By Alexei Vlasov, exclusively to VK
A new stage of Russian-Georgian media face-off started after Washington decided to supply the Georgian contingent in Afghanistan with M-4 carbines and armored Hummers. What’s so special about these supplies? It seems that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan also hope to equip themselves with the leftovers after NATO troops leave Afghanistan. However, Georgia is a special case for Moscow.
Back in February Saakashvili promised the Georgian military in Afghanistan that US aid won’t be confined to anti-terrorist training, but will also contribute to increasing the state’s defense capability.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed its concern that the new armaments would be used by the ‘Saakashvili regime’ against the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including Russian citizens living there. In my opinion, Tbilisi was in fact ‘teasing’ the Kremlin, and the latter allowed itself to be fooled. The Georgian President doesn’t want a new war, as it goes against the interests of the main ‘sponsor’ of Georgian reforms – the US. And the upcoming NATO Summit is unlikely to approve Georgia’s entry to the alliance.
Tbilisi will carry on provoking Moscow – it is their task number one until 2013, when Saakashvili’s presidential mandate ends. Any politician that occupies the office afterwards will be regarded by Moscow as a more agreeable figure. There will be a seeming opportunity of a ‘reload’ in the two states’ relationship, but under this new façade there will definitely be the ‘Saakashivi model’ defining Russian-Georgian relations.
Kyrgyz MPs and Tajik security officials will keep coming to study to the country of ‘great reforms’, but Washington strategists would like it even better if young people of the South Caucasian and Central Asian states would take the streets to support their own Saakashvilis. It is obvious that the US doesn’t care who’ll have to pay for the Georgian-type modernization, but Russia also fails to provide a successful example of its counter-proposal in South Ossetia.
So the Georgian President still has time to plant as many ‘zones of tension’ for the Russian government as possible. The most obvious counteraction would be to turn Abkhazian and South Ossetian political projects into ‘a haven on earth’, so that young democrats from all over the world would come there to gain experience… But that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.
