The Agonist - Caucasus

Ukraine fears for its future as Moscow muscles in on Crimea

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:54:03 -0700

Luke Harding | Yalta | Oct 11

The Observer - As Ukraine prepares for its first presidential election since the Orange Revolution, there are signs that its giant neighbour to the east will not tolerate a pro-western outcome.

From the terrace there are views of the Crimean peninsula, with fir trees, dark green cypresses and a shimmering bay. Inside – through a pleasant Italian courtyard – is the room where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat together around a wooden table and divided up postwar Europe.

But almost 65 years after the "big three" met in the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta – now in Ukraine – the question of zones of influence has come back to haunt Europe. Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine as crucial to its bold claim that it is entitled to a zone of influence in its post-Soviet backyard.

Last month, a group of east European leaders and intellectuals gathered in the Livadia Palace, where Britain, the US and the Soviet Union held the Yalta conference in February 1945. The idea was to discuss Ukraine's strategic future. But the discussion was overshadowed by one question: will there be a war between Russia and Ukraine?

The scenario is not as daft as it seems. In August, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, gave his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, an unprecedented diplomatic mugging. In a seething letter, and subsequent video message, Medvedev reprimanded Yushchenko for his "anti-Russian" stance. He told him that, as far as Russia was concerned, the pro-western Yushchenko was now a non-person.

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea
Russia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff

Armenia, Turkey Hit Glitch in Agreement to Build Diplomatic Ties

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:56:15 -0700

Mary Beth Sheridan | Zurich | October 10

WaPo - Senior Armenian and Turkish officials traveled to Switzerland on Saturday to sign an agreement that could set them on a course to end a century of hostility stemming from brutal massacres at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

But just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's motorcade arrived at the University of Zurich for the signing of the accord, she got word of a last-minute glitch. The motorcade reversed and sped to a hotel, where U.S. diplomats tried to satisfy concerns on the Armenian side over language in the two countries' statements.

The accord was quietly brokered by the Swiss over the past two years, with the help of French, Russian and U.S. officials. Clinton has been in frequent contact with the two sides in recent weeks to help seal the deal.

The agreement still must be approved by the two countries' parliaments, where it is likely to face opposition from nationalists.

Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia have had bitter relations since an outbreak of violence in 1915 that ultimately left hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians dead. Many historians call the killings genocide, but Turkey strongly rejects that label, saying people died in forced relocations and fighting.

If ratified, the accord could have implications well beyond Turkey and Armenia. It may ease tensions in other parts of southeastern Europe and help with the establishment of oil pipelines to the West, officials said.

"It's a huge step. It's a historic breakthrough," said David Phillips, a scholar at American University who has worked on the dispute.

Turkey, Armenia to sign peace agreement

CNN, By Jill Dougherty, October 10

Istanbul -- The historic Saturday signing of an agreement normalizing relations between Turkey and Armenia was delayed when the Armenian delegation objected to the wording of an oral statement.

"We are facilitating the two sides in coming to an agreement on the statements that they're going to make at the ceremony," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

He didn't indicate what Armenia's problem with the wording was.

The statement was to be delivered after the signing in Zurich. Officials said the signing is apparently not jeopardized by the holdup.

The agreement would normalize relations between the countries after nearly a century of animosity.

Genocide forgotten: Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:37:43 -0700

Robert Fisk | Oct 8

The Independent - A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people

In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers.

The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died.

Subjected to constant rape and beatings, some had already swallowed poison on their way from their homes in Erzerum, Serena, Sivas, Bitlis and other cities in Turkish western Armenia. "Some of them," Bishop Grigoris Balakian, one of Litzmayer's contemporaries, recorded, "had been driven to such a state that they were mere skeletons enveloped in rags, with skin that had turned leathery, burned from the sun, cold, and wind. Many pregnant women, having become numb, had left their newborns on the side of the road as a protest against mankind and God." Every year, new evidence emerges about this mass ethnic cleansing, the first holocaust of the last century; and every year, Turkey denies that it ever committed genocide. Yet on Saturday – to the horror of millions of descendants of Armenian survivors – the President of Armenia, Serg Sarkissian, plans to agree to a protocol with Turkey to re-open diplomatic relations, which should allow for new trade concessions and oil interests. And he proposes to do this without honouring his most important promise to Armenians abroad – to demand that Turkey admit it carried out the Armenian genocide in 1915.

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:55:09 -0700

Philip P. Pan | Oct 6

WaPo -

On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."

Ingushetia's cycle of violence

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:26:16 -0700

Dom Rotheroe | Oct 3

BBC - Political violence and killings seem to be daily occurrences in the tiny mainly Muslim republic of Ingushetia in the Russian North Caucasus, which shares a border with Chechnya. Dom Rotheroe explains why.

"Don't mention to our mother that he was tortured before he died," one of the sisters of the late Batyr Albakov whispers to us before we interview his family.

"She doesn't know about that and she has a weak heart."

They came in the early hours of 10 July to take Mamma Albakov's son away. Two carloads of security forces had barged their way into the family flat in Russia's Caucasian republic of Ingushetia.

Eleven days later, Batyr's family learned of his death through a report on the internet.

In that time, the 26-year-old aeroplane engineer had supposedly become an Islamic militant, acquired a gun and camouflage gear and been killed in a shoot-out with security forces.

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili blamed for starting Russian war

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:48:46 -0700

Ian Traynor | Oct 1

The Guardian - An investigation into last year's Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war.

In more than 1,000 pages of analysis, documentation and witness statements, the most exhaustive inquiry into the five-day conflict dismissed Georgian claims that the artillery attack was in response to a Russian invasion, accused both sides of violations of the laws of war, indicated that war crimes had been perpetrated against Georgian civilians and rejected Russian claims of "genocide" in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.

The EU-commissioned report, by a fact-finding mission of more than 20 political, military, human rights and international law experts led by the Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, was unveiled in Brussels today after nine months of work.

"There is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone," the report found.

But the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a "penchant for acting in the heat of the moment".

The war started "with a massive Georgian artillery attack", the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia.

Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."

Russian killings and kidnaps extend dirty war in Ingushetia

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:54:09 -0700

Clancy Chassay | Sept 20

The Observer - Policemen and soldiers work at the site of an explosion in a police station, Nazran, in Russia's Ingushetia region, Aug 17, 2009. Photograph: Stringer/Russia/Reuters

Like many in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Petimat Albakavar lives in terror. "Nobody sleeps properly. We can't because we are listening to every sound, waiting for the police to knock at the door," she says.

On 10 July, Petimat's 26-year-old son, Batyr, was taken away at dawn by armed men claiming to be Ingush police. They appeared at the door and demanded to see the family's passports but refused to show any identification themselves. "As soon as they left I went to all the police stations, but I couldn't find my son. I filed complaints with the police and government officials, but nobody knew anything," says Petimat, her eyes weary with grief and fear.

"Ten days later we found a report on the internet that someone with my son's name, whom they described as a rebel leader, had been killed in the forest. It was Batyr. His passport was with him."

According to human rights investigators, hundreds of civilians such as Batyr have been "disappeared", tortured and murdered by Russian security services as they struggle to quell a rebellion that spans across Ingushetia and the neighbouring republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. In June the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt. As suicide bombers strike with alarming frequency, the security forces are unleashing a wave of terror which critics say is only serving to fuel the rebellion.

Russia signs military base pacts with Georgian rebels

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:11:15 -0700

Moscow | Sept 16

AFP - Russia tightened its ties with Georgia's rebel regions on Tuesday by signing agreements allowing it to maintain military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for nearly half a century.

Georgia's pro-Western government immediately condemned the move, with a top official saying the agreements would deepen a "barbaric" occupation.

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov signed the long-awaited pacts with his Abkhazian and South Ossetian counterparts Merab Kishmaria and Yury Tanayev, the Interfax and ITAR-TASS news agencies reported.

"The agreements that have been signed are aimed at protecting the republics and people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia," Serdyukov was quoted as saying by the news agencies.

Serdyukov said he expected other agreements with Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be signed soon, including one on "military-technical cooperation," a term that Russian officials use to describe arms sales.

Turkey, Armenia move to boost ties

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:58:27 -0700

September 1

Al Jazeera - Turkey and Armenia are at the beginning of a "long process" of normalising ties, the Turkish foreign minister has said.

Ahmet Davutoglu's comments on Tuesday came a day after the feuding neighbours agreed to establish relations and reopen their border under a plan to end nearly a century of hostility.

Davutoglu told Turkey's NTV television that the process would be long but that obstacles could be overcome and that the border could be open by the end of the year.

"If everything goes as planned, if mutual steps are taken, the borders could be opened around New Year," he said.

Bomb blasts kill police in Chechen capital

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:14:16 -0700

Moscow | Aug 21

CNN - At least two police officers in Russia's restive region of Chechnya were killed Friday when two bombs went off in the capital, Grozny, the Russian Interior Ministry said.

The bombs went off around 2 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), the ministry said. An investigation into the explosions has been launched.

Reports on Russian state television said preliminary information suggested four people were killed in the blasts and one person was wounded.

** Suicide bombers on bicycles kill at least 4 police in Chechnya
** Russia rebels claim "economic war"
** Chechen Group Claims It Attacked Dam

Truck bomb signals trouble on Russia’s southern flank

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:50:49 -0700

Fred Weir | Aug 17

CSM - A week of regional violence climaxed Monday in Ingushetia when a suicide bomber blew a hole in a heavily fortified police headquarters, killing at least 20.

A week of extremist attacks on Russia’s seething southern flank climaxed Monday with a suicide truck bombing in Ingushetia that killed at least 20 and injured scores outside a police station in the tiny republic’s main city, Nazran.

The resulting explosion triggered a “raging fire” that destroyed a weapons room, incinerated nearby cars, and damaged nearby apartment buildings, according to an Associated Press (AP) report from Nazran. It was one of the deadliest attacks in the region in years, the AP said.

Violence by Islamist insurgents, once confined mainly to separatist Chechnya, has gradually spread throughout much of Russia’s northern Caucasus, leaving Russian authorities increasingly unable to guarantee order, or even protect pro-Moscow officials, in the mainly Muslim region.

For Moscow, the stakes are huge. The northern Caucasus region is Russia’s gateway to the energy-rich and strategically vital southern Caucasus, which includes the former Soviet nations of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

** Ingush leader accuses West of seeking to destabilize Caucasus

Putin Visits Breakaway Georgian Region, Unveils Plan for Military Base

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:27:40 -0700

Philip P. Pan | Moscow | Aug 13

WaPo -

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traveled to the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia on Wednesday and pledged to strengthen Russia's military presence there, defying U.S. and European objections amid simmering tensions in the region.

Speaking on the anniversary of his nation's victory over Georgia in a five-day war last year, Putin said the Kremlin planned to spend nearly $500 million to build a base in the separatist enclave and reinforce its de facto border with Georgia.

"It won't be a Maginot line," Putin said, referring to the fortifications France built against Germany before World War II.

Did Russia pay high price for winning Georgia war?

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:04:30 -0700

Fred Weir | Moscow | Aug 7

CSM - It is responsible for economically troubled South Ossetia and may have spurred the European Union to seek alternative sources of energy.

Though the dispute over who started the war between Russia and Georgia has yet to abate, most experts agree that it erupted during the night of Aug. 7 with an apparently well-planned and massive Georgian attack on Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, which had won its de facto independence from Georgia in a brutal civil war nearly two decades earlier.

About a dozen Russian peacekeeping troops died in that assault, prompting Moscow to send its North Ossetia-based 58th Army swarming through the Roki Tunnel the next day. Russian forces rapidly routed the Georgians and went on to briefly occupy a handful of Georgian towns such as Gori, where they destroyed Georgian weapons.

Many experts argue that Georgian President Saakashvili merely handed Russia the pretext it had long awaited. But while Russia may have won the war, in doing so it exposed potentially fatal weaknesses in its unreformed Soviet-era military machine. It also took on two expensive new dependencies – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – whose nominal independence no country in the world, other than Nicaragua, has joined Moscow in recognizing.

Georgia's Opposition Rejects Truce Call

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:59:38 -0700

Lena Iremashvili | Tbilisi | July 27

IWPR - Promise of reform from Saakashvili puts ball in protesters’ court.

Georgia’s opposition has rejected proposals by President Mikheil Saakashvili intended to end a months-long demonstration by activists that has paralysed the capital, and promised a new wave of protest.

Opposition protesters occupied the central Rustaveli Avenue, which runs past parliament in central Tbilisi, for four months. They opened the road last week, but it remains lined with barred tents intended to symbolise the prison that they say the country has become under Saakashvili.

Saakashvili, whose resignation they have been demanding, made a long-promised speech on July 20, hoping to entice the activists’ leader into negotiations.

“The illegal occupation of the streets was allowed for more than three months in order to preserve calm and avoid clashes. But now we all have a collective interest in moving the central area of public debate from the streets into our parliament, our electoral system, and our system of governance,” the president said, appealing to the activists to come off the streets.

He invited opposition leaders to take part in the National Security Council, promised to give more powers to parliament and the courts; secure the freedom of the press; bring forward local elections from autumn to spring 2010 and introduce a directly elected mayor or Tbilisi.

“Reform. Reform. Reform. This is the only path to transforming Georgia into a trustworthy partner for our allies, uniting our people and our country around issues of vital concern to us. In this way, we can make Georgia even more attractive for investors, both Georgians as well foreigners, thus leading to more jobs and sustained economic growth,” he said.

But if he hoped to placate his opponents, who said they had hoped for more specific and extensive proposals, he was disappointed.

Giorgi Targamadze, leader of the parliamentary minority, said the president’s speech was “just another publicity stunt on the eve of the visit to Georgia by US vice-president Joe Biden”.

As for the opposition, which has been demanding immediate elections for both parliament and the presidency, it was loud in its disapproval.

“Expectations were dashed that the president would, at the end of the day, understand that there is a crisis in the country, and dialogue needs to be restarted in a new way. This talk about dialogue is completely pointless, because he offers nothing genuine to the opposition,” said Salome Zurabishvili, leader of the Georgia’s Way party.

She and other opposition leaders promised more protests to show Saakashvili they were not seduced by his promises. The new wave of protests, they warned the government, could prove even angrier than the first.

“In the autumn the acts of protest will take a sharper form. If the authorities do not seriously consider what is happening and do not start to really look at the problem, there is a probability that the people will get out of the opposition’s control,” said Bezhan Gunava, another opposition leader.

All the leaders were hoping to persuade Vice-President Biden of the justice of their cause, and hoped he would put pressure on Saakashvili during a lengthy bilateral meeting on July 23.

“Sadly, the only lever to affect the Georgian authorities is the desires of the West, particularly the United States,” said Giorgi Akhvlediani, leader of the Christian Democrats group in parliament.

“The authorities only take into account the opinion of the international community, and not that of their own people.”

There was encouragement for both sides in Biden’s words when he addressed parliament. He chided Saakashvili, but also urged the opposition to return to legal tactics in their stand-off with the government.