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As could be expected, after the war Russia got the support of Kremlin-friendly Western experts. One of them was Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, doyenne of the French Kremlin watchers (although more a specialist on tsarist history than on modern Russian politics). Over the years Carrère d’Encausse has developed a warm personal relationship with the Russian leadership. As a regular participant in the seminars of the Valdai Club—sometimes referred to as Putin’s fan club—she received on November 4, 2009, from the hands of President Medvedev the Russian Order of Honor. She was also a prominent guest at the State Dinner, organized on March 2, 2010, on the occasion of Medvedev’s official visit to France. In her book La Russie entre deux mondes (Russia between Two Worlds), she wrote that the rebellion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, when it started, certainly was “illegitimate and should have been ended.” However, she continued, “the military defeat calls this pretention into question and modifies slightly the geography of the lost territories, still reducing that [part] which is controlled by Tbilisi.”^[32] Why the military defeat of Georgia against an aggressor would call into question Georgia’s right to have its national integrity restored is not indicated. Further in the text she refers to “the two separatist States.” The word “States” is written with a capital S in the text.^[33] According to their status in international law the correct title would have been: the two separatist “entities” or “provinces.” Apparently the author had no principal objections to the “independence” of the two provinces, but, on the contrary, fully condoned the Russian land grab.^[34]

The Real Reasons for Moscow’s Land Grab

On November 21, 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the headquarters of the 58th Army in Vladikavkaz. This was the army that led the invasion of Georgia in August 2008. He gave a speech in which the official Kremlin version of the war—that it was “a humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide in South Ossetia”—was put into a broader context. While emphasizing that the intervention was a necessary “peace-enforcement operation,” he mentioned a second and quite different objective: “to curb the threat which was coming at the time from the territory of Georgia.” “If we had faltered in 2008,” Medvedev said, “[the] geopolitical arrangement would be different now and a number of countries in respect of which attempts were made to artificially drag them into the North Atlantic Alliance, would have probably been there [in NATO] now.”^[35] It took the Kremlin three years to unveil the real reason for its intervention: to stop Georgia’s eventual NATO membership. Stopping NATO membership necessitated, however, for the Kremlin a second objective: a regime change in Tbilisi. In her memoirs the former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, revealed how the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, called her in August 2008 and shamelessly proposed a regime change in Tbilisi as a condition for a Russian troop withdrawal. “The other demand,” said Lavrov to Rice, “is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.”^[36] “I couldn’t believe my ears,” wrote Rice, “and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis.”^[37] Condoleezza Rice refused to negotiate the removal of a democratically elected president. When Lavrov repeated that it was “just between us” and asked her not to talk to others about his demand, this was similarly rejected by her. It was clear that the objective of regime change was not something that just popped up during the negotiations. It had been prepared months, and probably years, before. It was, apparently, apart from the dismemberment of Georgia, the real reason for the Russian invasion.