Russian Support of Georgian Separatists Raises New Questions

11 September 2008

(Moscow’s pretext for invasion “simply false,” says U.S. special envoy)

By David McKeeby
Staff Writer

Washington — The Georgia crisis began long before Russia’s August 8 air and ground assault, says a top State Department official, and followed years of provocative acts engineered in Moscow to obstruct international peacemaking efforts in the region.

“Moscow’s pretext that it was ‘intervening’ in Georgia to protect Russian ‘citizens’ and ‘peacekeepers’ in South Ossetia was simply false,” U.S. Special Envoy Matthew Bryza told members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission on September 10.  “The real goal of Russia’s military operation was to eliminate Georgia’s democratically elected government and to redraw Georgia’s borders.”

For more than a decade, Bryza, who serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has been a leading U.S. official engaged in international efforts to resolve long-standing disputes over Georgia’s separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, as well as other post-Soviet-era “frozen conflicts.”

“We have continuously tried to work with Russia, acknowledging its interests and proximity to Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” Bryza said. “Yet, from the time Russia got involved in the wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s, it has taken steps out of keeping with its claimed role as a mediator and a facilitator of the negotiations.”

As Washington’s representative to the U.N. Group of Friends of the Secretary-General on Georgia, the international body charged with mediating the Abkhazia conflict, Bryza reported that Russian diplomats “continuously bogged down negotiations with our German, British and French colleagues on technical minutiae.”  In negotiations on South Ossetia led by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Bryza also watched as “Russian colleagues seemed to be under instructions to block progress toward a solution.”

While both regions are internationally recognized as Georgian territory, Moscow’s practice of issuing passports conferring Russian citizenship to local residents was a long-standing concern to its diplomatic partners, said Bryza, as were Russian investments in property and businesses in the separatist regions that further called into question Moscow’s neutrality in mediation efforts.

Tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi also grew in the years following the 2004 “Rose Revolution,” Bryza said, resulting in incidents such as Russia’s 2006 trade embargoes and mass deportation of Georgians in retaliation for Georgia’s arrest of several Russian military intelligence officers allegedly linked to a series of bomb attacks.

In two still unexplained 2007 incidents, Russian attack helicopters launched a strike on Georgian government offices in March, while in August Russian warplanes crossed into Georgia and unsuccessfully fired a missile toward a Georgian radar station.  Russian soldiers were discovered serving in separatist militias during a series of skirmishes with Georgian forces later in the year.

Russia Sowed Seeds for Future Conflict

Moscow stepped up provocations in the breakaway region in 2008, Bryza said, following the NATO Bucharest Summit, where the 26-nation alliance offered future membership for both Georgia and Ukraine over strong Russian objections.  Within weeks of the April summit, the Russian government issued orders to strengthen official ties with the breakaway regions, sent Russian officials to serve in senior positions in South Ossetia, and built up Russian troops serving as “peacekeeping forces” in both territories since the early 1990s.

“Russia acted to support the South Ossetian and Abkhaz leaderships, sowing the seeds of future conflict,” Bryza said.

U.S. and European leaders called on Moscow to reverse this provocative course, Bryza said, as a Russian fighter shot down a Georgian unmanned surveillance drone over Georgian territory.  Russia resisted a new Georgian peace proposal for Abkhazia endorsed by the rest of the U.N. Friends group.  Russian warplanes crossed deep into Georgian territory again in July as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Tbilisi to urge all sides to work for peace and to caution Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to resist any temptation to use force to resolve these conflicts, even in the face of continued provocations. (See “Rice Urges End to Separatist Violence in Georgia.”)

Georgian forces moved into South Ossetia’s capital August 7, but only after several days of intense violence.  Russian officials may have been indirectly involved in armed hostilities, Bryza said, citing Georgian reports that South Ossetian militias fired on Georgian villages from behind Russian “peacekeeper” positions.  “There will be a time for assessing blame for what happened in the early hours of the conflict, but one fact is clear: There was no justification for Russia’s invasion of Georgia,” he said.

Within hours, Bryza was in the air en route to Tbilisi as the Georgia crisis began to unfold. (See “Russian Provocations Contributed to Georgia Crisis.”)

“This is the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Moscow has sent its military across an international frontier in such circumstances, and this is Moscow’s first attempt to change the borders that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union,” Bryza added.  “This is a troubling and dangerous act.”

The text of Bryza’s remarks is available from America.gov.

For more information, see Crisis in Georgia.