Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

A new step in the process of escalation was taken on April 20, 2008, when a Georgian Israeli-made Hermes-450 reconnaissance drone was shot down above Abkhazia. The Russian government attributed this act to “Abkhaz militias.”^[37] This explanation was ridiculed by Novaya Gazeta journalist Yuliya Latynina, who wrote, “Apparently, in the near future small, but proud Abkhazia will have its own space armies.”^[38] The Georgian government was able to produce video evidence of the attack that was filmed by the unmanned drone seconds before it was shot down. It showed a Russian MiG-29 fighter attacking the drone with a missile and then flying back in the direction of Russia. Russia said the video was a fake, but a UN report, published one month later, concluded that the video evidence was authentic.^[39] In the same week in which the drone was shot down, Pavel Felgenhauer reported that “Sergei Shamba, the head of [the] Abkhazian foreign ministry, made a statement about the intention of capturing part of Georgian territory for making a certain ‘buffer zone.’ Apparently, it is planned to banish local population from there.”^[40] These aggressive declarations hinting at further annexations of Georgian territory coupled with ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants were accompanied by accusations at the address of Georgia that Georgia prepared an attack. Georgia’s “aggressiveness” was also used as a pretext for transferring on April 29, 2008, an additional Russian military contingent of what were called mirotvorcheskie sily (peacekeepers) to Abkhazia. Felgenhauer commented: “People in the Staff of airborne troops stated that it’s not ‘additional peacemakers,’ but a battalion of 400 soldiers with regular ammunition, including heavy material, anti-aircraft means and artillery (which is not allowed for peacemakers) that was brought into Abkhazia without any prior arrangement with the Georgian side.”^[41] This move was a flagrant violation of the 1994 cease-fire agreement that had ended the war between Georgian and Abkhaz fighters.

On May 31, 2008, a further step on the escalation ladder was taken when four hundred soldiers of Russia’s railway forces illegally entered Abkhazia and started to repair the railway connection between Sukhumi, Abkhazia’s capital, and Ochamchire in south Abkhazia, near the frontier with Georgia proper. The railway along the Abkhazian coast connects Abkhazia in the North with the Russian town of Sochi. It is the only railway connection linking Georgia with Russia. The official reason given for this troop activity was a ruling by the—newly elected—Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, “on rendering humanitarian aid to the republic.”^[42] NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pronounced the deployment to be “clearly in contravention of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and “an escalating action by Russia.”^[43] He said the troops should be withdrawn. The Georgian government indicated the real reason for the repairs: the preparation for a Russian attack on Georgia. “Nobody needs to bring Railway Forces to the territory of another country, if a military intervention is not being prepared,” declared Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze.^[44] Due to the poor road system the Russian army, as a rule, transports its troops and tanks by rail. The troops finished their work at the end of July, only a few days before the war started.

In July Russia further increased the pressure. On July 3, 2008, an assassination attempt was made on Dmitry Sanakoev, head of the Tbilisi-backed interim administration of South Ossetia, which still controlled about one third of the territory, including some villages north of the separatist capital Tskhinvali. Throughout the month of July new incidents took place.

On July 9 Moscow demonstratively acknowledged that four Russian Air Force planes had flown a mission over South Ossetia. That action sought to deter Georgia from flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), thus blinding Tbilisi to Russian and proxy military movements in the area. A series of roadside bomb blasts targeted Georgian police patrols. During the second half of July and the first days of August, Russian-commanded Ossetian troops under the authority of (Russian-led) South Ossetian authorities fired repeatedly at Georgian-controlled villages, forcing Georgian police to fire back defensively.^[45]