Russia may have quickly defeated Georgia in the 2008 war, but Moscow still speaks of a Georgian menace to regional security. To suss up the nature of this "menace," a Russian reporter from the Kommersant daily recently spent a week behind enemy lines with a Georgian special forces unit.
The elite Georgian servicemen live in barracks that look like “a three-star hotel," reporter Vladimir Solovyev wrote in the March 21 piece; they do not salute, but, rather, exchange handshakes and kisses; they know how to use a condom to stop bleeding from a wound and, to add insult to injury, the American-trained soldiers are learning English and have taken to using American military terms.
To top it off, President Mikheil Saakashvili and his five-year-old son, Nikolozi, both decked out in military fatigues, showed up to visit the troops during the Russian team's time at the base.
What was the point of Tbilisi agreeing to all this? It could be a PR stunt for the negotiating table; another attempt to show Moscow that Georgia's armed forces are no longer ragtag guerilla fighters, and deserve respect. Or, alternatively, another chance to show the West that Georgia, unlike Russia, welcomes media scrutiny -- even from an enemy state.
A story run by Georgia's effervescently pro-government TV station Rustavi-2 reinforced both those impressions.
Still, the visit's purpose was apparently less than clear to all of the Georgian special forces who came into contact with the Russian team. “How did you get in here?" asked one perplexed captain. "Even Georgian -- much less Russian -- journalists have never been here."
Moscow and de facto Abkhaz officials will try to decide later this month where exactly Russia ends and Abkhazia begins.
In response to the March 28 talks, Tbilisi on March 18 reminded the world that Abkhazia's borders belong to Georgia to begin with, and that defining their latitude and longitude without Tbilisi's consent is illegal.
That argument is likely to fall on deaf ears in both Moscow and Sokhumi.
In 2009, the breakaway government invited Russian border guards to help train its own border forces. The largest of four Russian border guard compounds in Abkhazia -- five hectares in area, with room for 50 servicemen and their families -- just opened in the village of Otobaia, in the southern district of Gali. Russian soldiers are now the main line of defense against any Georgian attempt to retake the territory.
Russia apparently believes that the way to the World Trade Organization lies through Georgian grape vineyards. Failing to override Georgian opposition to Russia’s US-backed WTO bid, Moscow is applying pressure on Tbilisi by tempting Georgian winemakers to return to Russia, once the main consumer of Georgian alcohol.
The Georgian government may be ignoring Moscow’s offer to re-admit Georgian wine that passes quality control tests, but Georgian winemakers themselves want to regain access to Russian markets, Onishchenko claimed.
In response,Tbilisi, more interested in territorial than economic concessions from Moscow, has warned Georgian winemakers to beware of Russians bearing gifts. “Seventy percent of the Russian economy runs on hush money,” asserted Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze. “Officials do not sign off on anything until they get that infamous envelope.”
Suit yourself, businesses, the minister added, but would you really want to face all the hassle associated with marketing in Russia while the chances are that you will get kicked out again?
Georgian businesspeople, who have a long record of doing business in Russia, may not mind that hassle, but Georgia is not quite the place where corporate pressure can alter foreign policy.
Just as US Vice President Joseph Biden on March 9 was promising to pull Russia into the World Trade Organization (WTO), Moscow and US ally Georgia were kicking off talks in Bern about Russia’s WTO membership.
Washington hopes that WTO membership will teach Russia to play by the rules when it comes to investment and trade. WTO member Georgia, however, is looking to sell for a good price the only significant bargaining chip it has in its territorial conflict with the Kremlin.
In exchange for allowing Russia into the WTO, Tbilisi wants Moscow to let Georgians guard Russia’s borders with breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia or, at the very least, to support the deployment of international border monitors in both territories.
Russia, which is on a mission to convince the world to accept Abkhazia and South Ossetia as sovereign states, was quick to throw out the option. Instead, Moscow offered to resolve the dispute over a glass of wine.
Parallel to the WTO talks, Russia’s food security chief, Gennadiy Onishchenko, reiterated that Russia may lift its embargo on Georgian wines if Georgia, to which Onishchenko kindly referred as a “nationalist territorial formation,” submits to "control measures" on its wine products.
Commenting on Tbilisi's attempts to block Moscow's WTO bid, Onishchenko scoffed that the Georgians must think that “they hold the god by his beard and they will probably order [him] around, using Russia's national interests."
Azerbaijan's ambassador to Georgia, Namik Aliyev, offered a little public service announcement the other day. It went something like this:
"People of Georgia be warned! THEY are here! They are snapping up lands and property on your coast, they are singing and dancing in your beachfront bars and restaurants. But one day soon, they will organize themselves into a force, wipe out other ethnic groups, claim your country as their historic homeland, and set up an empire that will stretch from sea to sea (the Black and Caspian Seas, to be specific)."
In Ambassador Aliyev's telling, these are, of course, the Armenians.
Claiming that Azerbaijan’s nemesis, Armenia, is on the verge of fulfilling an eons-old dream of establishing a “Velikaya [Great] Armenia,” Aliyev on February 23 urged Tbilisi to join forces with Baku to stop the process of "Armeniazation" before it is too late.
Georgia may respond with an awkward laugh to such wild prophecies, and try to change the subject, but Azerbaijan is, in fact, pressing the Caucasus’ hottest button.
All three Caucasus countries tend to long for those episodes in their histories, however brief they may have been, when they dominated their surrounding area. While a frequent subject of jokes within Georgia, any mention of a "Great Armenia" can spark no-holds-barred debates between Georgians and Armenians over which majority-Christian nation has the right to what land. And a history debate can go a long way in the Caucasus.
The Azerbaijanis know that. Which begs the question . . . why try to set one off now?
In the nationalist Caucasus, many people often view the term "peace activist" as a synonym for "traitor." But, in the case of Armenian theater actor/director Georgi Vanyan, promoting peace is all about promoting ordinary well-being. Vanyan plans to set up a peace village in Georgia, where the Caucasus’ most implacable foes -- Armenians and Azerbaijanis -- can interact free of government restrictions.
The free communication zone would be established in the Georgian village of Tekalo, located not far from the Armenian and Azerbaijani borders. Vanyan, who has also tried to stage Azerbaijani film festivals in Yerevan, hopes that the site would become the venue for all confidence-building projects involving the two countries, Global Voices South Caucasus Editor Onnik Krikorian reports. The project proposes capitalizing on the precedent of peaceful coexistence between ethnic Azeris and Armenians in Georgia.
Underlying the initiative is also Montesquieu's premise that "peace is the natural effect of trade" -- a notion reflected in Georgia's current push for a pan-Caucasus free trade zone.
Not long ago, many Armenians and Azerbaijanis, indifferent to bombastic war rhetoric at home, actively exchanged goods at a market not far from Tekalo. The project will try to bring some of that back.
Forget about Russian tanks or that sophisticated French warship that Moscow recently bought. Georgia seems intent on defending itself against a far more powerful and pervasive weapon -- Russian pop music.
Despite the Georgian government's ongoing efforts to explain to audiences at home that nothing good can come out of Russia, Russian pop's deafening beat and kitschy aesthetics have so far managed to overcome all political animosity. Many Georgians hold a grudge against Russia for their years as a Soviet republic and the Kremlin’s role in Georgia's separatist conflicts, but many still hit the dance or karaoke floor when the Russian pop beat starts.
Clearly, something had to be done. And, according to the online chatter, something has been done. The talk about an informal ban on the evil sounds of Russian pop music began online and then crossed over into Georgia's mainstream media.
Reportedly, some Tbilisi restaurateurs were summoned to the financial police, where they were requested to make changes to their musical repertoire.
Culture Minister Nikoloz Rurua dismissed the reports as “stupid" (while acknowledging a personal dislike of the Soviet crowd-rouser "Den' Pobedy"/"Day of Victory"), but some bar and restaurant owners still whisper about the attempts “from above” to improve their taste in music.
The public reaction to the government’s alleged foray into DJ-ing -- whether perceived or real -- is mixed. Some speak about crude interference in culture, while Georgian patriots and music snobs say "Good riddance!"
The Georgian government's nocturnal abduction of Gori's Stalin monument last year left a noticeable architectural emptiness in the former Soviet dictator's hometown, a city that bore the brunt of Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia. Now it's come time to fill the void.
In the place of Stalin, Georgia's Ministry of Culture has hit on a sculptural ensemble of lanky human figures meant to represent both Stalin's victims and the victims of the 2008 war with Russia -- a connection that reflects the Georgian government's position that Stalin’s imperialist ambitions live on in modern-day Russia.
The project, designed by internationally exhibited sculptor Tamar Kvesitadze and Paata Sanaia, will cost some 300,000 lari, or about $165,000. Kvesitadze also designed Batumi's mechanical glass-and-metal sculpture "Love," an ultra-modern curiosity that features two mammoth figures -- one man and one woman -- merging into one.
An expected completion date for the Gori project has not yet been announced.
Is Moscow’s main bête noire becoming Washington’s darling again?
A trip to the US for the January 13 memorial service for diplomat Richard Holbrooke has given Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili the chance to score a second tête-à-tête with US President Barack Obama in the space of two months. The first, in November, took place on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lisbon.
After all the talk of Obama keeping Saakashvili at arm’s length lest he spoil the whole US-Russia restart campaign, every interaction between Obama and Saakashvili is closely watched both in Georgia and in Russia.
There could be more conversations to scrutinize: Saakashvili’s press office claims that the Georgian leader and Obama also agreed to set up a broader meeting in the future.
Not surprisingly, the Russian interpretation of these exchanges differs strongly from the Georgian.
To hear the Russian press (and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) tell it, Saakashvili used his time in Washington to pull aside top US officials and ask them to rearm Georgia. The Georgian Foreign Ministry denied such reports, saying that Obama and Saakashvili spoke about economic assistance, trade and security, as well as Georgia’s contribution to NATO's Afghanistan campaign.
Similarly, the Pentagon avidly denied any talks about arms sales, while the White House did not comment on the issue, The Washington Post reported.
Three men were arrested for the negligent handling of a mortar that exploded on January 11, killing three soldiers and wounding 13 other service personnel at a military training center near Tbilisi, the Georgian Ministry of Defense has announced.
“The investigation indicates that the incident was caused by violation of safety norms,” said the ministry in a statement released late on January 11. Military trainer, Col. Tristan Tkesheladze, Col. Mamuka Fareshishvili and Lieutenant Major Malkhaz Kobalia were taken into custody. The three men were responsible for safety measures at Krtsanisi National Training Center, where US servicemen train Georgians for North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations in Afghanistan.
President Mikheil Saakashvili and opposition leaders have demanded a full and transparent investigation into the incident.
