A senior adviser to the president of Abkhazia, Nadir Bitiev, is visiting Washington this week. Bitiev is the highest-ranking Abkhazian official ever to visit D.C., but he is doing it in an unofficial capacity (and traveling on his New Zealand passport, to ease visa troubles). He sat down with me for a conversation at the National Press Club; following are some of the excerpts of his take on Abkhazia's military and security situation, in particular the Russian military presence on Abkhazian territory.
The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia resulted in Russian recognition of Abkhazian independence, and agreements with Moscow that have resulted in 1,200 Russian troops each at a naval border patrol base in Ochamchire and at a land forces base in Gudauta, leading many (especially Western) observers to conclude that Abkhazia was merely a Russian colony. But Bitiev emphasized the Russians' role in preserving Abkhazian independence.
Bitiev was in town to promote Abkhazia at a Russia investment forum and to him, the Russian military presence in Abkhazia is key to the territory's economic success: “We need them to stay there. The reason we have 2.5 million tourists a year is that the Russian troops are there... We need something to patrol our borders, in addition to our troops, in case of a conflict to make it bigger.”
I asked if he saw the Russian military presence as permanent, or just a step on the way to military self-sufficiency.
“That's what investment does – the more successful we are, the quicker we'll restore ourself to full capacity, and there will be no need for...” He trailed off; at several points he seemed to stop himself before he even implicitly criticized Russia. “And if Georgia recognizes us, of course, there will be no need at all,” he added.
If a Russian-backed revolution forces the president of a former Soviet state to flee, one of the last places you'd expect him to go is Belarus. But Minsk appears to be a surprisingly congenial place for Russia-bashing. Kyrgyzstan's deposed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev late last week openly suggested -- without providing much evidence -- that Russia pushed him out because of his refusal to kick the U.S. out of its air base there:
Asked about speculation that Moscow may have played a role in the uprising, Bakiyev said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had been unhappy at his decision in 2009 to extend the lease on the U.S. base.
"They told me: 'Why are you holding on to this Manas base, this worries us, this does not suit us'," Bakiyev told reporters in Russian at a news conference.
"Russia's leadership was irritated, annoyed by the presence of the base and this factor also played a certain role."
And then on Sunday, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko chimed in:
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday berated Russia for not paying for its military bases in his country and warned that he could snub the summit of a Moscow-dominated security pact next month over Kyrgyzstan....
"If someone has forgotten, Russia has two military bases on Belarussian land," Lukashenko said. "And Russia pays us zero rubles, zero kopeks and zero dollars for these bases....
Lukashenko also threatened to skip an informal summit of the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization, set for May 8 in Moscow, unless Kyrgyzstan's "coup d'etat" is included in the agenda....
There's been a lot of recent insta-analysis about how Uzbekistan's president Islam Karimov may be seeking closer ties Russia as a result of the revolution in Kyrgyzstan in Uzbekistan, along with the nonstop speculation about what would happen to the U.S.'s Manas Air Base. But almost none of this analysis has discussed the situation in southern Kyrgyzstan, where both the U.S. and Russia were in the process of seeking new military installations: Russia, a CSTO rapid reaction force base in Osh, the U.S. an anti-terror training center in Batken.
Of these proposals, Uzbekistan was definitely more concerned about the Russian base. IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia has some useful analysis about how that has factored in to the Uzbek reaction to the "Roza revolution":
NBCentralAsia: How well-founded are Uzbek authorities’ fears about a possible deployment of more Russian forces in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan?
Tolipov: They are as well-founded as the need for this deployment is unfounded. Militarising the region is clearly inappropriate, and there’s clearly a geopolitical context to decisions like these. The first indications of what was termed Russia’s second military base in Kyrgyzstan, to be located in the south, came after agreement was reached to maintain the United States military airbase at Manas airport, albeit under a new name. [In 2009, the Kyrgyz authorities announced that the US base was to close, but a deal was later reached for it to remain, renamed a “transit hub”, apparently to save face.]
An Azerbaijani newspaper has a new take on the cancellation of the U.S.-Azerbaijan military exercises. Most media accounts -- and Azerbaijani analysts -- interpreted the move as Baku's signal to Washington that it was unhappy with the U.S.'s involvement in the Armenia-Turkey reconciliation process. But the Baki Xabar newspaper (via BBC Monitoring) suggests that it is not a cancellation, but merely a postponement, and that it may have had to do with Russian pressure on Azerbaijan:
The daily quoted Milaz news agency's report that talks with the USA on conducting the "Regional Response 2010" exercises are still under way. "Defence Minister Safar Abiyev and US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy discussed the matter on 17 April and agreed to continue bilateral cooperation". Milaz quoted an anonymous source in the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence as saying that the exercises are likely to be held in June or July 2010.
Meanwhile, the Doktrina journalistic centre for military research says that the root of the problem lies in Russia's opposition to signing the second stage of the working plan between Azerbaijan and the USA, Baki Xabar reported. "There is serious pressure from Russia to prevent Azerbaijan from signing the document and this leads to certain problems for Azerbaijan's military cooperation with the USA," Casur Sumarinli, director of the Doktrina centre, said. He added that the second stage of the working plan envisages setting up radar stations along Azerbaijan's border with Russia and Iran. "I believe that the Azerbaijan-USA military exercises envisaged for 2010 will go ahead, but signing the second stage of the working plan remains questionable," Sumarinli told the newspaper.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to protect Russian citizens and property in Kyrgyzstan, as violence returned to the Central Asian republic after a bloody uprising this month.
Medvedev instructed Serdyukov “to take measures” as incidents of looting increase, the Kremlin said on its Web site today, without elaborating.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Eldar Mammadyarov has expressed concern about the opening of a direct land connection between Russia and Armenia via Georgia through the Larsi checkpoint. Azerbaijani’s concern is based on the fact that through this connection Moscow could supply Yerevan with military cargo designed for the 102nd Russian military base located in Gumri, Armenia. If Azerbaijan receives information that Armenia is being supplied with arms through this route Baku will immediately react and ask Tbilisi for explanations.
The Russian media reports that Baku is thinking of taking "adequate measures" against Georgia in response to the Upper Larsi checkpoint opening. Energy and investment projects and the issue of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may be affected by these.
For its part, Georgia says “No weapons or ordinance for Russian troops in Armenia will be allowed access” through the border checkpoint. Though, technically, that doesn't preclude allowing weapons for Armenia, that seems pretty unlikely. It seems to me more likely that this is the best pretext Azerbaijan could come up with to object to the opening of the border, whose closure was causing economic problems for Armenia. But maybe I'm missing something here?
For those inclined to believe the worst about Russia's military intentions, there have been two recent developments that have aroused pundit ire: the possible sale of advanced French Mistral-class ships to Russia, along with the statement of Russia's top naval official that "a ship like this would have allowed the Black Sea fleet to accomplish its mission [invading Georgia] in 40 minutes and not 26 hours," and the new Russian military doctrine and its explicit designation of NATO as a threat.
The volume on the Mistral sale is bound to increase over the next few days, as France and Russia formally began talks today to buy not just one Mistral but up to four.
But RFE/RL has a perceptive analysis that suggests that the alleged aggressiveness of the doctrine is overblown, and that those two developments, in a way, blunt each other, that the Mistral sale in fact suggests a softer attitude toward NATO than Kremlin rhetoric can suggest:
The 600-pound gorilla hiding in the verbiage of the new doctrine is the question of how to arm the military with the high-tech weapons listed in the document. The Russian defense industry suffers from outdated plants, an aging work force, and the incompatibility of a system built by Josef Stalin with the realities of a market economy.
The new doctrine suggests that Russia somehow invigorate investment into innovative technologies and keep its independence as an arms manufacturer. While debating the best way to direct the Russian economy toward technological innovation, Russia's leaders appear to be moving away from defense industry autarky. During a meeting with Western experts on Russia last September, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reportedly said Russia wanted to cooperate with Western nations in weapons manufacturing.
