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The Lukewarm War: Russian Provocations and Preparations for War

The second phase, the “lukewarm war,” started soon afterward. In his famous Munich speech of February 10, 2007, Putin had already announced a harder stance toward the West. This was followed by Russia’s first direct military aggression against Georgia one month later, when Russian military helicopters shelled Georgian administration buildings in the Kodori Gorge, a mountainous part in Upper Abkhazia that was still under the control of the Georgian government. However, when shortly after this aggression Russia proposed the closure of its 62nd military base in Akhalkalaki, a small town in South Georgia near the frontier with Armenia, this raised hope in Georgia that the situation would improve. On June 27, 2007, ahead of schedule, the Russians finished the withdrawal of their troops. Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin aide, later turned into a regime critic, said that this unexpected and seemingly cooperative attitude on Russia’s part was, in fact, an integral part of the Russian war preparations. “While it may seem counter-intuitive,” wrote Illarionov, “it became clear in hindsight that Moscow wanted to avoid a situation in which Georgia [in an eventual war] could take Russian bases hostage.”^[21] The decree, signed by Putin on July 13, 2007, in which he announced the suspension of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) by December 12, 2007, should be viewed in the same light. When this treaty was signed, it was hailed as “the basis for overall European and North American security, and derivatively, world security, for many decades to come.”^[22] Through the treaty the objective of “eliminating the capability of launching a surprise attack [was] completely realized.”^[23] An example of an attack that was supposed to be excluded in the future was the “combined-arms surprise attack in Europe like the Nazi blitzkrieg at the beginning of World War II.”^[24] Putin, however, unilaterally “suspended” this treaty, a step that was not foreseen in the treaty text.^[25] Although the other signatories still continued to apply the CFE Treaty, Putin, in fact, had killed it. He killed it deliberately. Since Russia was no longer bound by the provisions of the Treaty, Putin could remove the limits on the deployment of Russian heavy military equipment in the North Caucasus, thereby giving Russia a free hand to start a war against Georgia.

On March 6, 2008, Russia took another unilateral step when it lifted the sanctions on Abkhazia that had been agreed by the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1996. It was Russia’s answer to the declaration of independence by Kosovo in February 2008, and it would be the opening shot in the war of nerves between Russia, with its South Ossetian and Abkhazian proxies, and Georgia. It was, however, after the Bucharest NATO summit of April 2–4, 2008, that Russia’s Cold War against Georgia really began to warm up. Without a doubt the refusal of France and Germany to grant Georgia (and Ukraine) a Membership Action Plan (MAP) during the summit was instrumental in Russia adopting a more aggressive stance toward its small neighbor, whose vulnerability had been suddenly exposed after being snubbed by these two leading EU countries.^[26]