Primarily, Kasparov travelled to Georgia for the 50th birthday of longtime friend and chess colleague Zurab Azmaiparashvili. The grandmaster stressed that his visit to Tbilisi was “not as a representative of the opposition, but as a chess player.” Given that, “it’s perfectly obvious that I don’t plan to turn down a meeting with the Georgian leadership,” said Kasparov. “I see nothing shameful in that.”

Kasparov met with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday at the presidential palace, where the two discussed Russia-Georgia relations and a forthcoming youth chess world championship to be held in Georgia this September. He also met on Wednesday with Speaker of Parliament David Bakradze to talk about the two countries’ relations.

Speaking with journalists afterward, Kasparov said that all that had transpired between the Georgia and Russia in recent years “is more than the mind can comprehend.” While relations severely deteriorated after the August 2008 military conflict in South Ossetia, Kasparov asserted that Russia had begun a campaign against Georgia long before.

“The eviction of Georgians, the embargo on Georgian goods – this was all part of a plan,” said Kasparov, adding that the conflict in August “had been predetermined.”

Kasparov expressed concern that Georgian opposition leaders had recently met with members of the Russian government, saying that there was nothing to be gained through negotiations while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remained in power. “There are some things that will not change under Putin,” said Kasparov, citing as examples the imprisonment of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Russia’s presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “While Putin is in the Kremlin, there cannot be any improvement in relations between Georgia and Russia,” he asserted.

That said, Kasparov was confident that no new military conflict between the two countries was on the horizon, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Referring to plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Kasparov said that “while Putin is building Sochi, there won’t be any war.” Given that Sochi lies just north of Abkhazia on the Black Sea, he explained, having a base there had always been necessary for the Russian government’s ability to organize construction for the games.

Kasparov noted that many Russians were critical of their government for its aggressive political stance towards Georgia, and stressed the importance of creating cultural contacts between citizens and civic organizations of the two countries. Referring to his own experiences in Georgia as a chess player, Kasparov explained that Russia-Georgia relations were a particularly painful topic for him. “I have many special memories connected with Tbilisi,” he said.

According to the report, which cited unnamed sources, Russia was considering paying Nauru up to 50 million dollars, which the island had requested for “urgent social-economic projects.”

The newspaper further reported that prior to an announcement in Tskhinvali by Nauruan Foreign Minister Kieren Keke that his country was ready to recognize South Ossetia, he had been in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow to discuss financial aid from Russia to the small country.

Russia recognized the independence of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after a military conflict with Georgia in August 2008. The only other countries to recognize the two republics are Nicaragua and Venezuela, the latter of which only did so after receiving 2.2 billion dollars in Russia credit.

The attempt that followed to elicit recognition from Ecuador turned out to be unsuccessful: President Rafael Correa failed to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and also failed to receive any Russian credit.

The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean that covers approximately 8 square miles and has an estimated population of 14 thousand people. Nauru’s government is notorious for its atypical methods of obtaining income, including becoming a haven for illegal money laundering, selling passports to foreigners, and running Australia’s illegal migrant detention center.

Georgian Coast Guard Intercepts Trade Vessels between Turkey and Abkhazia

The Georgian Coast Guard recently intercepted an Abkhazian cargo ship filled with scrap metal bound for Turkey and a Turkish cargo ship filled with fuel as part of Georgia’s economic blockade of the breakaway region. The incident raised already high anti-Georgian sentiment in Abkhazia, a de facto independent region backed by Russia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain in a strange state of international and legal quagmire one year on from Russia’s land war with Georgia.

Read more from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Russia Arrests Eight for Hijacking Ship with Dubious Cargo

Russia has charged eight men from Estonia, Latvia, and Russia with hijacking a Russian ship named the Arctic Sea last month. Media reports have said that the ship may have been carrying arms or nuclear material to the Middle East.

Read more from Reuters and the Canadian CBC News.

Kyrgyz Teenager Assaulted in Petersburg: Despite Evidence Contrary, Investigators Claim Violence Was Not Ethnic Hatred

Kyrgyz ninth-grader Tagir Kerimov and a friend were assaulted in Petersburg in February by a group of 25-30 who shouted, “Beat the khuch” and “Russia for Russians” along with other racist and nationalistic slogans. On Friday investigators said that the assault was not incited by ethnicity or nationalistic intent, stunning human rights activists.

Read more from the Moscow Times.

Putin Vows to Settle Debt from Soviet Era

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Ministry of Finance to repay the remaining debt from the USSR. Before the end of the year, Putin plans to close the $34 million debt owed to the London Club of Creditors.

Read more from Pravda.ru.

Russian TV Documentary Caught in False Reporting Scandal

A dispute ensued over the past week between media photographer Arkady Babchenko and the state-run Channel One. The channel aired a documentary accusing the West of manipulating the media, even as it misrepresented a photograph of a wounded soldier.

Read more from The Other Russia and the St. Petersburg Times.

As the first anniversary of Russia’s war with Georgia approaches, the area is showing signs that violence may flare up once again.  Last year, similar shoot-outs between separatist South Ossetian forces and their counterparts on the Georgian side steadily escalated into full-blown combat.  Is the stage being set for a second armed confrontation over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia?

Writing for the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, journalist Yuri Simonyan explores the deteriorating situation, assessing the chances of a second Russian-Georgian war.

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SOUTH OSSETIAN DEJA VU
Yuri Simonyan
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
August 3, 2009

The situation in South Ossetia took a definite turn for the worst last weekend. The Ossetians claim that their capital city of Tskhinvali and police checkpoints come under regular fire from the Georgian territory. Tbilisi reverses the accusations and claims that it is Georgian police checkpoints that are fired at.

Guarantor of Abkhazian and South Ossetian security, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement warning the Georgian authorities to give a thought to consequences of the failure to put an end to “provocations against a sovereign republic, its citizens, and Russian servicemen”. A year ago, analogous warnings, accusations, and skirmishes had escalated into a shooting war.

Official Tbilisi maintains in all earnest that provocations are engineered by Moscow and Tskhinvali.

That Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said the Russian Defense Ministry was lying through the teeth to justify presence of “the occupiers on the territory or Georgia”. “No Georgians ever fired at Tskhinvali or checkpoints, including the checkpoints near the village of Eredvi.
Making all these bold statements, Russia hopes to justify the presence of the occupiers in the region. Fortunately, the international community knows better. Russia hopes to draw us into these provocations. It will fail,” Yakobashvili announced. The state minister dismissed another shooting war as unlikely “even though it is predicted by doomsday prophet Felgengauer”. This Russian expert had recently evaluated chances of another Russian- Georgian war at 80%.

The Georgian Foreign Minister appraised the statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry as an open threat to “a sovereign neighbor”. “Aggressive rhetorics of the Russian Defense Ministry and some senior officers of the Russian Armed Forces reveals existence of some plans with regard to Georgia,” it said and urged the international community to appraise the statement issued in Moscow.

That Tbilisi will once again secure the international community’s support goes almost without saying. Lacking access to the territory controlled by Tskhinvali, the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) refused to confirm the fact of firing at the South Ossetian capital. EUMM spokesman Steve Bird told journalists that observers had failed to find evidence of firing at Tskhinvali or any other South Ossetian settlement from the Georgian territory. The official statement made by the EUMM in the meantime included a reference to the necessity of access to the territory or South Ossetia, something Tskhinvali was denying EU observers.  The EUMM backed the Georgian claims that the checkpoint near Zemo Nikozi had come under mortar and automatic rifle fire from the direction of South Ossetia.

South Ossetian Foreign Minister Murat Jioyev dismissed the EUMM’s verdict as prejudiced. “Neither do they notice rapid remilitarization of Georgia, growth of its military potential, or aggressiveness of its leaders with regard to South Ossetia… All of that plainly shows that the August 2008 events have taught the Georgians nothing,” Jioyev told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Military expert Irakly Sesiashvili in his turn disputed the assurances of the official Georgian authorities that an armed conflict was unlikely. Last Friday, President of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity voiced territorial grudges against Georgia and said that the Trusov Gorge (currently controlled by the Georgians) had always been Ossetian. “There are some serious territorial issues we want brought up. The Trusov Gorge which is currently part of the Mtskheta-Mtianeti Administrative District of Georgia is ancestral Ossetian land turned over to the Georgian Social Socialist Republic in the Soviet period for some inexplicable reason,” Kokoity said. “Time to demand its return to Ossetia.” As far as Sesiashvili was concerned, Kokoity’s statement signalled “the resolve of Tskhinvali to expand its territory and the desire on Moscow’s part to expand the security zone.”

Tbilisi claims in the meantime that deterioration of the situation in South Ossetia is Moscow’s way of reminding everyone that it does not want Mikhail Saakashvili as the president of Georgia. It is also alleged that Moscow’s stiffly-worded statements are expected to inflame and encourage the Georgian
opposition that pins the blame for the loss of territories [Abkhazia and South Ossetia] on Saakashvili alone. Applying pressure in the region, the Kremlin sends a message to Tbilisi that it won’t let go while Saakashvili remains the president.

Political scientist Paata Zakareishvili who visited South Ossetia the other day disagreed with this hypothesis.  Zakareishvili called the latest deterioration “petty and local”.  “The Georgian law enforcement agencies arrested an Ossetian gunman by name of Pukhayev, the one who had gained notoriety through exceptionally cruel eradication of the Georgian village of Kurta in the August war. The Ossetians responded by opening fire at Zemo Nikozi. The Georgian probably returned it, and so on,” Zakareishvili said.

Translated by Aleksei Ignatkin

Shayapov added that a table map and 2009 calendar including the two territories was already printed at the end of 2008.

President Dmitri Medvedev has also designated an ambassador-at-large to lead the effort to finalize the borders of the two breakaway republics, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Tuesday.  No border agreement has been reached with Georgia, which continues to lay claim to the territories and other areas.

Russia fought a short war with Georgia in early August, and on August 26th recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions within Georgia.

In November, Medvedev told the French Le Figaro newspaper that the decision to recognize the two territories was “final and irreversible.”

“These are not joking matters, he said, “We have recognized these two new subjects of international law. From the point of view of international law, these two subjects now exist.”

Still, the regions have not been recognized internationally, and Georgia considers them to be sovereign territories.  Russia’s recognition has sparked criticism from the European Union, the US and other governments.  Georgia has since reclassified Abkhazia and South Ossetia as occupied territories.

The only country aside from Russia to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia was Nicaragua, which spoke out with support in August.  Afterwards, Nicaragua’s Foreign Affairs Ministry postponed establishing diplomatic relations with the two republics for an indefinite period.

—

Further reading:

Russia Started the Georgian War – Analysis

Russian Opposition Party Decries Recognition of Georgian Breakaway Regions

—

Declaration of the UCF in connection with the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has signed decrees recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

The United Civil Front believes that this decision:

1.Contradicts the interests of Russia and her citizens.
2.Breaches international agreements signed by Russia, as well as principles of international collaboration.
3.Contradicts the plan of peaceful reconciliation in South Ossetia, presented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and signed by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

The unavoidable consequences of this decision will be:
-escalation of the situation in the Caucasus and the increase of separatist tendencies inside Russia;
-the full political isolation of Russia in the world, increased pressure on Russia, the loss of her international standing;
-the deepening of negative tendencies in Russia’s economy.

The military-political adventurism of the illegitimate regime is pulling our country into a new Cold War with catastrophic consequence for all the Russian people.

The press-service of the UCF

translation by theotherrussia.org

“I signed decrees on the recognition by the Russian Federation of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Medvedev announced in a televised address today. “Russia calls on other states to follow its example.”

“This is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives of people.”

It also became clear that Russian military forces would remain within South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after requests from the presidents of the two breakaway republics.

The US had earlier called for the issue to be resolved by the United Nations. Tony Fratto, the White House Deputy Press Secretary, spoke on the topic at a press conference Monday:

“Well, the status of those two regions in Georgia are not a matter for any one country to decide; they’re a matter for the international community through the mechanisms at the United Nations. So those two regions are part of U.N. resolutions — resolutions, by the way, that Russia has supported in the past. That is the force of law today. As you heard the President say last week, the two regions are part of Georgia. They’re in Georgia, they’re part of Georgia, as a matter of these U.N. resolutions. And that’s where the matter stands.

“How we go forward in dealing with the two regions and what their interests are and the interests of Georgia are should be a matter of peaceful negotiations and discussion among the parties. That’s where we would like to get to.”

European governments, including the UK, France, Germany, and Italy also spoke out against the move.

Signing the declaration “further complicates an already complicated situation,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome. “It’s a unilateral decision that doesn’t have international support that makes it legally binding.”

The office of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wrote in a statement: “This is contrary to the principles of the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was equally outspoken. Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the Chairman of the group, condemned the decision:

“The recognition of independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia violates fundamental OSCE principles. As all OSCE participating States, Russia is committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of others.

“Russia should follow OSCE principles by respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia. Russia should immediately withdraw all troops from Georgia and implement the ceasefire agreement, including the modalities defined in the 16 August letter of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The international community cannot accept unilaterally established buffer zones,” Stubb said.

Russia experts and Russian political figures were predicting that by going through with calls for independence, Russia was setting itself up for international isolation.

“If [Medvedev] does this, it would be to further aggravate the relationship between Russia and the West,” said Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center. “Moving toward further isolation of Russia would be catastrophic.”

Mikhail Kasyanov, the leader of the People’s Democratic Union and a former Prime Minister, told the Grani.ru online newspaper (Rus) that “Russia is practically setting itself against the whole world. In the nearest future, one can expect a chill in relations.”

Alexander Rar, an analyst with the Berlin-based German Foreign Policy Council told the Sobkor®ru news agency (Rus) that “a new Cold War has started for Russia.”

“I think that for Russia, this is a dangerous situation,” he said, “and it can fall into international isolation. In the West, no one thought yesterday that Russia would recognize the independence of the republics. That is why the West is shocked. I think that the West will react emotionally: sending ships into the black sea, threatening countries that will support Russia’s decision with sanctions. Georgia will likely be accepted into NATO, although I’m not sure of this.”

One Russian expert dissented from the broad consensus that independence was a poor step for Russia. Sergei Arutyunov, the chair of the Caucasus department of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the move was unavoidable.

“There was no other way out,” he told the Sobkor®ru news agency (Rus), after saying he did not want to jump to value judgements.

Arutyunov led the Russian parliament’s delegation to Georgia in 1992, after the first South Ossetian war, which resulted in the region’s de facto independence. “I saw,” he said, “what the Georgians did in the unrecognized republics, and from then on my sympathy rested on the side of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Unfortunately, Georgia never did find a model which would allow it to retain these republics.”

Georgia, meanwhile, expressed the loudest protest, describing the step as “blatant annexation,” and saying that Russia was trying to revive the Soviet Union.

“Russia has legalized what it was threatening to do for a long time now,” Kakha Lomaia, the head of Georgia’s Security Council, told Bloomberg. “This means these two regions are about to join Russia. Make no mistake about it.”

One major point of contention in the conflict is the destruction of a Georgian unmanned spy drone in late April. While Russia claims to have no connection to the event, a report by the UN found that a Russian fighter plane was responsible, backing Georgian assertions that a ceasefire accord had been broken. Aleksandr Golts examines this incident in an editorial in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper (below).

Since the article was published on May 28th, Russia has announced that it will move more troops into Abkhazia, for “humanitarian aid” purposes. Georgia’s deputy foreign minister, meanwhile, called the move “an aggressive act, which is aimed against Georgia’s territorial integrity.”

—

On the art of choosing ones enemies
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
May 28, 2008.

When a mission of UN observers in Georgia presented their report, asserting that it was exactly a Russian fighter jet that shot down an unmanned Georgian drone, I immediately felt pity for the most intelligent and kind Vitaly Churkin, who currently serves as Russia’s representative to the UN. I immediately imagined him in the place of Soviet representative Valerian Zorin, who fiercely denied the presence of rockets in Cuba at a [UN] Security Council session forty-five years ago. At a certain moment, State Department employees brought in boards with glued-on photographs of Soviet rockets. And this allowed the American representative, Adlai Stevenson to run Zorin in to a corner: “Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no—don’t wait for the translation—yes or no?” To which the the ambassador of a superpower found nothing better to say than: “I am not in an American courtroom, Mr. Stevenson.”

I’m not even referring to the fact that Moscow was caught telling blatant lies. In 1962, at least the opponent was worthy. But today, the representative of tiny Georgia will drag us face-down along the table. It must be said that both now and forty-five years ago, Moscow was let down by a colossal underestimation of the opponent’s political will and technical capabilities. In 1962, after the Americans didn’t use force to topple the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev counted them incapable of adequately responding to the deployment of rockets. And even the military promised to safely hide the rockets from reconnaissance aircraft. Today, [Moscow] clearly misjudged Georgia’s readiness for political conflict, and most importantly—its technical capacity to substantiate its charges in detail.

The UN mission’s report gives the impression of an extremely tested and painstaking work. Before anything else, the UN writers underscore the qualifications of the specialists, [who they] draw upon for expertise (specialists on radar and unmanned aircraft and aerial photography, as well as fighter pilots). The authors of the report meticulously explain why they regard the Georgian video as authentic. Here you have a both a clear matching of on-the-ground features and terrain, completely corresponding to the radar data and witness testimonies (including those presented by the headquarters of the [Russian] peacekeeping forces). Furthermore, it is underscored that the video recording does not have any changes of color rendition or skipping in the image, which could point to a falsification.

The same can be said regarding the Poti [, Georgia] radar data. [The authors] meticulously explain to us why falsification is impossible in this case. It turns out that the recording of the flight paths of both the drone and the fighter jet are replete with slight changes of course. And an attempt to make a forgery would necessarily show up as an unswerving straight line. We are even told why the fighter flew so close to the drone, as to allow itself to be caught on film. It turns out that this air battle was started practically inside an air corridor constantly flown by civil aircraft. Thus, the fighter pilot had to see his target, so as to, God forbid, avoid hitting a passenger liner.

In order to refute all this, firm statements from representatives of the [Russian] air force that on April 20th, our war planes didn’t fly near the Russian-Georgian border won’t quite suffice. Disputing the Georgian data can only be done by presenting our own data – and I hope that our air defense radar watches this region. After all, information can be obtained from the civil dispatchers, who were guiding planes through the above-mentioned corridor.

Instead of this, [the authorities] have decided, it seems, to once again stigmatize Georgia, as America was stigmatized in 1962. Then, after the embarrassment in the Security Council, the Soviet newspapers wrote that “V. A. Zorin exposed the assertions of US State Department employees, pulled from a heap of all sorts of of rubbish, about the so called “establishment of Soviet rocket bases” in Cuba.” Now, the Foreign Ministry has put on a semblance that the naïve UN investigators have been fooled by the cunning Georgians: “The point at issue is not to cast doubt on the competency of the UN Mission’s specialists. Rather, the question is in the biased and unobjective materials, on which this investigation was built –the video recording and the readings of certain radars. This video tape, which has long been discussed, and which the Georgian side has broadcast on television, but had not risked showing the UN or giving to the Russian side, raises serious doubts, as we have already noted. And the radar data, used by the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, does not correspond with [the data] we have.” It follows, that they have decided to play dumb in Moscow. To pretend that there is in fact a report, but at the same time to consider that the arguments it raises do not exist at all. “Let them slander, the bastards.”

As if the UN authors didn’t dedicate nearly their whole report to explaining how they came to such distasteful conclusions for Russia.

All that happened in distant 1962 was of course humiliating for the Soviet representatives – it’s not very pleasant, when the government whose interests you represent is caught red handed. But then one could write everything off to the stand-off of two systems, to the uncompromising confrontation, by way of which the fate of the country was decided.

Now, when Georgia has managed to incriminate us in lies, Russia stands not only in a humiliating, but in a downright laughable position. And the inability to give any credible explanations at all makes it doubly so.

translated by theotherrussia.org

The UN report says that the evidence indicates the unmanned drone was shot down by a Russia jet. Investigators looked over radar records, video taken by the drone, and witness testimonies, finding that the attacking aircraft was a MiG-29 or Su-27 warplane.

The Russian defense and foreign ministries denied the findings. “Overall, the quality of these investigations does not inspire confidence,” Russia’s foreign ministry wrote on its website.

The incident, which took place on April 20th, was the last in a series of conflicts between Georgia and Russia. Russia, which backs Abkhaz separatist rebels and maintains peacekeepers in the area, has been accused of inciting an escalation towards a military conflict, and interfering in Georgian sovereignty.

Russian involvement in Abkhazia and another breakaway republic, South Ossetia, has also threatened economic relations between the two countries. For its part, Georgia has pledged to block Russian accession into the World Trade Organization.

Kovziridze said that an April 16th directive by Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish direct links with Abkhazia and South Ossetia was a gross violation of Georgian sovereignty. The order also cancelled economic sanctions against the two breakaway republics. Kovziridze called the move a “creeping annexation” of Georgian territory, adding that the order must be rescinded before talks continue.

Relations between the two countries have been tense for years, largely over the two republics. The situation has recently escalated, with Moscow announcing that it was prepared to use force against Georgia if they launched a campaign against separatist rebels. An unmanned Georgian drone shot down over Abkhazia last week also sparked vocal protest from Tbilisi.

Trade between the two nations has also suffered. In 2006, after alleged health concerns that critics called political, Georgian wine and mineral water, one of the country’s largest exports, were banned from Russia. Air and sea travel, also blocked since 2006, only resumed in March. Experts have pointed to the situation as an example of Russia’s new and aggressive foreign policy toward its neighbors.

Russia has been in negotiations regarding WTO membership for some 15 years, and the Kremlin had hoped to join the organization this year. Aside from Georgia, Russia needs to sign a bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia. It may also need to rework previous agreements with other countries, including the United States.

Russia is currently the largest economy that does not belong to the WTO.