Georgia marks 10th anniversary of war with Russia

Published August 9, 2018
Tbilisi: Honour Guards stand at attention during a wreath laying ceremony on the 10th anniversary of Georgian-Russian war at the memorial cemetery of the Georgian soldiers killed during the war.—Reuters
Tbilisi: Honour Guards stand at attention during a wreath laying ceremony on the 10th anniversary of Georgian-Russian war at the memorial cemetery of the Georgian soldiers killed during the war.—Reuters

TBILISI: Georgia on Wednesday marked the tenth anniversary of its war with Russia which has left the country dismembered with a fifth of its territory remaining under Moscow’s control.

Georgia’s five-cross red-and-white national flags were flying at half-mast outside government buildings as the tiny Black Sea nation mourned the victims of the bloody war.

On Wednesday morning, President Giorgi Margvelashvili laid a wreath at the memorial cemetery of the Georgian soldiers killed in the conflict.

He later addressed troops at the Senaki military base that was looted and destroyed by invading Russian forces during the conflict and then rebuilt as a showpiece of Georgia’s drive to join Nato.

“Today, I mourn together with you our soldiers and civilians, journalists and doctors who were killed in this war,” Margvelashvili said. “One must be stupid, faithless or a coward not to believe that our country will be reunified,” he added.

Georgia and its Soviet-era master Russia have long been at loggerheads over Tbilisi’s bid to join the European Union and Nato with the spiralling confrontation culminating in a full-out war on August 8, 2008.

The Russian army swept into Georgia — bombing targets and occupying large swathes of territory — after Tbilisi launched a large-scale military operation against South Ossetian separatist forces who had been shelling Georgian villages in the region.

Over just five days, Russia defeated Georgia’s small military and the hostilities ended with a ceasefire mediated by France’s then-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who at the time held the EU’s rotating presidency.

After the war — that claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and civilians from both sides — Moscow recognised South Ossetia and another separatist enclave, Abkhazia, as independent states where it then stationed permanent military bases.

The two regions constitute 20 per cent of the country’s territory.

Chorus of condemnation

Georgia and its Western partners have condemned Russia’s continued “occupation” of its territory and demanded the Kremlin reverse its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

On Wednesday the Georgian presidency said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned Margvelashvili to reiterate Washington’s “strong support to Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”.

In a show of solidarity with Tbilisi, the foreign ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, and Ukraine’s vice premier visited the country and issued a joint statement urging Russia to “start honouring international law and the right of sovereign neighbouring states to choose their own destiny”.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the “Russian military presence in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia continues to violate international law”.

The German and French foreign ministries called Russia’s recognition of the breakaway Georgian areas Abkhazia and South Ossetia “unacceptable.”

Ethnic cleansing

Mikheil Saakashvili — Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2013 — accused Russia of preparing to invade his country for years before the war, claiming in an op-ed published on Tuesday that Russian forces had started entering Georgian territory ahead of Tbilisi’s offensive on the enclave.

But the Kremlin has called its Georgia campaign an “operation to force Georgia to peace” and save South Ossetia’s population from “genocide”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin — who served as prime minister during the war -- said in 2012 that he approved a plan of military action against Georgia as early as 2006 and that Russia has “trained South Ossetian militia”.

Russia and the separatist authorities in South Ossetia have rejected repeated calls from the UN General Assembly for the “safe and dignified return to their homes” of the 18,500 ethnic Georgians who were forcibly displaced from the region” in what the EU has said was “an ethnic cleansing”.

Speaking to AFP last week, Margvelashvili said that the 2008 war was part of Georgia’s “two-century fight from freedom, against the Russian imperialism”.

The Kingdom of Georgia was annexed by the Russian empire in 1801 and the country regained independence in 1918.

The short-lived Democratic Repu­b­lic of Georgia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1921 and again became an independent nation when the USSR collapsed in 1991.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2018

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