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#10974498 · 25 Sep 2008, 00:02 · · პროფილი · პირადი მიმოწერა · ჩატი
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sept. 24, 2008
What the Russians Left In Their Wake in Georgia
Melik Kaylan
Having devastated vast areas of its own lands in the Caucasus, such as Chechnya and Ingushetia, in order to "protect" them from instability, Moscow's obliterating shadow has settled deep over Georgia -- with the usual consequences. The full barbarism of Russian actions in Georgia may not emerge for years; much of the evidence lies behind the lines in terrain newly annexed by Russia. But some details are now beyond dispute. Alongside the various human atrocities, such as the bombing and purging of civilian areas, the invaders looted and destroyed numerous historical sites, some of which were profoundly revered by the Georgians as sacred building blocks in their national identity. This is especially true of the region around South Ossetia that served as a kind of cradle of early Georgian culture. The Georgian Ministry of Culture lists some 500 monuments and archaeological sites now mostly under Russian occupation and out of sight.
Georgia's Battered Monuments
After the interminable Soviet decades, the Georgians from 1990 onward made a special push nationwide to reconsecrate churches and build local museums to revive their own interrupted national narrative. No doubt that in itself acted as a kind of provocation to Russia's hair-trigger sensitivities over loss of empire. Using satellite imagery and interviews with refugees from the August invasion, the Georgian government is in the process of identifying damage to the most important monuments.
Thus far the destruction includes severe bomb damage to the Museum of Prince Matchabelli, which housed the personal effects of the Georgian royal family's famed anti-Russian rebel, who was native to the region; destruction by arson of the church of St. George in Sveri, a rare 19th-century wooden structure; shelling damage to the 12th-century Ikorta church with its graves of revered Georgians; and extensive bomb damage to the monastery complex of Nikozi Church -- dating from the 11th century, it is perhaps the most important site of all. This is an extremely selective list, but it gives the reader an idea of why the area matters deeply to Georgians, and in a perverse way to Russian-backed militias allowed to plunder as they drove out residents at gunpoint and, according to eyewitness accounts, began looting buildings. Satellite imagery shows that specifically Georgian villages were extensively torched and in some places are being bulldozed flat.
Here one should firmly scotch any budding moral equivalency arguments comparing Russian conduct in Georgia with allied conduct in Iraq or Kosovo. Whatever other mistakes have been made, the U.S. has meticulously avoided bomb damage to ancient sites and never has encouraged any allies to attack or obliterate the culture of rivals. To be clear, the U.S. simply does not harbor that kind of targeted animus toward the cultural patrimony of others.
I was in the Georgian war zone during a chunk of August and with the help of local friends I was able to traverse occupied terrain via country roads and over hills on foot -- a highly dodgy undertaking as one moved into South Ossetia without Russian permits. Georgian refugees were still streaming out. Bodies and burned vehicles were left behind. To view the damage to Nikozi, my friends got me to a hillside at dusk for a short spell, before it got dark enough for night-vision lenses to pick us out, making it suicidal for us to move around. One could make out rubble and destruction in the village and the church complex. The church itself seemed unharmed, but the equally historic bishop's palace nearby appeared roofless and fire-damaged. In the advancing twilight, visibility was bad. But what I saw has now been confirmed by multiple eyewitness and other reports.
The site of Nikozi Church dates back to the fifth century and is known to Georgians as the Church of the First Martyr. The story goes that St. Rajdeny was a Persian soldier of high rank stationed in the area under the Sassanid empire. He converted to Christianity and was tortured to reconvert to Zoroastrianism. He refused and died under torture, and his grave became a center of pilgrimage around which a church was built by Vakhtang Gorgaseli, the fifth-century Georgian king who founded Tblisi. A bishop's palace was added and the church rebuilt in the 11th century.
The Soviets expunged all religious activity there with particular force because Stalin hailed from the nearby town of Gori, where they built the Stalin museum in his lifetime. At the Soviets' demise, Nikozi became again a center of pilgrimage for Georgians. And as the national church came back to life, Nikozi reacquired a bishop who revived the annual mid-August festivities in honor of St. Rajdeny.
Conflict in Georgia
The fiercest aerial bombardment of the village took place this year on Aug. 12 and 14. Bishop Andrea Gvazava of Gori, who was helping conduct services at the church at the time, later told me that he had organized the evacuation of villagers but the bishop of Nikozi had stayed to face further bombing. There is some confusion over the condition of the church -- some say it sustained some fire damage and little else -- but the medievаl bishop's palace was gutted and everything inside torched. New outbuildings to house a school were destroyed. Bishop Andrea believes that the complex likely suffered looting, because in Gori and outlying villages he and other priests were later robbed at gunpoint by Ossetian militias.
In contrast, Stalin's museum in Gori, which I visited during the occupation, went unmolested except for the Georgian flag flying on the tower above -- a sniper had shot out its red St. George crosses. In fact, the museum became a center of pilgrimage for Russian soldiers who daily stood around having their pictures taken. The custodian, a sturdy elderly lady, also had refused to flee. She told me that teary-eyed Russian officers, drunk by evening as most Russian soldiers were, kept turning up and complimenting her for watching the place. They had hugged her and said: "He was a great man. He kept our country unified."
Had they mentioned that he'd done so by decimating an entire generation of Georgians and by settling Ossetians in and around Tskhinvali, the source of all the present trouble? "They were alcoholics," she sniffed. Why hadn't she fled? "Because it is a piece of history, whatever you think of Stalin," she said, "and we have a responsibility to preserve it."
TALLINN, Sep 24, BNS - A group of Estonian and Finnish cultural figures, scientists, journalists and politicians has sent the leaders of the University of Helsinki a public letter comparing Johan Backman, the author of a controversial book on Estonia that has triggered heated debates, to deniers of Holocaust and questioning his competence as a university teacher.
The authors of the letter addressed to the rector, chancellor and dean of the law faculty recall that Backman on Monday presented in Tallinn his book "The Bronze Soldier: The Backdrop and Content of the Estonian Monument Debates," which among other things denies the Soviet occupation of Estonia and calls the corresponding viewpoint a Nazi myth.
They added that Backman predicts a speedy end to Estonian independence, speaks in favor of Estonia's unification with Russia and calls Estonia an apartheid state in both his book and his blog as well as in public appearances. He contrasts different ethnic groups such as Estonians, Russians, Jews and Russian Estonians, and distorts the Estonian history.
The authors note that at the presentation of the book Backman, diminishing the historical experience of Estonians, said it is time for Estonians to understand that there was no Soviet occupation. He supports his claim among other things by the Nazis' anti-Jewish propaganda spread by Nazi Germany in occupied countries during World War II, which he represents as the ideology of Estonians and the Estonian state, thereby labeling people who speak about the Estonian history and experience as disseminators of Nazi propaganda.
The letter notes that Backman lectures on sociology of law and the specific features of the Russian and Estonian legal policies at the University of Helsinki this academic year.
The signatories add that Backman's public statements are not a mere expression of opinion. In their words, questioning the existence of the Estonian state and declaring Estonia to be a part of Russia can be considered hostile propaganda against the state and the nation.
Backman as a lecturer on Estonian and Russian legal policies can be compared to a denier of the Holocaust teaching Jewish history at a university, they added.
"Would that, too, be possible at the University of Helsinki?" they asked.
The authors of the letter asked the leaders of the university how is it possible that the University of Helsinki considers it acceptable for subjects linked with Estonian and Russian law and policies to be taught by a person who disseminates hostile propaganda about Estonian history and present-day reality.
They also asked whether the university expects its teachers to be familiar with facts and whether it intends to take a position on the lecturer's statements.
Among the signatories were University of Helsinki researcher and noted columnist Iivi Anna Masso, journalist, writer and film director Imbi Paju, Finnish author Sofi Oksanen, journalist Stefan Brunow, Jewish Estonian historian and writer Elhonen Saks, and Jevgeni Krishtafovitsh, leader of Estonia's Russian-speaking youth association Avatud Vabariik (Open Republic).
Suvi Salmenniemi from the University of Helsinki, researcher Anna Rotkirch, leader of the free-thinkers' association Jussi K. Niemela, members of the European Parliament Lasse Lehtinen and Henrik Lax, writer Mikael Enckell, and Katri Vallaste from the Alexander Institute also signed the letter.
Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8861, sise@bns.ee
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Wants More than Just a Sphere of Influence, Russian Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 24 – After Russia's intervention in Georgia, many in Moscow and the West have been arguing that the Kremlin is simply seeking recognition of the former Soviet space as its sphere of influence, a demand that some see as reasonable but that others view as a threat to the international system.
But one Moscow analyst warns that in fact a growing number of increasingly influential people in the Russian capital have a far larger goal: They want Moscow to regain what it "lost" in 1991, and they want this new and expanded state to become a superpower resembling what the Soviet Union had been earlier.
In an essay posted on the Grani.ru portal this week, Irina Pavlova traces the history of the emergence of this neo-imperial worldview back to the mid-1990s and argues that in recent months, its advocates, often viewed as marginal in the past, have become part of the ideological mainstream (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.141751.html).
To understand why that is so, she says, one must recognize that "the people in Russia as a rule believe those in power" and that "the supreme power is untouchable and absolutely insured against any questions and even more demands by the people." Consequently, when the Georgian conflict started, "the people believed [Moscow's] explanations and supported [the government]."
Given how closed off the powers that be in Russia are, she writes, "the experts are assuring us that no, Putin and company do not have any ideology and that they are interested only in money." But any serious consideration of the words they are using and the content of what they are saying shows that such a view is wrong, even delusional.
"For those who want to understand what is taking place," Pavlova writes, "it is clear that the powers that be have changed the language they use. The prime minister, the president, and representative of the army, special services and church, that is, all the most influential forces in the country, now speak it."
And this language -- one drawn from the writings of people like the Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin, Russian nationalist Sergei Kurginyan, and Patriarch Aleksii II -- and reflects the views of those "who up to now cannot come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and who have been bringing up the idea of global revenge."
A decade ago, there was a clear distinction between the words of Dugin, Kurginyan, and Aleksii, on the one hand, and the leaders of the state, on the other, but now they have converged, "a moment of truth has arrived when the vision of the world of the representatives of those in power and their secret intensions are becoming clear."
Pavlova devotes most of her article to an analysis for the rising profile of the neo-imperialists in such places as the special issues of "Ekspert" entitled "Russia. Five Centuries of Empire" (www.expert.ru/printissues/expert/2008/01/) and of "Profil" on the national goals of Russia in the future (/www.expert.ru/printissues/expert/2008/01/).
"After the Russian government decided on the military operation in the Caucasus and then recognized the independence of south Ossetia and Abkhazia," she says, "the next stage of converting into life the intention of the powers [to rebuild the empire and become a superpower] began," as several writers have already pointed out (www.profile.ru/numbers/?number=625).
Perhaps the clearest articulation of the direction in which Moscow is moving, she says, is provided by "Profil'" editor Mikhail Leontyev's recent influential book "Fortress Russia." In it, he writes, "liberalism is the policy of the strong in relation to the weak, which deprives the weak of any chance to become strong" (www.chtivo.ru/chtivo=3&bkid=765390.htm).
Consequently, he continues, "the response of Russia to American challenges cannot be liberal. … Our country is an inaccessible fortress! As long as it isn't surrendered without a battle by the 'internal enemy.' We have a reason for optimism! … [Especially] if the powers that be finally dispense with the liberalism hated by the people!"
Leontyev, Kurginyan, and Dugin believe that Russia must adopt "an alternative aggressive ideological and geopolitical project," that it must "think and act in an imperial way," and that it must become "a world power" which projects power from its borders "to the most distant corners of the planet." And ever more people in the political elite agree, Pavlova says.
For both these writers and the political figures who follow them, their "unqualified ideal is a superpower like the Soviet Union," a country with a core (the USSR) and a periphery consisting of the Warsaw Pact, the world communist system, the national liberation movement, the non-aligned countries and so on."
"In these universal plans for the restoration of empire, the people of Russia is given only the privilege of serving the powers that be," Pavlova says, a view that reinforces the traditional relationship between rulers and ruled in Russia rather than opening up the possibilities for a break with the past.
"But now is an entirely different time," some will object, "it's the 21st century after all." But Pavlova says, while the external trappings have changed, inside Russia is "the same traditional, patriarchal country with the same type of power and the same mentality of the people which has learned nothing from its history."
Even if Pavlova's dire vision of the direction Russia is taking is overstated – and many will insist that it is – her argument represents a useful correction to those who refuse to pay attention to the influence that people like Dugin and Leontyev now have and to those who insist that Russia wants to be a traditional power in the Western understanding of that term.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Sept. 23, 2008
Russia deploys warships to the Caribbean
Russian warships are sailing towards the Caribbean for the first time since the Cold War to take part in a joint naval exercise with Venezuela.
Adrian Blomfield
In a display meant to show off Russia's military resurgence and to provoke the United States, four vessels from the Northern Fleet set sail on a mission replete with an atmosphere of Soviet-era bombast and brinksmanship.
Symbolically at least, the manoeuvres represent the Kremlin's boldest challenge yet to US military hegemony. By sailing so close to the American coastline for a series of exercises with Washington's principal detractor in Latin America, Russia seems to be deliberately attempting to irritate the White House.
The flotilla that left the northern port of Serveromosrk on Russia's Arctic coast was lead by the guided missile cruiser Peter the Great, one of the largest warships of its kind. The Kirov-class warship is equipped with cruise missiles that can be armed with nuclear warheads.
It was accompanied by the Admiral Chabanenko, an anti-submarine destroyer, and two support vessels.
Although navy chiefs insisted that the exercises had no political overtones, most analysts believe the Kremlin is signalling its determination to challenge the United States and retaliate for Washington's support of Georgia during last month's war in the Caucasus.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, vowed that Moscow would respond in kind after accusing American naval vessels ordered to Georgia to deliver aid of carrying weapons to re-arm the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
The mission, which will formally begin in mid-November, will delight Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, who has already revelled in the presence of two Russian bombers in his country earlier this month.
"It is a message to the empire that Venezuela is no longer poor and alone," Mr Chavez said last week.
Over the past 18 months, Mr Putin has unnerved the West by ordering the resumption of long-range bomber patrols close to the airspace of several countries, including Britain and the United States.
Whatever their private reaction, American officials are likely to mock Russia's latest attempt at swagger. The White House has already derided the Kremlin's attempts to court Latin America's socialist states, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as part of a newly assertive foreign policy that again has many echoes of the Cold War.
There were also insults from the Pentagon over the state of Russia's ageing air force and those jibes are likely to be revived with even greater intensity over the feeble condition of the country's navy.
According to some military analysts, about half of Russia's navy is in dry docks at any one time undergoing repair. The Peter the Great itself was put out of commission for several months in 2004 after Russia's navy chief warned it was in such poor condition it could "explode" at any moment.
Last week two sailors were killed aboard another Russian ship after it caught fire - a regular hazard on many vessels.
Even so, Russia is undergoing a rapid modernisation of its armed forces. While the focus has been on upgrading the country's nuclear capability, Russia unveiled plans last week to increase its defence budget by 50 per cent over the next three years.
Moscow is also seeking the international presence of its navy by building naval bases outside Russia for the first time since the Soviet Union collapsed and could build a new port in Syria, another close ally.
As it tries to reassert itself as a power, Russia has offered itself as a champion of many countries that are bitterly opposed to the United States, among them Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe.
Many of Russia's new friends will be addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which convenes on Tuesday. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran will address delegates in a speech that is expected to echo Russia's demands for an overhaul of the world order.
Mr Chavez will make his speech on Wednesday, with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe due to talk on Thursday.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Sept. 23, 2008
Europeans see Moscow as security threat
James Blitz
The Russian military’s recent incursion into Georgia means that many more west Europeans now regard Russia as a greater threat to global stability than states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, according to a survey for the Financial Times.
Despite this, a clear majority of people in western Europe remain firmly opposed to their governments spending more on defence and diverting resources away from public health and social programmes.
Indeed, the Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times, conducted after the conflict between Russia and Georgia last month, indicates the citizens of three west European states would strongly oppose their national armies defending east European nations from a Russian attack.
Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are all legally obliged to defend their fellow Nato members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the Atlantic alliance’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defence.
However, in Germany, Italy and Spain, more people say they would oppose the notion of their national troops rushing to defend the Baltic states than would support the idea.
In Germany, as many as 50 per cent of people say they would oppose national troops going to the defence of the three states, compared with only 26 per cent who say they would support it. Only in Britain and France do more people support the idea of their armies defending the Baltic states than oppose it.
The contrast between Europeans’ rising fears of Russia and their unwillingness to support any action to meet the challenge posed by Moscow militarily is the most striking feature of the survey. The difficulty for governments contemplating an increase in defence spending is that growing public anxiety about Russia is somehow doing little to change the debate.
Even in the UK, which has the most fraught bilateral relationship with Russia of any west European state, 49 per cent of people oppose extra spending on the military as a result of Russia’s actions.
Overall, the events in Georgia have pushed Russia up the table of countries that are perceived by west Europeans to endanger world peace.
Over the past year, Harris has asked Europeans on a monthly basis which states they regard as the greatest threat to global stability. Russia has repeatedly ranked well behind China, the US, Iran and Iraq. As recently as August, before Russia’s incursion into Georgia, only four per cent of west Europeans deemed Russia as the greatest threat to world stability. But the September poll shows 17 per cent of respondents putting Russia top of the list, ahead of Iran on 14 per cent and not far behind China on 21 per cent.
The number of US respondents who say Russia is the greatest threat has also soared, from two per cent in early August to 13 per cent this month.
Harris’s poll, meanwhile, shows a sharp divergence between Europeans and Americans over which of the US presidential candidates are seen as better protecting Europe’s interests with regard to Russia.
On this measure, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, is overwhelmingly favoured in each of the five European countries surveyed. Only in the US is John McCain seen as being better able to protect Europe’s interests – gaining 41 per cent of votes to Mr Obama’s 37.
International Herald tribune Sept. 23, 2008
Relying on Russia: A question of risks
John Vinocur
Late last week, Australia effectively put on hold ratifying a treaty that would turn it into a uranium supplier for Russia. The reason, plus or minus a nuance or two: Russia's invasion of Georgia.
With the world's headlines and crawl lines framing global attention between financial Armageddon and attempts at salvation, the decision got next to no prominence.
And neither did Sweden's move to delay a report on the future of its armed forces because Russia's tactics in Georgia call its military planning and readiness seriously into question. The government also announced it was junking a plan to disband certain units and close installations.
Here were two countries that could easily take a slide away from any kind of pushback to Russian aggression - one a neutral, the other on the far side of the world from Georgia - saying in effect that Vladimir Putin's regime is risky business and no longer worthy of their trust.
Representing a loss of close to a billion dollars a year in revenue for Australia, and an unusual choice by Sweden to rise above caution's parapet, the actions came against a surge of faltering attention and questionable resolve elsewhere in relation to Russia. In the Australian case, the opposition joined with the Labour government in Parliament to back a commission's recommendation that ratification of the uranium treaty be delayed.
Sure, Condoleezza Rice has again offered damning words, describing a "dark turn" in Russia's behavior back toward "a paranoid, aggressive impulse." But the Bush administration has done nothing meaningful or palpable so far to bring substance to its pledge in early August that "Russia cannot be allowed to get away with invading its neighbor."
Since then, Russia has recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, essentially annexing two Georgian provinces, and raised its troop strength in them to 7,600 men.
What did the European Union, which is handling the bargaining to get the Russian military out of Georgia, say about that just last week?
Proving that a financial crisis is a better place to hide news than a late Saturday night in August, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU Commission, offered that Russia's withdrawal from "Georgia proper" will be enough to restart the negotiations it postponed on a Strategic Partnership agreement between the EU and Russia.
There goes the EU's meaningful response on Georgia.
NATO argues that Russia leaving additional forces in the new puppet states can't be considered a necessary return to the status quo.
But here you have a traditionally risk-averse EU, tut-tutting about a financial maelstrom centered on speculative strategies and horribly disregarded risks, yet announcing that Georgia should be soon risk-free enough to remove the only bit of opprobrium the EU has piled on Putin's head.
Nota bene: There is little prospect of returning Russian troop levels to previously agreed "peacekeeping" levels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
But unlike the United States, NATO or the EU, what Australia and Sweden have done individually is to take uncomfortable, concrete steps to face up to a country they now publicly regard more as a risk than a partner.
Australia and Sweden have something very basic in common. Neither is dependent on Russia for its energy needs. In a sense, that fact sets them free. Absent anything resembling American leadership, it also points in the direction of adequate responses to an unreliable, aggressive state.
If the EU were making a priority of breaking its dependence on Russian energy supply and delivery, it would be liberating itself from Putin's well-practiced skills in energy blackmail, and driving home a point the invader could not ignore.
"Our response must include ... a collective defense to secure our energy supplies," Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain has said. "I will encourage our European partners to use our collective bargaining power rather than seek separate deals with Russia."
So? So nothing massive, determined or striking. The need for more energy security, softly worded, is contained in an EU declaration on Georgia.
But those separate deals Brown denounced block anything that would look like a counter-offensive where all members abandon sweetheart arrangements with Russia, stop fussing about national vs. community prerogatives within the EU, take possible financial hits like Australia, or reconsider nuclear power.
Short on action elsewhere, the United States through its ambassador in Stockholm, Michael Wood, put in a reasonable word on the matter. He said in a Swedish newspaper article that the Swedes could be leaders in refusing to allow Russia "to sow differences between European states."
That meant re-examining the South Stream gas pipeline project, whose principal Russian goal, he said, was to cut Ukraine off from the natural gas distribution system. Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria are shareholders.
Sweden, Wood wrote, should also take "a hard look" at the planned Nord Stream gas pipeline, mapped to run through Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea. It represents, Wood said, "a special arrangement between Germany and Russia."
No offense caused in Sweden, which on environmental grounds - read security considerations - has withheld its approval of the pipeline's construction. But in Germany, Quel Scandale! Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered an official protest made to the Americans.
Graceless and negative spirits will recall that the pipeline deal with Putin was the last major act of Gerhard Schröder's seven years as chancellor. It came just a few months before Schröder, once out of office, was named by Moscow in 2005 as chairman of the supervisory board of Gazprom's German company.
Now, with Russia still in Georgia and holding, still unchallenged, what Brown refers to as an "energy stranglehold over Europe," the Germans have expressed irritation that an ally should not keep silent on the situation's obvious specifics.
It is part of what's arguably small change relegated to the margins of the news for a time, but who would dare say it can't get worse.
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Мелочь, но приятно-IV,, სასიხარულო ამბები ჩრდილოეთიდან
