Strongman, The

chamber where the city legislature meets,’ Powell remembers, ‘and we sat behind a table in front of all these people ... and we had a town hall meeting with the whole population, televised throughout Georgia. Just President Saakashvili and the American secretary of state, while all the other guests and senior people from around the world, including those from the Russian Federation, were outside wondering what’s going on.’
    Saakashvili did have the prudence to head north, not west, though, for his first presidential visit abroad. And remarkably, his trip to Moscow on 10–11 February 2004 was a great success. Igor Ivanov was present when the two presidents met in the Kremlin, and recalls that – considering the hatred the men would later develop for one another – the mood was very positive: ‘Saakashvili greeted Putin very emotionally, very joyfully, and said that he greatly respected him as a politician and had always dreamed of being like him. He said he would do everything in his power to develop good relations between our countries, and that the previous leadership of Georgia had made many mistakes which he would try to put right.’
    Saakashvili’s own foreign minister, Tedo Japaridze, confirmed that the Georgian president emerged from the meeting almost bewitched by Putin: ‘He came out of it very much excited and thrilled with that encounter and with the man himself: “He’s a real leader, a resolute and strong man who controls everything – Duma, the mass media and so forth.” These were his first words when we were driving back to the airport.’ 6
    Saakashvili himself described in an interview what happened when the presidents left their foreign ministers and retreated to a separate room for private talks. Having proposed that they take off their jackets and ties, Putin apparently launched into a tirade about the subject that worried him most – Georgia falling into the all too warm embrace of the United States. It was not just American involvement in supporting – or, as the Russians firmly believed, planning – the Rose Revolution that concerned Putin. The US had also had a small military presence in Georgia for two years. Ironically the American troops had been invited in by the previous president, Shevardnadze, to help him deal with a problem that was spoiling his relations with Russia . After Putin had launched the second Chechen war at the end of 1999, thousands of Chechens, including armed militants (and foreign Islamist fighters), had moved over the mountains from Chechnya into Georgia and settled there in the Pankisi Gorge. Russia claimed the gorge was being used as a terrorist base and threatened to bomb it. Alarmed at the prospect of Russia attacking Georgia, Washington offered instead to help the Georgians themselves clear terrorists from the Pankisi Gorge by training their armed forces. Launched in May 2002, the Georgia Train and Equip Programme involved only a couple of hundred American soldiers at first, but it gave the US its first foothold in the Caucasus. Attending Saakashvili’s inauguration two years later, Colin Powell remarked upon the marching styles on show in the military parade: ‘I was just fascinated to sit there and watch some Georgian troops march by, marching like Soviet troops, the way they had been trained, and then the next contingent go by marching like American soldiers – 120 steps per minute just the way we teach our soldiers. And I said, times they are a changing.’
    So it was not surprising that Putin’s toughest message for the new Georgian president was to cool it on the American front. According to Saakashvili, Putin stressed on the one hand that Russia was a friend of America and developing relations with it, but on the other hand claimed that Eastern European countries had become ‘slaves to America’, doing whatever ‘some second secretary’ at the US embassy told them to do. ‘Basically, it was all about America, a 20–25 minute tirade, until I finally politely stopped him and said, “Look, it’s very good you’re telling me about your relations with America, but I’m not here to talk about America.” I said, “Do you really believe that what happened in Georgia is an American plot? Do you really believe that our government is paid by Americans, or George Soros or, you know, that we are directed by them?” And he said, “No, no. Not you for sure. But some people in your government might be in that position, to be closely