Strongman, The

little hope of avoiding war through diplomacy.
    A few days later, the Russian 58th Army began massive military exercises across the whole of the North Caucasus, involving 8,000 troops, 700 combat vehicles and 30 aircraft. At the same time 1,630 US and Georgian forces conducted military exercises in Georgia called ‘Immediate Response 2008’. Remarkably, despite the tension and continuing skirmishes in South Ossetia, the leaderships in both Georgia and Russia appeared to think the situation was calm enough to go on holiday. One senior American who visited Tbilisi in July recalls having dinner with members of the Georgian leadership before they went away, Saakashvili to a health farm in Italy, deputy foreign minister Bokeria to Spain: ‘They were pretty happy, and totally relaxed, hugging each other with “see you in a month or three weeks, make sure you don’t think about work!” ’
    In the first week of August almost the entire Russian leadership also went on holiday, just as the worst Georgian–Ossetian skirmishes in four years erupted in South Ossetia. In the next days thousands of Ossetians evacuated their families to the safety of North Ossetia. On Wednesday 5 August an official in the Russian government gloomily told me it was not a question of ‘whether’ there would be war: ‘There will be war.’ It erupted finally on the night of 7–8 August, with a massive Georgian assault on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, followed by a Russian invasion that swarmed deep into Georgia, far beyond the confines of the disputed region itself. The war was almost universally blamed – at least at first – on Russia, and comparisons were drawn with the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Russia’s reputation suffered its greatest blow since the end of communism, though a European Union commission which was set up to investigate the war apportioned blame more evenly, concluding that Georgia aggressed first, with force that was not ‘justifiable under international law’. The report also said that both sides had contributed to the build-up of tensions beforehand, and that Russia’s reaction was disproportionate, going ‘beyond the reasonable limits of self-defence’.
    The war and its consequences
    President Saakashvili, who had announced a ceasefire at 19:00 on 7 August, ordered his forces to attack Tskhinvali at 23:35. A huge artillery bombardment, using tanks, howitzers and Grad multiple-rocket launchers, destroyed swathes of the city and caused many civilian casualties. Georgian ground troops moved in. Russian peacekeepers were killed, as well as many Ossetians, who by virtue of Putin’s ‘passportisation’ policy were now Russian citizens. The Russians evoked ‘genocide’, claiming 2,000 civilians had been killed in the Georgian attack, a figure that proved to be grossly exaggerated. The next day hundreds of Russian tanks poured through the Roki tunnel, with massive air support. Over the next five days 40,000 Russian troops entered Georgia, half of them through South Ossetia, the others through Abkhazia. They quickly drove Georgian forces out of Tskhinvali and proceeded into Georgia proper, bombarding the city of Gori, attacking airfields and army bases across the country, and even destroying the port of Poti, many miles from the disputed areas. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians fled their homes as Russian forces headed south towards the capital, Tbilisi. In Gori, South Ossetian militias rampaged through the empty city, while Russian troops turned a blind eye. Eventually, international diplomacy brought hostilities to a halt, and the Russian advance stopped. The five-day war left 850 dead and 35,000 people displaced from their homes.
    Such are the basic facts, but how and why it all started was, and remains, a subject of bitter dispute. Shortly after the initial assault on Tskhinvali, Georgia’s military commander, Mamuka Kurashvili, appeared to confirm that President Saakashvili had decided to press ahead with his long-held desire to re-conquer South Ossetia, when he told reporters that Georgia had ‘decided to restore constitutional order in the entire region’. It was later said that this statement had not been authorised, though Saakashvili himself announced that ‘a large part of Tskhinvali is now liberated ’. The Georgians later tried to justify their actions by claiming that they had resorted to force only to counter a huge Russian invasion that was already under way,