South Ossetia: two months before elections

Exactly two months are left before the presidential elections in South Ossetia. On the second Sunday of November the second term of Eduard Kokoity in the office of president will expire, and he will not run for the presidency of the republic for the next term, as he said in an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza in March (see http://www.vestikavkaza.ru/interview/politika/33988.html). Now the fight for the highest office in the country is taking place not only in Tskhinvali but also in Vladikavkaz and Moscow, where the principal opponents of Kokoity and his team are located.

As for the candidates of the government, the current president has already announced his support for Attorney General Taimuraz Khugaev and the head of the Ossetian Emergency Ministry, Major-General Anatoly Bibilov. The announcement came after Kokoity's August trip to Moscow and meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, which was officially dedicated to the third anniversary of Russia's recognition of South Ossetia. Prior to this visit, Kokoity only used to consider Taimuraz Khugaev as his successor. In mid-August experts started to consider Anatoly Bibilov as the favorite of the Kremlin in the South Ossetian election race.

His candidacy was proposed by the Ministry of Regional Development and has already received the support of all the power structures of Russia, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

Bibilov is 41 years old. He was born in Tskhinvali, and graduated from the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School, participated in the peacekeeping operation in South Ossetia as part of the composite battalion of the 76th Pskov Airborne Division and was one of the commanders of the South Ossetian Defense Ministry special forces until 1996, when he left for Kiev, spending two years there and becoming a businessman. After he returned from Kiev, he served in the North Ossetian battalion of peacekeepers in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict.

It is hard to judge the political views and expertise of Bibilov. All the interviews he has given in recent years naturally focus on the work of the Emergency Situations Ministry and emphasise emergency management and not power issues.

However, one can compose an opinion on the identity of Bibilov from his story about the August events, promulgated by the public commission on the investigation of war crimes in South Ossetia: “On the seventh, closer to twelve o’clock, the rockets and howitzers began shelling... On the eighth I left with Gena Chochiyev and Soslan Kotaev, and it was even interesting to watch explosions behind our backs...

... The Georgian tanks had serious armor, and our weapons, such as the RPG-6, could not penetrate them. It was like throwing stones at a wall, they were bouncing off and the wall stayed still... Then we dispersed into their headquarters and upper floors. And when they approached the firehouse, we knocked them well, and they left. At that time I was already injured and went to dress my eye. When I got out and walked over to another building I saw them loading their dead and wounded. Nearby stood a boy, he now serves in the border troops, he was with a machine gun and had them nicely ...

…When the fighting ended, Soslan Tasoevym and I decided that sitting in the headquarters made no sense. We gathered soldiers, divided into groups according to units, separated and in different directions went to clean up the city. So that evening, on the eighth of August, the city was cleared of Georgians. When I went down Stalin Street I saw an overturned Georgian “Scorpion”, five crew members ran into the house, but we killed them ... "

Two months later, Bibilov became head of the republican Ministry of Emergency Situations and frequently contacted the "puppet of the Kremlin", Prime Minister Vadim Brovtsev, and with Russian counterparts about the restoration of the republic, and probably even earned the trust of Moscow. If the information about the Kremlin's choice is correct, then one can assume that the election campaign of Bibilov has already started. In late August, the head of the Russian Emergency Situations Minister, Sergei Shoigu, brought 116 tons of humanitarian aid to Tskhinvali and praised his South Ossetian counterpart. Shoigu awarded Bibilov with a medal of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the UNHCR as a “participant of emergency humanitarian operations.”

In one way or another, the situation in South Ossetia before the elections leaves no hope for accurate predictions on the outcome of the presidential race. The unpredictability of the current president, the activity of the opposition and many external factors influencing present-day Tskhinvali create a rather interesting plot. Nevertheless, it is clear that Moscow's support will be a key factor in the outcome of the presidential race, as there is a large Russian contingent in South Ossetia, Moscow actually is restoring the economy and rebuilding the infrastructure of the country. The electorate is well aware that without Russia the problems in all areas of life would be much more serious.

Meanwhile, not only the views of Ossetians themselves are interesting, but also the views of Russians, whose tax payments basically support the republic. The attitude of the Russian population to the problems of South Ossetia after the five-day war has changed dramatically. According to polls, the number of people admitting the possibility of reviewing the decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is growing. If in 2010 there were 21% respondents in Russia having this opinion, now 38% believe that the question of independence of both republics should be revised. At the same time the number of people with a strong position of recognition of these two republics’ independence is decreasing significantly. A year ago the figure was 51%, now it amounts to 40%. Sociologists believe that Russian society was divided in their attitude toward South Ossetia, not because of the complexity of the issue but because it is not well discussed by the media and this is the reason that most Russians fid it difficult to answer the question of how South Ossetia can be useful to Russia.

Katerina Tesemnikova. Exclusively for VK