Translated material
We would be grateful
Abkhazia and South Ossetia turned to American image makers
The day after Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Russian-recognized Republic of Abkhazia, it suddenly became clear that from the point of view of Sukhumi, visits by Russian top officials, even such prominent ones, are not enough to fully form an image. As journalists learned, Abkhazia and South Ossetia entered into contracts with the American company Saylor Company, according to which the specialists of this company will take care of the positive image of the two republics in the world for a fee of 30 thousand dollars per month for each.Saylor Company is considered a fairly expensive PR agency; it is headed by former editor-in-chief of The Los Angeles Times Mark Saylor. On the Abkhaz side, the contract, according to available data, was signed by President Sergei Bagapsh’s assistant for public relations, Christian Bzhania, and on the South Ossetian side, by the Commissioner for Human Rights under President Eduard Kokoity, David Sanakoev.
For now, it cannot be ruled out that information about the contract will be refuted - it causes too obvious image damage to the governments of both republics in the eyes of Moscow, which throughout the year has constantly noted that Uncle Sam is somehow behind Georgia’s aggression against Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However, official Washington has nothing to do with agreements on image-building services - the United States still does not doubt the territorial integrity of Georgia and does not recognize the independence of the two republics. And the company that entered into the contracts is a private enterprise that merely made the contracts public in accordance with the US foreign lobbying law.
The nuances will become clear later, but for now the approximate goals of both republics are known, and they are not unexpected. Tskhinvali plans to focus public attention on explaining why there are Russian military bases in South Ossetia, while Sukhumi wants to demonstrate the maturity of Abkhazian democratic institutions, tolerance of ethnic minorities and the republic’s readiness for wider international recognition.
It must be said that the information campaign launched by the Russian media in connection with the anniversary of the five-day war in August 2008, after which Moscow recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia , left much to be desired from many points of view. The Abkhaz story generally featured poorly in the media space until Vladimir Putin’s trip the day before yesterday. South Ossetia was on the screens around the clock, but did not particularly shine. Perhaps the only real success of Russian television journalists was a series of fairly eloquent refutations, the meaning of which boiled down to the fact that at least some Western media were quite biased in their coverage of events. In a number of episodes, foreign journalists refused to admit that the Georgian side was in any way involved in the outbreak of hostilities; they deliberately or not confused pictures of the burning quarters of Georgian Gori and South Ossetian Tskhinvali. They also categorically ignored the fact that by the time last year’s war began, South Ossetia and Abkhazia had actually lived as territories independent of Tbilisi for almost 20 years and did not show the slightest desire to return to Georgian sovereignty.
However, in the process of this refutation, the Russian information machine itself made such inaccuracies and miscalculations that, to put it mildly, did not contribute to changing the ideas of foreigners about what happened a year ago or is happening in South Ossetia and Abkhazia now. The footage of a quarter being built with funds from the Moscow government on the northern outskirts of Tskhinvali looked quite cynical, accompanied by a comment that houses and a school were being built on territory that “before the war was occupied by the Georgian army,” despite the fact that in fact the quarter was being built on ruins of the Georgian village of Tamarasheni. The Georgian enclave brought a lot of troubles to the South Ossetians, but it was they who subjected it to total destruction, and after the war, when the entire Georgian population was forced to leave it.
Not a single Russian company bothered to show the comfortable, full-fledged houses that the Georgian government built for refugees from Georgian enclaves in South Ossetia even before the onset of the first post-war winter. Even if we assume that the Saakashvili regime built these houses in advance, nurturing militaristic plans, this can only speak of the foresight of the Georgian leaders.
Meanwhile, all Russian national television channels, without exception, broadcast pictures from Tskhinvali for a week in a row, in which anyone could see how little had been done in a year. Unfinished social facilities such as a hospital or a television center, as well as residents of destroyed private houses living in tents a year after Russia actually took charge of post-war reconstruction, involuntarily raise the question: what happened during the whole year? The failure of the Moscow-funded program for the restoration of South Ossetia, which only a few publications wrote about during the year, was shown in full on federal channels - albeit accompanied by bravura comments about the busy work.
Despite the fact that the death of even one person anywhere cannot but cause the deepest sadness, the concept of “genocide”, constantly used by South Ossetian and Russian politicians, has once again undergone a certain devaluation. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor's Office, which is leading the investigation into the atrocities of the Georgian military, which undoubtedly took place, has confirmed the death of 161 people to date. This is exactly how many white balloons rose into the night sky over the central square of Tskhinvali on the anniversary of the start of the war on August 8. Perhaps this is not a completely correct comparison, but during the terrorist attack on the Theater Center in Moscow, 130 people died. In a school captured by militants in Beslan, the death toll was 335. During the Ossetian-Ingush conflict in 1992, about 500 people died on both sides, and about 30 thousand more ethnic Ingush were subjected to, in fact, ethnic cleansing - but the attempts of some Ingush public figures claims of genocide in relation to these events are generally ridiculed by their opponents. No one has yet fully calculated the civilian casualties during the two wars in Chechnya.
All the losses mentioned are in one way or another connected with the Caucasus. It is no secret that in the Caucasus, people - regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliation - have a heightened sense of justice. The Vremya Novostey correspondent spent the entire mourning week of the anniversary of last year’s war in Ingushetia. All residents of this republic, without exception, who consider themselves loyal citizens of Russia, watched TV these days with amazement and some resentment.
It is clear that this perception of telemourning is due to the complexities of Ossetian-Ingush relations in the past and present. Probably, federal television is not a silver ruble to please everyone. But if a state declares its federal structure and the equality of the peoples inhabiting it, then it is quite obvious that such obvious preference should not be given to some peoples at the expense of others. The formula about “Russia’s outpost in the Caucasus” is appropriate in the center’s communication with Ossetia, but it becomes offensive to neighboring regions as soon as “Ostankino” begins to broadcast it on a massive scale.
In addition, what was striking was the complete absence in the video of footage with the participation of the Chechen battalion, which a year ago covered itself with glory as part of the Russian army column in South Ossetia. It is clear that the political situation has changed over the past year. But the history of the Vostok battalion and its commanders, who a year ago were among the heroes of the day, and now have left the stage and were not only consigned to absolute oblivion, but also partially killed, testifies to the fickleness of Moscow's sympathies towards those who are ready to lay down their lives for her interests.
Maybe this is a reasonable decision by the authorities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - to look for commercial image makers who will do their job, and not someone else’s geopolitics.