It began when five men stole into the rustic village of Tkviavi. With its plum trees, walnut groves and vines, Tkviavi was one of a jigsaw of picturesque villages beneath the hulking mountains of central Georgia. Up the road was Tskhinvali — the grim Soviet-style capital of the backward rebel statelet of South Ossetia. Down the road was Gori, a town once more famous for its association with an unpromising cobbler’s son, Josef Stalin.
The men arrived outside Elene Maisuradze’s modest cottage. Waving guns and speaking rapidly in Russian, they wanted to know where Elene had hidden her Lada. One of them was Ossetian; the others had come from Russia.
“I told them I had sold it,” she said. “They asked me: ‘Where are the boys?’ I said my sons were away. They took everything from my house, turned it upside down and left.”
Soon more paramilitaries, armed with Kalashnikovs, turned up.
“They wanted to know where my basement was. I told them and said: ‘We have plenty of wine. Please take it.’ They went to the basement, shot it up and came back. I was crying. They said in Russian: ‘Rastreli, rastreli [kill her, kill her].’ My neighbor, a Russian woman, told them: ‘Don’t do this.’ They shot into the ground and said: ‘Fuck [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili.’”
The militia gangs were part of a murderous wave unleashed by Russia last week on Georgian civilians. The Russian army has now advanced deep into Georgian territory, capturing at least a third of the country, including Gori, the Black Sea port of Poti and the western towns of Senaki and Zugdidi. On Sunday, they were within 20km of Tbilisi, the capital.
At the same time, Chechen and Ossetian irregulars have been busy carrying out their own private ethnic cleansing. All week fires burned in Tkviavi, Karaleti, Eredvi and other looted villages along the South Ossetian border; smoke plumed across the valley and into the hazy Upper Caucasus.
Survivors described how gangs of Chechen and South Ossetian irregulars roamed from house to house. They sifted out villagers with Georgian surnames, immediately executing all teenage boys. Nugzari Jashashvili, 65, was returning home across the fields when he saw gunmen approach the house of his neighbor, Gela Chikladze, 50.
“They cut his throat,” Jashashvili said.
The same five-man gang looted his house and stole his generator.
Jasashvili said the gunmen killed his cousin Koba, 40, and another man. They took two other local men hostage. After watching his neighbor’s execution, Jashashvili hid in a cornfield. Once they had gone, he escaped, fleeing for three days across the fields toward Gori.
“We lived off peaches, apples and plums,” Jashashvili said. “There wasn’t any water. We drank very little.”
Those spared were mainly the elderly. After gunmen came to her home, Maisuradze, 73, also fled, packing an icon and other possessions in two plastic bags and leaving the village on foot.
“The gunmen were laughing at us,” she said.
One of her group — a 93-year-old woman — died on the road.
“We had to leave her,” Maisuradze said.
She passed through burning villages full of corpses.
“There were bodies everywhere. I saw two dead women from my village lying on the ground. Everything was on fire,” she said.
But Russia’s war in Georgia is about more than just punishing Saakashvili, whose doomed military incursion into South Ossetia 10 days ago sparked the most serious crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
The objectives of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are much bigger — to create a new global order in which the US and Russia are equal partners again. Putin has frequently lamented the demise of the Soviet Union. He has described it as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. For Putin, the 1990s under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin was a period of national humiliation in which a weakened Russia was forced to accept Western economic help and which saw former members of the Warsaw Pact embrace NATO, the West’s military club.
Over the past two years, Putin has given ample warning of his intentions to overturn the status quo in international affairs. Last year in Munich he launched a vituperative attack on the US, denouncing its “unilateralism.” The Kremlin has criticized NATO’s westward expansion and Washington’s deal with Warsaw last week to site missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia would, Putin made clear, be the final straw.
Putin’s aim, it appears, is to rewrite history, in particular the narrative that suggests that Russia lost the Cold War. Over the previous eight years as president, he has fashioned Russia into an advanced post-modern authoritarian state, governed by former KGB officers whose attitudes to the West were forged under communism. Putin has apparently never been reconciled to Russia’s new boundaries, which left millions of ethnic Russians living outside the borders of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states and Central Asia.
Nor is there any doubt about ordinary Russians’ views about the war in Georgia. “Suck it and cry” announced one piece of graffiti on a Moscow apartment wall, an opinion echoed by most Muscovites.
“The Georgians were absolutely in the wrong,” said Igor Pavlov, 23, a driver. “They got what they were asking for.”
Andrei Teryoshin, a 35-year-old businessman, agreed: “We were fighting to defend the people of South Ossetia, and I am proud of that.”
Anatoly Pavlov, a theater director, went further: “I want to complain about the one-sided reporting from the West. Your reports are not correct; they are not right. The West has been reflecting only the Georgian point of view.”
Nor was there any doubt about who was the initial aggressor.
“It’s perfectly obvious — Georgia, of course. And it’s not the first time either,” pensioner Felix Bezik said.
“This Saakashvili bloke, it’s clear he’s just an American puppet,” said Ivan Sidorov, 63, a sports instructor. “That’s how I see it: either he’s sick or he’s evil, the way he’s treated Russia.”
At the same time analysts at the Kremlin have given free rein to conspiracy theories. Sergei Markov put the Caucasus crisis down to a dastardly plot by US Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican Senator John McCain. A confrontation with Russia would be extremely useful just before the US presidential election, exposing Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s inexperience in foreign and security policy and boosting McCain’s chances. Such is the paranoid world view of an analyst well connected to the entourage of Putin, who guarantee that such scenarios get an extensive airing on the Kremlin-controlled TV channels.
With such views being expressed at home, Putin clearly feels he is in a strong domestic position as he presses to get back some of Russia’s old territory. Georgian observers expect Putin swiftly to absorb Georgia’s secessionist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from Tbilisi during the 1992-1993 civil war. Both regions are likely to hold popular referendums on a formal or semi-formal union with the Russian Federation. Russia will justify this de facto annexation by pointing to the need to protect Abkhaz and Ossetian citizens from Georgian aggression.
“I expect this to happen within a couple of days,” said Zaza Gachechildaze, a Georgian analyst who predicted a war between Russia and Georgia this month.
South Ossetia would vote to unify with Russian North Ossetia, while Abkhazia would declare itself independent and then associate with Russia, he predicted.
Nor will this bring an end to Putin’s ambitions, he suggested. His next target is likely to be Ukraine — in particular, the Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
For Nane Tetsladi, 35, there were no doubts last week about Putin’s ruthlessness, or his nonchalant defiance of world opinion. Russian Sukhoi SU-25 bombers pulverized her fifth-floor apartment block last Sunday, targeting the residential suburb of Verxvebi, on the outskirts of Gori. They bombed for three consecutive days.
“We fled 15 minutes before the bombs hit,” Nana said.
Not everyone managed to get out, she said.
Her pregnant neighbor Marca was killed, she said, together with her husband. Their seven-year-old son was injured. The twisted remains of Marca’s car still stood outside her apartment block on Saturday, a blackened ruin, smelling of burnt flesh.
The bombs also fell on Gori’s Stalin Square, next to the grandiose Soviet-era museum to Stalin and the green railway carriage in which the dictator traveled to the 1945 Yalta conference. At least five civilians, including a Dutch journalist, were killed. With no discernible military target, it seems clear that the Kremlin was effecting its own form of collective punishment on the town, 28km away from the border with South Ossetia.
Two days after Russian President Dimitry Medvedev announced he was halting military operations, Russian tanks rolled into the center of Gori, parking outside its sandstone church. This swift action took residents by surprise.
“I saw a soldier on the street. I assumed he was Georgian and asked him in Georgian for a light. He turned round and spoke in Russian,” said Giorgi Maraneli, 48. “He gave me a match and we shook hands.”
Russian tanks took up positions just outside Gori, chopping the highway that connects the east and west of the country and dividing Tbilisi from its Black Sea holiday coast. On Saturday Georgia said Russia bombed the last rail link between the two divided halves, dismembering the small nation still further.
The mood on this new front line has sometimes been friendly. Young, multi-ethnic Russian soldiers posed for photographs as armored personnel carriers clattered through the undergrowth, noisily squashing small fir trees and leaving swirling patterns on the grey tarmac. One 30-year-old Russian officer, Major Nail, from Dagestan, turned out to be both witty and philosophical. Why had he invaded Georgia?
“There isn’t any difference between Georgia and Russia,” he said.
This was his first trip to Georgia, he said, adding: “The landscape is beautiful. But we also have big mountains in Dagestan.”
But this innocuous mood is clearly illusory. On Thursday, a drunken South Ossetian general arrived at the Russian checkpoint in a stolen white Lada. He got out, puffing and red-faced, removed his pistol and started firing in the air. One of his henchmen fired into the ground; he then hijacked a UN Jeep. A battered mini-van carrying South Ossetian paramilitaries and flying the Russian flag careened down the road to Tbilisi. One was wearing a black balaclava; all were heavily armed; their mood was exuberant. Asked what they were doing, one joked: “We’re on holiday.”
After fleeing for three days, Elene Maisuradze began trudging along the dusty road from Gori back to Tbilisi, 63km away. Five other villagers had come with her — an old woman dressed in black with a white chin beard, a vigorous woman in her seventies and a couple with a young son wearing a green tracksuit. They had clearly come together in a collective struggle to stay alive. A Russian armored column approached. The group dived into fields and hid behind a mud embankment. After five minutes they emerged — keening and weeping.
“My husband died 14 years ago. I wish I’d died soon after him. I can’t walk any more,” Maisuradze said, halting under a tree next to a gasoline station.
She put down her stick and showed off the few possessions she had salvaged — black-and-white photos of her as a young woman, a Bible and her icon of the Virgin Mary.
“My generation grew up during the Second World War. We were always crying. It was a terrible situation,” she said.
“Now I’m old and I’m in a war again,” she said.
With Georgia’s army beaten off the field of battle, the Kremlin has sent columns of armored vehicles trundling through the countryside. Every day the Russians get closer to Tbilisi; on Saturday, they were blocking a junction 20km away.
These advances have caused panic in Georgia’s shattered military. The Georgians have modern kit and American-style Toyota Jeeps, but they have no air force left and no tanks, and are no match for the Russian war machine.
These theatrical Russian advances have a clear purpose: to menace Saakashvili and to underscore the irrelevance of European and US diplomacy. Nobody doubts that Putin wants to overthrow Georgia’s pro-Western government. It is also personal: Putin’s loathing for Saakashvili is boundless, Georgian officials say.
“The idea is to punish Georgia and the Georgian government, and Misha [Saakashvili]. They hate Misha,” said Irakli Batkuashvili, the head of Georgia’s military planning division.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice condemned Russia’s invasion of Georgia and called for an “immediate withdrawal” of Russian troops. She also said the “free world” needed to start a debate about the “profound implications” of Russia’s actions.
“You can’t be a responsible member of institutions that are democratic and underscore democratic values and on the other hand act in this way against one of your neighbors,” Rice said, after holding almost five hours of talks with Saakashvili at his unfinished hilltop palace in Tbilisi.
As she spoke, nine Russian armored personnel carriers rolled toward her press conference.
So far, however, the US assistance to occupied Georgia has only compromised moral support and humanitarian aid. The administration of US President George W. Bush has no plans to offer its ally military assistance with which to take on the Russians. Moreover, the “free world” has found few levers with which to punish Putin.
Rice’s comments about the need for the West to re-evaluate its relationship with Moscow appear to be a hint that Russia could soon be excluded — formally or otherwise from the G8 and other international institutions. The West’s most stinging gesture would be to take away the 2014 Winter Olympics from Russia: They are scheduled to be held in Sochi, 20km from Abkhazia.
None of this is likely to bother the Kremlin much. As Saakashvili pointed out on Friday, the Kremlin has tested the West’s reactions with a series of provocative steps, discovering each time that the Europeans generally don’t do anything. Dubbing Russia’s leadership “evil” and “21st-century barbarians,” Saakashvili lambasted the EU for its feebleness. The Russians had dispatched agents to murder Alexander Litvinenko in a “nuclear attack,” poisoned Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and last month — during Rice’s last visit — sent jet fighters into Georgian airspace. The Europeans did nothing, he said.
“Russia has been all the time testing the reactions of the West. It’s going to replicate what happened in Georgia elsewhere,” he warned.
And certainly there was little sign of any strength of European outrage at events in Georgia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in particular, has said that both sides are to blame, a comment suggesting that Germany’s relations with Russia are more important to her than Georgia’s struggle for survival.
Indeed, it was only until the middle of last week that Europe made any 0diplomatic move to try to end the crisis in Georgia, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, exploiting France’s EU presidency, decided to intervene. Kouchner was dispatched first to Tbilisi, then to Moscow, to explore the prospects for a ceasefire and to gauge whether Sarkozy could profit from heading east. The Russians would be happy to talk to Sarkozy, he reported back to the Elysee, so the French president went to Moscow and spent hours haggling with Putin instead.
The result was a six-point ceasefire plan, essentially on Russia’s terms, which Sarkozy then took to Saakashvili in Tbilisi for a midnight session. The proposed pact was a bitter blow to Georgian sovereignty, curbing the activity of its military on its own territory, while giving Russia the right to mount patrols and take “additional security measures” on sovereign Georgian territory. For its part, the US was alarmed, though supporting the peace bid in public. En route to Tbilisi, Rice stopped off in France to stiffen Sarkozy’s sinews and try to shape the mediation effort.
At first the Kremlin said it was in no hurry to sign a deal and only announced late last week that Medvedev had agreed to the plan. However, Sarkozy could not get Saakashvili to sign at first, and it was only when Rice arrived that the Georgian leader backed down and flourished his pen, bolstered by US emphasis that the Russian security concessions would be limited in time and space. As Rice headed for the presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas, to brief Bush, it appeared that Putin had gambled and won.
Nor is it surprising that European reaction to the invasion of Georgia has been so limited. The Europeans — quite simply — have more to lose. Like the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago this week, this invasion took place in August. But it is in winter that the Kremlin can exploit Europe’s great weakness — by cutting off its oil and gas supplies.
It is almost three years since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a friendship with “no limits” — weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, they have retreated from such rhetorical enthusiasm. The “no limits” language was quickly dumped, probably at Beijing’s behest. When Putin visited China in May last year, he said that he and his counterpart were “as close as brothers.” Xi more coolly called the Russian president “a good friend and a good neighbor.” China has conspicuously not reciprocated Putin’s description of it as an ally. Yet the partnership
The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) said “know yourself and know your enemy and you will win a hundred battles.” Applied in our times, Taiwanese should know themselves and know the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so that Taiwan will win a hundred battles and hopefully, deter the CCP. Taiwanese receive information daily about the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) threat from the Ministry of National Defense and news sources. One area that needs better understanding is which forces would the People’s Republic of China (PRC) use to impose martial law and what would be the consequences for living under PRC
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said that he expects this year to be a year of “peace.” However, this is ironic given the actions of some KMT legislators and politicians. To push forward several amendments, they went against the principles of legislation such as substantive deliberation, and even tried to remove obstacles with violence during the third readings of the bills. Chu says that the KMT represents the public interest, accusing President William Lai (賴清德) and the Democratic Progressive Party of fighting against the opposition. After pushing through the amendments, the KMT caucus demanded that Legislative Speaker
Beijing’s approval of a controversial mega-dam in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River — which flows from Tibet — has ignited widespread debate over its strategic and environmental implications. The project exacerbates the complexities of India-China relations, and underscores Beijing’s push for hydropower dominance and potential weaponization of water against India. India and China are caught in a protracted territorial dispute along the Line of Actual Control. The approval of a dam on a transboundary river adds another layer to an already strained bilateral relationship, making dialogue and trust-building even more challenging, especially given that the two Asian
RSS