‘They Want the Whole of Georgia’

Even as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to military activities in Georgia, Georgian officials reported continuing air and land attacks Tuesday. Since the conflict began last week, about 2,000 deaths have been reported, many of them civilians.

The escalating battle, which began last Thursday when Georgian troops and separatists in South Ossetia exchanged fire, has been a major test for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. He came to power in 2003 after the Rose Revolution, which ended the rule of former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Saakashvili has closely allied himself with the United States, often irritating Russia. Critics say Saakashvili pushed the Russians too far when he made aggressive moves in South Ossetia, a separatist enclave.

American-educated, Saakashvili has been a constant in Western media this week, making his case that Russia is to blame for the current conflict. On Monday, while touring a damaged building in Gori, the sound of a Russian jet led Saakashvili's bodyguards to push him to the ground and cover him with flak jackets, but no one was injured. NEWSWEEK's Anna Nemtsova caught up with the beleaguered president in Tbilisi on Monday. Excerpts:
 
NEWSWEEK: How did this all begin?
Mikheil Saakashvili: First of all, the Russian troops in North Ossetia [part of the Russian Federation] were massing for the last four months. They called it "exercises." But every time I would hear about these exercises, the Russians would say that they were preparing for military actions inside Georgia. They would say it publicly. President Putin would always hint at that. He said, "We need different ways to get to Georgia." So we knew Russia was preparing. We were worried about it. But there wasn't much we could do about it.

Now, in South Ossetia, there had been tensions for years. That's nothing new. So when the latest round of confrontations had started we didn't take it too seriously. I mean, they tried to blow up houses and opened fire on [a Georgian] police convoy. We returned fire and killed five or six of them. I thought this would end there. But then they started to bombard villages we controlled with mortar fire. But even these kind of things had happened in the past, so initially we didn't think it was serious. But sometime late on the afternoon it all started, I started to smell something bad. So I began, frantically, to call the Russians. They wouldn't respond. I called the secretary-general of NATO. I called [European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy] Javier Solana. I called several other European presidents, like [Lithuanian President] Valdas Adamkus. I said we are coming under an extensive barrage, and nothing like this has ever happened before. Something is wrong here.

Then we contacted the local Russian peacekeepers in Ossetia. The head of the local peacekeepers and Ambassador Yuri Popov [Russian co-chair of the Joint Control Commission for Georgian-Ossetian Conflict Resolution]. Both said they no longer had control over the Ossetian separatists. They told us that the [separatists] are out of their minds. That they don't pick up their phones and can't be reached. But the whole point is that this whole thing started immediately after [Ossetian separatist leader Eduard] Kokoity came back from Moscow. We asked the Russians, "What's going on?" I believe that there are different factions in Russia fighting each other. One faction has become nasty, and the other doesn't know what they are up to.

From our point of view, it all sounded very confused. The acting Russian foreign minister said that the separatists opened fire first and promised us that they were trying to calm the situation down. We told the Russians that we would declare a unilateral ceasefire, and maybe they could do something about this. I went on TV and announced a unilateral ceasefire.

My minister of defense called to say that he had two soldiers killed, and the ministry of interior had some men wounded. All this time we were still holding off from responding to any of these provocations. Then we started to get reports that Russian tanks, Russian APCs [armored personnel carriers], were coming through the tunnel [linking South Ossetia to Russia on Aug. 8].

Finally we said, "OK, the only way to stop this convoy was to open artillery fire." We did not have enough military on the ground to start a ground assault. So we did fire at that convoy, and we fired at Tskhinvali [which South Ossetian separatists recognize as their capital]. But before that, and every international observer saw that, there were several hours of barrage, to which we didn't respond. And in the meantime, we were trying to get international involvement.

Was this planned by the Russians?
When I called the secretary-general of NATO [Jaap de Hoop Scheffer], I said, "Look, this is happening. Conditions are nasty." I said the Russians are being helpful. They are trying to stop the separatists. And you know what he told me? He said, "I don't think so. I think this is a Russian game."

[A NATO spokesperson said Tuesday that de Hoop Scheffer would not comment on a private conversation with Saakashvili.]