Strongman, The

Georgians took this as proof that they were preparing for an invasion, and the leadership began frantic discussions about whether to launch a pre-emptive strike. In interviews, three members of the Georgian leadership recalled the kind of arguments they were making at the time. Giorgi Bokeria, deputy foreign minister, said, ‘The major question was at what point does it become impossible for a sovereign state not to react, even when we don’t know for sure if the aggression will be massive or not?’ 13 Batu Kutelia, deputy defence minister, said, ‘Our citizens need to know that Georgia can protect them and that Georgia can react to these actions that cause concern for the Georgian people, that their country will use all its resources to destroy that threat.’ 14 Nino Burjanadze, chair of the Georgian parliament, cautioned some restraint: ‘Some people tried to persuade the president and myself that the Russians had rusty tanks, that we had modern equipment and that Georgia would defeat the Russians in one night. Almost all the Security Council wanted to start a military intervention in Abkhazia.’ 15
    President Saakashvili, for all his eagerness to reclaim the ‘lost’ territories, decided to give diplomacy another chance. Russia, after all, had a new president, Dmitry Medvedev. And even Prime Minister Putin was sending mixed signals. Just as the Russians were sending railway troops into Abkhazia, Putin was asked by the French newspaper Le Monde what he thought about Saakashvili’s ‘peace plan for Abkhazia granting an unprecedented degree of autonomy’ and ‘giving the post of vice-president of the Georgian state to an Abkhaz national’. ‘I very much hope that the plan proposed by Mikheil Saakashvili will gradually be introduced,’ Putin replied, ‘because it is on the whole a sound plan.’
    A few days later, on the margins of a summit of post-Soviet states in St Petersburg on 6 June, Saakashvili held his first talks with Medvedev. Both men appeared to approach them in a positive mood, as if they were really starting from a fresh piece of paper. ‘I think we will be able to resolve all the difficulties we face today and find long-term solutions. What do you think?’ said Medvedev.
    ‘I agree,’ replied Saakashvili. ‘There are no unsolvable problems. There are plenty of unsolved ones, but no unsolvable ones.’
    Recalling the meeting later, Saakashvili said: ‘He seemed to have a very different style from Putin. He was open, he was engaging.’ (Saakashvili has a similar recollection of his first meeting with Putin.) The Georgian was encouraged to hear Medvedev suggest that he had ‘inherited these situations and didn’t initiate them’, and wanted to resolve the Ossetian and Abkhazian conflicts ‘within the framework of the territorial integrity of Georgia’. 16 That amounted to a pledge that Russia was not interested in annexing the two regions and regarded them as part of Georgia.
    Saakashvili said he left the meeting ‘full of hope’ and that Medvedev had suggested getting together in Sochi to ‘sit down and look at the different options’. But he did not mention that – as Sergei Lavrov points out – the prerequisite for any progress, as far as Russia was concerned, was that Georgia, given its stated intention to regain the two territories, should sign a non-use-of-force pledge. In an interview, Medvedev’s diplomatic adviser Sergei Prikhodko confirmed: ‘The key thing was a proposal to put together a document on non-use of force. They even named the venue where it could happen, in Sochi. Saakashvili reacted, as far as I recall, quite positively.’ 17
    But the question of a non-use-of-force agreement would bedevil relations over the next months. Saaskashvili says the Russians wanted Georgia to sign such an agreement with the Abkhaz and South Ossetians – with the Russians as guarantors. But for Saakashvili that was ‘like giving a fox a mandate to guard a chicken house’. He would only agree to sign a non-use-of-force agreement with the Russians. But the Russians responded: why should we do that? We are not combatants in the area, we only have peacekeepers there.
    Both men agreed that there was no point in meeting until they had narrowed their differences sufficiently for there to be a practical outcome. In the middle of June they exchanged confidential letters, which I have seen. Saakashvili sent Medvedev what he believed were a few helpful proposals to reduce tension