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09.08.07
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Georgian Missile Defense
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By Shaun Walker
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Suspicion and Anger Cloud Relations
After several months of relative quiet, a missile that fell near the Georgian village of Tsitelubani this week has reignited passions and rhetoric in the simmering dispute between Russia and Georgia. The missile landed, but failed to explode, on Tuesday morning, and Georgian officials have claimed it was fired from a Russian plane that was illegally flying in Georgian airspace. If the missile was fired from a Russian plane, as the Georgians insist, the incident reflects a shocking attack on a sovereign country. Or if the Russians are to be believed, the Georgians are attempting to marshal international support for their confrontation with Russia by staging an attack on themselves, at a time when Western countries are already taking a hard line on Russia.
“Everyone is talking about who is behind the attack, but there's really not enough data to reach any real conclusions, and there's no access to the primary intelligence sources,” said Sergei Markedonov, of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis. “It's pointless to talk about who is behind it.”
Still, this has not stopped politicians, analysts and journalists on both sides from coming up with all kinds of theories about the attack. “It is very clear,” said Alex Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies in Tbilisi. “The Russians want to keep the status quo in the conflict areas, and Georgia is trying to change it, and is very active in developing peace initiatives.” The move, said the analyst, was “a very clear message to Mr. Saakashvili that if you continue in this way, we will show you your place.”
The Georgian response was swift and well coordinated, and clearly aimed at achieving maximum international impact for the story. President Mikheil Saakashvili strode around the landing site wearing a pair of sunglasses, and foreign diplomats in Tbilisi were briefed on the incident and shown evidence the Georgians claim proves that Russia was behind the attack. “Russia can deny the bombing, but we have reliable evidence,” said Gela Bezhuashvili, the Georgian foreign minister, to CNN. “We expect a strict reaction from international, and especially European, society.”
“This whole thing is targeted towards one thing only – disrupting Georgia's peace and stability, to cause panic and estrangement in society and alter our political course. Our response to these acts of provocation will be our surprising calmness,” said Saakashvili at the site. “Let me tell you that the majority of the population here are ethnic Ossetians although for me ethnic Ossetians and ethnic Georgians are the same. We all are one. No-one will be able to undermine our unity.”
The missile fell around 40 miles from Tbilisi, and not far from territory controlled by the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, where most of the Ossetian population might well disagree with Saakashvili's statement that there are no differences between Georgians and Ossetians.
A later Georgian version of events suggests that the Ossetians started firing on the plane by mistake, which led the pilot to jettison the missile in confusion before turning and flying back to Russia. “Maybe the missile was dropped because South Ossetia opened fire, and maybe it was not prepared for explosion,” said Rondeli. “But it was definitely a Russian plane and a Russian weapon, and everyone understands that pretty well.”
In fact, not everybody buys into this version of events. Naturally, the most skeptical are the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian press. The ministry issued a statement denying all Russian involvement in the attack and saying that it was a similar case to the March 11 bombing in the Kodori Gorge region of Abkhazia. The buildings of the pro-Georgian local administration, set up right on the line of control with separatist Abkhazia last year were attacked in March, and as with the incident this week, Georgia blamed Russia and Russia denied all involvement.
Georgia has suggested that the missile fired on Tuesday morning came from a Su-24 plane, some of which are stationed over the Caucasus mountains at Russian airbases in North Ossetia. The South Ossetians and Russians, however, have suggested that the plane involved was a Su-25, of which the Georgian army is also in possession. The Russian press this morning is also suggesting that the “Raduga” missile, which was found at the site, was swiftly destroyed by the Georgians before anyone could verify where it was from. The missiles are not just used by the Russian Army, they were sold widely to CIS countries and further a field.
Today's Kommersant offered further information which it claimed casts doubt on the Georgian version of events. It quoted Vitaly Larionov, deputy director of the “Raduga” construction bureau in Dubna. “This missile has a high level of effectiveness... The pilot can calmly fly off after releasing it without waiting to see the result; the missile will find its target on its own. These missiles are known as 'Fire it and forget about it’,” said Larionov.
Larionov also suggested that Georgian actions to diffuse the missile were also suspicious, as sappers would never be allowed to withdraw an unexploded missile from the earth, whereas in this case they did so in front of massed television cameras. “This could only happen if specialists were certain that the missile would not explode,” he said. “It's quite possible that they just brought the missile over in a car, destroyed it and buried it.”
And some opposition forces in Georgia also expressed skepticism at the Georgian version of events. “Naturally, Russia has an aggressive attitude towards us, but such actions would not suit it given the upcoming Olympic Games [in 2014 in Sochi],” said Salome Zurabishvili, the former Georgian foreign minister on Tuesday, reported Interfax. "I do not rule out that the bombing near Tsitelubani was a spectacle staged by Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili."
For now, the truth behind the incident remains elusive. “Instead of guessing who is behind this attack, we should look at instead is the general state of Russian-Georgian relations and in which areas they can be improved,” said Sergei Markedonov.
“Russia needs to diversify its policies with Georgia, and needs to decide where compromise is possible and where it isn't. Abkhazia and South Ossetia impact on the security situation in the Russian North Caucasus, but we should work on compromises in aviation and other communication links.”
However, it seems unlikely that Russia is in the mood to offer compromises to its southern neighbor right now. Equally though, it seems unlikely that a serious escalation will arise from this week's event. Even the international monitoring team was unable to draw any firm conclusions from the March 11 incident in the Kodori Gorge. And while tensions will be raised for a while, the Tsiteliubani missile, like the March attack, is not likely to lead to any further escalation of the already strained relations between Georgia and Russia, but instead slowly fade into the background of mutual distrust and angry rhetoric. |
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