Saakashvili about 2008 war and mistakes of his government
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, August 12
The former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, talked about the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 in an exclusive interview with the Institute for War & Peace. During the interview, ex-president talked about the mistakes made by the Georgian government at the time, things that he would do differently, as well as the response of Europe and noted that the Western politicians’ basic instinct is to keep trouble away, to ignore it or to pretend they don’t see it and that it’s not real.”
The ex-president said, the government at that time could not have imagined that Russia would launch a large-scale war, and neither did Europe. According to Saakashvili, his European partners were telling him Russia “will provoke you, but they will never do anything.”
As Saakashvili said, the only one who was telling him that Russia was planning to do something was Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the President of Germany. In 2008, Steinmeier was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany. “Steinmeier came to Georgia in a very hasty way, and he was nervous, you could see that, he just came because he thought an invasion would happen and he wanted to show that beforehand,” noted Saakashvili.
According to Saakashvili, while meeting Steinmeier in Batumi, one of the representatives of Georgian Government asked him if he would help Georgia “with bringing international peacekeepers to both our conflict zones,” and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany replied: “You’ll soon have a large-scale war here, what peacekeepers are you talking about?”
Former President also said that by not giving Georgia a MAP and deciding to discuss it in December, “Germans gave them [Russians] the green light by saying okay, we are postponing it till December.”
“I don’t think Germans wanted war, of course, but they at least gave the Russians some leeway to do what they did,” added Saakashvili.
The interviewer also asked Saakashvili about the role of Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, which happened to also be the holder of the rotating EU presidency at the time. According to Saakashvili, “Sarkozy behaved like a clown. The Americans did not want him to do this mission. Sarkozy basically sidelined them from the diplomatic process and played a double game.”
As for the US, former President said that the only thing that disappointed him was Robert Gates (Former United States Secretary of Defense) views towards Georgia, especially when he said that the US would not use military force, “that’s when the Russians took Akhalgori.” According to Saakashvili, Gates was against Georgia’s integration with NATO, “he sabotaged our military training, was one of the initiators of the military embargo and so on.”
According to the ex-president, the last thing that the Georgian government wanted was the war, “because we were not ready.” He also stressed that Russians were very fast, “they did not start evacuating Tskhinvali because they were afraid that people would die, no, they would be happier if they died.”
He also noted that the Georgian Government did not start evacuation because “evacuating would be seen as another provocation. They evacuate, we evacuate; that’s declaring a war zone, and we start... the war or what? Because the war was the last thing we wanted. Nobody was actually prepared for mass operations in Tskhinvali from the start. It was a response to what the Russians were doing.”
As Saakashvili said, his biggest mistake was that he “should have screamed much more.” As he noted, if you look at the resources that the country had, Georgia was holding up pretty well. “We stood up to the Russians, the state did not collapse, we held up for four years under the tremendous pressure of various much bigger powers than we even imagined back then,” stressed Saakashvili.
The current President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili called Saakashvili’s statements “an insult to our partner nations and leaders who stand by Georgia since its independence.” As she wrote on her Twitter account, the remarks of the former President affect Georgia’s strategic interests and “such falsehoods and misrepresentations are irresponsible and unacceptable from a former President.”
“On behalf of the people of Georgia, I reiterate my country’s deep appreciation for the continuous support provided by our European and American partners before, during, and after the 2008 war. As President, I will fight any such attempt to undermine our strategic relations,” wrote the President.
The Russia-Georgian War was fought between Georgia, Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of so-called South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The war took place in August of 2008 following a period of worsening relations between the two countries.
