that Putin had effectively taken its powers with him—along with much of his presidential staff—to the prime minister’s office, located in the White House at the opposite end of Novy Arbat from the Kremlin. Medvedev remained the nominal head of state, but his handling of foreign affairs was muddled and confused because he had to vet any fundamental decisions with his prime minister. His own efforts to echo the commanding, aggressive, and unflinching tone that Putin wielded so deftly often proved embarrassing instead.