There are fears in some quarters that tensions could lead to another Caucasus war, writes LARA MARLOWE
RUSSIAN DEPUTY minister of defence Alexander Kolmakov boasted that the Kavkaz 2009 (Caucasus 2009) military exercises launched by his country yesterday are comparable to those in the days of the Soviet Union.
Russia is deploying 8,500 men, 200 battle tanks, 450 armoured vehicles and some 250 artillery pieces in the week-long manoeuvres near the Georgian border. They involve brigades from the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, naval units in the Black and Caspian Seas, the air force and paratroopers.
The exercise has raised tension, less than 11 months after Russia and Georgia fought a week-long war. One goal, cited by Interfax news agency quoting a senior Russian army official , is to “cool fantasies of some hawks” in the Georgian capital. Tbilisi.
The manoeuvres appear to be a riposte to a Nato Partnership for Peace exercise that ended on June 3rd, which Moscow called “provocative”.
The words “pure provocation” were used yesterday by the Georgian government to describe the Russian war games. Nato’s exercise mobilised 1,100 men, compared to the 8,500 now moving through the Caucasus in Moscow’s show of force.
Similar manoeuvres, with 500 fewer Russian soldiers, were staged last year before the August war. Georgians and Russians now accuse each other of being better armed than they were a year ago.
Last month three former ambassadors to Tbilisi, the Americans William Courtney and Kenneth Yalowitz and Denis Corboy, an Irishman who represented the EU Commission in the Georgian capital, wrote a joint opinion piece in the New York Timeswarning of the possibility of renewed war this summer. Russia was building up forces on borders between South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia, they noted. "Reports of gunfire across the ceasefire lines have increased," they added.
The ambassadors cited three Russian motives for starting another war: Moscow’s desire to control the export of natural gas and oil that transit Georgia after being pumped in the Caspian Sea; Georgia’s continuing efforts to join Nato; and the fact that Mikheil Saakashvili, the mercurial, anti-Russian Georgian president, is still in power.
"Of the three reasons, oil and gas from the Caspian is by far the most important," said Zaza Gachechiladze, the editor of the English language daily newspaper the Messenger, in a phone interview from Tbilisi. "Russia always blackmails the West by threatening to cut energy supplies to Western Europe. Moscow sees Georgia as a small pawn in the big chess game."
Among the goals of the exercises cited by the Russian agency Novosti are “ensuring the security of energy supplies” and “protecting Russian economic interests in the south-west region”.
On June 15th, Moscow vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended the mandate of the 16 year-old UN observer mission in Abkhazia. And Moscow asked the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to withdraw its observers from South Ossetia by tomorrow. Russia has never allowed the European monitors deployed in the wake of last year’s war to enter the enclaves.
Lawrence Sheets, the Caucasus Project Director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), expressed “deep concern” at the fact that “there will be no independent observers around the conflict zones ... and there will be no mechanism for ensuring that minor incidents don’t deteriorate into wider fighting.”
The ICG noted that Russia had not fulfilled the conditions of the ceasefire agreement it concluded with President Nicolas Sarkozy during France’s EU presidency, namely: an end to military action, a pull-back to pre-war positions and access for humanitarian and monitoring missions.
The three former ambassadors have urged President Obama to “signal to Moscow that steps to take over Georgia, including any plotting to overthrow Saakashvili, would kill any ‘restart’ of relations.” But the warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
Mr Obama will meet the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, in Moscow on July 6th. They will discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan, arms control and Iran, according to the Washington Post.
The territorial integrity of Georgia seems to have fallen far down the list of US priorities.