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But it was not only Russian passports that were distributed. The de facto deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia, Maksim Gvindzhia, declared on September 6, 2006, that at that point roughly 80 percent of the population held a dual Abkhaz-Russian citizenship.^[12] This means that the Abkhaz government had already started to distribute its own—illegal—passports two years before its independence was recognized by Russia.^[13] Because holders of Abkhaz passports could obtain a dual Russian-Abkhaz citizenship (which gave Abkhaz citizens the right to receive Russian pensions and to travel to Russia without restrictions),^[14] it became clear that from 2006 Russia was conducting a double track strategy, leaving both options open: either the independence for Abkhazia, or its incorporation into the Russian Federation. The extent to which these options even remained open after the August 2008 war, emerged from declarations by the presidents of the two breakaway provinces on September 11, 2008. According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, “South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said his republic planned to merge with the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia, and become part of Russia, a statement he later withdrew [apparently under pressure from the Kremlin, MHVH]. Meanwhile, Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh said Abkhazia would not pursue to obtain ‘associated territory’ status with Russia, but would seek to join the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and the Russia-Belarus Union State.”^[15]

In December 2001 Eduard Kokoity replaced the more moderate South Ossetian independentist President Lyudvig Chibirov. Kokoity was Moscow’s man. A former Komsomol apparatchik and ex-Soviet professional wrestler, Kokoity was accused of links with organized crime.^[16] As a member of Aleksandr Dugin’s revisionist International Eurasianist Movement that propagated the reintegration of former parts of the Soviet Union into the Russian Federation,^[17] he was never interested in any negotiated compromise with Tbilisi. For Moscow, Kokoity was the right man in the right place to block, definitively, the eventual reintegration of South Ossetia into Georgia, opting for a solution that would make the secession of the region permanent.

It is important to note that this aggressive strategy by Russia toward Georgia started in the years 2000–2002. It was, therefore, neither a reaction to the Rose Revolution nor to Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership: during those years the Georgian president was Eduard Shevardnadze and not Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Rose Revolution had not yet taken place. Also a Georgian NATO membership was not on the political agenda. After the Rose Revolution in 2003, however, the relationship rapidly deteriorated. When, on September 27, 2006, Georgia arrested four Russians diplomats suspected of espionage for the GRU, the Russian military secret service, and extradited them some days later, the Kremlin launched a full-scale economic and diplomatic war. It was a case of pure and deliberate overkill. Russia suspended all air, rail, and road traffic between Russia and Georgia, including the postal services. It stopped issuing visas to Georgians and imposed import bans on Georgian wine and mineral water. Putin declared “that Georgia’s home and foreign politics was similar to that conducted by KGB during Stalin’s times,”^[18] which is a surprising remark for a former KGB agent who has never hidden his deep personal pride in being a Chekist. The economic blockade was accompanied by a vehement anti-Georgian campaign within the Russian Federation, targeting the approximately one million Georgians who lived and worked in the country. Georgian businesses in Moscow were raided; illegal immigrants were hunted and expelled. The Russian action clearly constituted a “racist campaign,” wrote Salomé Zourabichvili, who was Georgian foreign minister from 2004 to 2005. “[It was] apparently supported by the official authorities, [and took] the form of a “hunt for the Caucasian” in the streets of Russia’s main cities.”^[19] The Moscow police asked schools to provide lists of children with Georgian names in order to check out their parents. The government sponsored raids on Georgian migrant workers and market traders soon started to give off a whiff of ethnic cleansing, which led the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) to start a campaign asking their listeners to wear a badge with the slogan Ya Gruzin (I am a Georgian).^[20]