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| One of the main culprits of the war in Abkhazia is Yeltsin |
| 2022-08-18 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Borislav Agadzhanov [REGNUM] The Russian authorities and personally President Boris Yeltsin had every opportunity to prevent the outbreak of war in Abkhazia in 1992. But they didn't. August 14 marks 30 years since the start of the war in Abkhazia, one of the bloodiest and most brutal wars in the post-Soviet space. The Abkhaz war, at least in the form and scale in which it took place, could well have been prevented. And a huge share of the blame for its unleashing lies with the then political and military leadership of the Russian Federation. It should be noted that since 1988-1989, when the active phase of the confrontation between Georgians and Abkhazians began, the Russian "progressive public" openly sympathized with the Georgian side. The Moscow and Leningrad intelligentsia perceived the Georgian-Abkhaz contradictions in an extremely primitive way, reducing them to a black and white ideological scheme. Georgians were seen as democrats and liberals with progressive views, while Abkhazians were seen as communists, reactionaries and retrogrades. Of course, such primitive ideological constructions had nothing to do with reality. However, after August 1991, this did not prevent them from being accepted almost completely by the new Russian authorities. And after coming to power in Tbilisi in March 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze's favorable attitude towards Georgia increased due to the "democratic" image of the ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. It can be said that Boris Yeltsin favored Shevardnadze as much as "double size". Firstly, according to old memory - as a colleague in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and secondly, according to a new fashion - as one of the fathers of the "new political thinking". The leader of Abkhazia, the orientalist Vladislav Ardzinba , did not belong to either the first or the second category, and therefore he was deeply alien to Yeltsin and his entourage. Shevardnadze, in turn, immediately understood how he should deal with Yeltsin. The combination of a kind of "carrot and stick" seemed to be optimal. On the one hand, during personal meetings, the President of Russia had to be praised in every possible way, emphasizing his special democratic merits and the leading role in the collapse of the USSR. On the other hand, at the slightest opportunity, Yeltsin should have been subjected to harsh, and sometimes rude pressure, accusing him and Russia as a whole of "great-power imperial behavior." After such processing, Boris Nikolaevich in the overwhelming majority of cases made all conceivable and unthinkable concessions. In addition, Shevardnadze very quickly managed to find the hook on which he quite firmly planted Yeltsin and his inner circle. There were even two such hooks. The first was the promise that Georgia would join the CIS in the very near future. And the second is that Georgia will keep Russian military bases on its territory. Shevardnadze initially had absolutely no intention of fulfilling these promises, since Georgia firmly took a completely pro-Western foreign policy course. However, Shevardnadze and other Georgian statesmen managed to fool Moscow for a very long time, and the Russian political and military leadership, like a donkey, obediently followed the carrot hanging in front of its nose. Immediately after the overthrow of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Russia began to disinterestedly help the new Georgian authorities build their own combat-ready and fairly large army. For this, literally an astronomical amount of weapons, ammunition, equipment, fuels and lubricants, property, real estate left over from the Soviet army was transferred to Georgia. With the full support of Russia, Georgia, which at that time was not even a member of the CIS, managed, according to the Tashkent agreements of May 15, 1992, to legitimize a significant share of the Soviet military legacy. The impression was created that Moscow had absolutely no idea of the catastrophic consequences of such a rapid militarization of Georgia. Russian generals and diplomats, like parrots, mindlessly repeated phrases about national armies as a necessary attribute of new sovereign and independent states. But before they could end their own autonomies once and for all by force of arms, the Georgian authorities needed to receive full international recognition within the borders of the Georgian SSR, and for this it was necessary to join the UN. That is why Tbilisi decided to temporarily stop hostilities in South Ossetia (and not at all because of Shevardnadze's desire to establish peace, as the Russian democratic media assured), but immediately after joining the UN, start a war already in Abkhazia. On June 24, 1992, an agreement was signed in Dagomys between Georgia and Russia on a truce in South Ossetia. However, it was extremely important not only and not so much the official agreement, but also what was achieved as a result of informal negotiations between Shevardnadze and Yeltsin. Most likely, it was during these unofficial talks that Shevardnadze received Yeltsin's agreement in principle to carry out a Georgian military operation against Abkhazia. Apparently, Shevardnadze convinced Yeltsin that the military action in Abkhazia would take place easily and quickly, literally within a few days. This may explain the very strange behavior of Russia in the period immediately preceding August 14 and immediately after the start of the war. Russian generals continued to intensively pump weapons and ammunition into the Georgian army even when the fighting was in full swing. So, the explanations of the Minister of Defense of Russia looked completely ridiculous, Pavel Grachev, who justified the transfer of the Grad multiple launch rocket systems to the Georgian army by the fact that the Minister of Defense of Georgia Tengiz Kitovani, promised him that, they say, these weapons would not be used in Abkhazia. When Grachev was pointed out that the Georgian army is widely using in Abkhazia precisely these installations transferred by Russia, the Russian minister, either with sincere or with fake bewilderment, stated that “Tengiz Kallistratovich, it turns out, deceived me!” Pavel Grachev was the last commander of the Soviet 40th Army, the main combat component of Soviet forces in Afghanistan. He also was the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan in 1989. Before the Georgian invasion of Abkhazia, Russian officials and "democratic" media were actually repeating Tbilisi's arguments word for word about the need to disarm illegal armed groups, unblock railways, and release hostages. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that after the start of hostilities Russia did not react in any way to Georgia's aggression. It is extremely revealing that on August 14, 1992, Yeltsin was on vacation in Sochi, very close to the border with Abkhazia. If the President of Russia would like to prevent the outbreak of war or stop it in the very first hours, he would immediately take emergency measures, in particular by summoning Shevardnadze and Ardzinba to Sochi. However, Yeltsin did not even think of doing anything like that and did not even express his attitude to what had happened. Moreover, Ardzinba for several days could not get through to the President of Russia via government communications. Other Russian officials actually sided with Georgia. It looked particularly cynical that at the time the Georgian invasion began in Abkhazia, more than 40,000 Russian citizens were on vacation, and their lives, health and property were in serious danger. The calls of the Abkhaz leadership to Moscow to intervene in the conflict remained unanswered, and therefore Ardzinba was forced to seek help from the authorities and the public of the republics of the North Caucasus. The Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus and the head of Chechnya readily responded to calls from Sukhum Dzhokhar Dudayev. They began to quickly transfer armed detachments of volunteers to Abkhazia. Sukhum Dzhokhar Dudayev was formerly a Soviet Air Force general, president of Chechnya. He led Chechens in war against the Russian Amy before he was killed in 1996. It should be noted that the Russian leadership did not predict the full severity of the consequences of the creation of volunteer detachments in the North Caucasus and treated this phenomenon with incredible frivolity. Russia continued to continue to take a pro-Georgian position in the conflict, which was especially clearly manifested on September 3, 1992, during a meeting in Moscow between Yeltsin, Shevardnadze and Ardzinba. This meeting, despite the peacemaking efforts of the President of Russia, did not lead to any positive results. Meanwhile, intense hostilities in Abkhazia very quickly led to a sharp aggravation of the situation throughout the Russian North Caucasus, especially in Kabardino-Balkaria. And when the Georgian side realized that a quick and easy victory over the Abkhazians was impossible, then Shevardnadze, trying to blame all military failures on Moscow and enlist the full support of the West, on September 25 made a sharp anti-Russian speech at the UN General Assembly in New York. And only after that did the Russian authorities begin to realize that the one-sided orientation towards Tbilisi was a mistake. But it was already too late. The meat grinder of the Abkhazian war, launched with the full connivance of the Russian leadership, has started working at full capacity. |
| Posted by:badanov |