You Can Call Me ‘Misha’

He would soon find out. Earlier this month, soon after shells began falling on the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali, I joined a group of Western reporters in the president's office for another interview. Initially he showed resolve, speaking in his brilliant, fast-paced English, arguing he did everything he could when South Ossetians began firing artillery at Georgian villages. He said he tried making phone calls, but neither Moscow nor Tskhinvali answered them. He said when he received the reports that 150 Russian armored personnel carriers were entering the tunnel to South Ossetia, "we fired at the convoy and we fired at Tskhinvali." But Russia had a different view. Last week I traveled from Georgia on the first Kremlin-arranged tour to Tskhinvali. With burning Georgian villages and bodies of dead soldiers along the road, Tskhinvali looked like an open grave. As we walked, the details of the battle became as clear as the daylight shining through the buildings: Georgian artillery had fired massively at the city, not just the administrative and strategic buildings. The destruction covered almost all of Tskhinvali. Saakashvili, the impetuous darling of the West, had responded in force to a South Ossetian provocation. And for what?

The last time I saw him he looked heroic, wearing a bulletproof jacket, protected by his bodyguards on the streets of Gori as Russian jets passed overhead. But possibly a more lasting image emerged later, and has been put to good use by Russian propagandists. It is a clip from the BBC, of Saakashvili behind his desk, chewing on his necktie the way a baby might clutch a blanket or a pacifier for comfort. Russian tanks had made their way into Georgia. The separatist regions seemed farther than ever. And as Vladimir Putin flew from the Beijing Olympics to Vladikavkaz, just north of the fighting, Saakashvili's erstwhile ally, Bush, hammed it up with the women of the U.S. beach-volleyball team. It seemed the man who wanted to integrate Georgia into the world ended up just barely keeping it all together.

© 2008