WAR UNDER THE FLOOR

PAIN POINT

“If it weren’t for all this stupid politics – the politics of fools, we would be sitting at the wedding now, it would be good for us, and no one would even remember that the wedding was mixed…” Zaza Didberuashvili, a big good-natured person, states with a sigh…

“If it wasn’t for all this stupid politics, the politics of fools, we would be sitting at the wedding now, it would be good for us, and no one would even remember that the wedding was mixed ...” Zaza Didberuashvili, a big good-natured man from Gori, states with a sigh. - When either he is Georgian, she is Ossetian. Or he is Ossetian - she is Georgian. What's the difference…

The car rushes forward - to where the self-proclaimed Tskhinvali is, and further, after it, nine villages of the Bolshaya Liakhva gorge cut off from the rest of the world. The August war has just passed. People died on both sides, houses were destroyed, peach orchards were shot, trenches dug with shock, Georgians do not go where Ossetians, Ossetians try not to appear where Georgians are. Bad for everyone. In a straight line, on decent asphalt, it’s only 26 kilometers to the gorge, but now a Georgian cannot go through Tskhinvali, and Zaza is a Georgian, the head of the regional Shida-Kartli department of the Ministry of State Security of Georgia (Shida Kartli is one of the seven regions of Georgia, it includes five districts, including Samachablo, the Georgian name for South Ossetia, which in translation means the land of Prince Machabeli, but, in fact, there is no prince).

— Mephistopheles… Have you heard, I guess? Zaza continues. “People die for metal. And so it happened. August war - because of the Ergneti market.

We are driving into Ergneti, a Georgian village, when on the left hand, in the valley, there are already gray Soviet boxes of Tskhinvali.

Ergneti market

Here it is, the very market, because of which all the mess was brewed this summer. Now it is empty and bare, not a single merchant, and the dogs are not even interested in wandering between the stalls - there is nothing to eat. And not long ago Ergnetsky market was a bustling and famous place where for many years they traded contraband imported from Russia through the Roki tunnel connecting Georgia and us. Everything that moved through it was illegal, controlled hand in hand by the mafia groups of Tskhinvali and the Russian military - primarily high-ranking leaders of the 58th Army, stationed in neighboring North Ossetia. For the convenience of gangster barter, even a visa-free regime for South Ossetia was knocked out of the Kremlin ...

This summer, the Georgian authorities tried to put an end to smuggling. First, they took control of the tunnel, and immediately South Ossetian nationalist slogans rang out everywhere: they say, we are independent. But the Georgian authorities developed the offensive and one day closed the Ergneti market. The mafia of the Roki tunnel felt itself in a pre-heart attack state - there was nowhere to sell smuggling. This is where the "right of nations to self-determination" came in handy - South Ossetia screamed about it, and Russia openly supported it. The war has begun. She went from 12 to 21 August. And when 16 Georgian soldiers had already died, President Saakashvili withdrew his detachments from the dominating heights occupied earlier in order to protect Georgian villages from shelling. The abandoned heights were immediately filled… Who? According to the papers - only peacekeepers. However, it is not easy to understand who the peacekeepers are. For two real peacekeepers - about a dozen individuals of a fuzzy state orientation. According to the signed agreements, five hundred official peacekeepers from each of the three sides, and checkpoints are strictly divided between them. But the parties to the conflict are North Ossetian, Russian proper and Georgian proper. What in reality means something else: five hundred Georgians per thousand Ossetians, because North Ossetian and Russian fighters are one and the same, North Ossetia is still part of the Russian Federation ...

Today, towards the end of August, the situation is again becoming more and more confused: many South Ossetians have appeared in the North Ossetian battalion, who officially, according to agreements, are forbidden to fight, but with the mediation of Russia and under the protectorate of the Russian military, they can ... Thus, the South Ossetians returned to the armed struggle for freedom Rok-Ergnet smuggling. This war is not obvious now - it only spreads over this earth, quiet and cunning, like smuggling - a war from under the counter. At all the so-called negotiations on South Ossetia, Tskhinvali methodically continues to raise this main issue - the opening of the Ergneti market: the South Ossetian and Russian sides, they say, agree to control the Roki tunnel together with the Georgians, but on the condition that the market is open. As long as the Georgian side stands its ground, the Ergneti market is dead: why feed the war with live cash, there will be no such “black hole”, and the war will fizzle out…. But what will happen next?

Mortars from you

“The Ossetians provoke us all the time,” says Geno Shatberashvili, a police captain from the Gori police department, who sits with his fighters right at the entrance to the empty market. Geno is the commander of the Ergneti checkpoint, from which Tskhinvali, a gray Soviet-style city, is perfectly visible. Behind the post at a distance - bushes and some buildings.

“The Ossetians are firing at us from there,” the captain says, and shows on the ground, as is usually the case. “Ossetian infantry fighting vehicles keep coming and standing behind the bushes, although they do not have the right to an infantry fighting vehicle.

- And you? Answer fire?

- No. - Geno is completely categorical, and it looks sincere. We don't want war. The answer is that there will be war again. If you start a war, how do you end it?

- But you personally, probably, this market was profitable? Did you buy cheap stuff there too?

“Why should I benefit from smuggling?” I am from the police. I keep order. - The captain is used to not succumb to provocations and is offended. “I can't benefit from smuggling. How much trouble from her ...

He is lucky to look at one of them - down from the post, on the last Ergneti street in front of Tskhinvali. It's really full of fresh traces of mortar splashes on fences and houses. Some holes are with a sheep's head. Although mortars are prohibited for use ...

— Who uses mortars?

— Ossetians, of course.

Where are the mortars from?

- From Russia, of course. - Captain Shatberashvili's eyebrows fold into a house in surprise. Don't you understand such simple things?

Not one of the Georgian villages managed to meet a single person who would have doubts about how the war functions here, where the shells come from and why. South Ossetia's fight for freedom from Georgia is being funded by black cash from Russian smuggling, as well as Russian budget money allocated from the military budget approved in Moscow.

The bunny was shot

The village of Tamarasheni is now a Georgian dead end of the Bolshaya Liakhva gorge. Right next to it - border to border - Tskhinvali, its other side than the one where Ergneti is located. In a straight line through Tskvinvali to Tamarasheni - fifteen minutes. Along the curve - through the bypass road, punched by the Georgians in the mountains - an hour and a half of dusty potholes. Georgians from Tamarasheni to Tskhinvali - not a foot, Ossetians here - not half a step. Exchange of neighborly pleasantries - only according to the military price list.

“But we will not leave this gorge, although the Ossetians are squeezing us out,” says Vasily Datashvili from Tamarasheni, looking melancholy from under the lush grapes at the shot-down shopping center in typical two floors. Vasily lived in this village all his life, 54 years. “Let’s go and see the school, she was also shot.”

From the windows of a rural school, you can look at the details of the outlying Tskhinvali buildings - only a hundred meters away.

- There are Ossetian firing positions. That's where they shot from. They shot the bunny…” Geography teacher Otar Solomonovich Tatashvili tries to explain, stuttering with shock, waving his arms. “The fox was shot… See?

On the wall of the school assembly hall, pierced in many places with shrapnel and machine-gun fire, little animals are indeed painted, cheerfully going to school. They got it at night. The school roof was broken through to the sky - this was already heavy artillery at work. The windows are smashed, the frames mangled, melted fittings hang down. The school, apparently, was brand new, renovated and pretty - it was built with money allocated by the European Union, according to its own standards, as evidenced by a memorial plaque.

“They know that there is a class here,” the geography teacher continues to repeat, leading into one of them. - School. Children. Understand?

The military pogrom is, of course, full-fledged. Liana Bortsvadze, director of the school, whose son was killed by Ossetians five years ago, and since then she wears only black, is sad, like an abandoned Madonna:

“The legs didn’t come here to look at all this.

- Why were you shot at? Target?

- They're scared. Driven out of the gorge. This is what Russia wants. After all, Ossetians without Russia are nothing. And Russia wants to take our territory.

There are no other comments on the situation.

NURS, and only

On the main street that cuts Tamarasheni in two, meanwhile the crowd keeps arriving. People carry trophies from the August war from their gardens. Among them there are unexploded ones - the capsules are preserved in the foreground. Colonel Alexander Kiknadze, the commander of the Georgian peacekeeping battalion, in an orderly tone orders to take this muck away. Kiknadze is not the only colonel in the crowd. In the middle stands another one, but already our Armed Forces. Andrey Pryakhin from the Russian peacekeeping battalion, deputy commander (that is, the deputy of the same "TV hero" General Stanislav Nabzdorov, who justifies the Ossetians and accuses the Georgians).

Deputy Andrey is a calm merry fellow in a field uniform. The people of Tamarashen directly into his arms, like a baby, lower a heavy blank with melted torn edges:

- Here, I flew to the house of Vakhtang Goberidze.

- NURS, by the way. - Kiknadze is puzzled. Andrey, this is your NURS. Where did Ossetians get NURSs from?

Yes, NURS. - Pryakhin does not deny it.

It is noticeable that he has absolutely nothing to say: he only keeps a mysterious half-smile on his face and seeks to quickly shake off this "fool" from his hands. However, everything is clear: NURSs are absolutely forbidden for use in the conflict zone, violations of all agreements are obvious, this buttress could fly into the Georgian village only from Ossetian positions, and Ossetian positions are Russian positions ... In short, we must record direct evidence that Tamarasheni Heavy artillery "worked", but Tskhinvali does not have it and cannot have it. But Pryakhin does not want to do this at all, and he disappears imperceptibly - since the Georgians are a noisy people, and the trail of the deputy commander is quietly lost in the dust of the South Ossetian roads.

"Our"

- But in Sarabuki, the Georgians fought back - they also destroyed the house, - this is Mahar Gassiev, a representative of the South Ossetian administration.

In official Tbilisi, officials from Tskhinvali are usually referred to as "the de facto authorities of South Ossetia." So, Mahar Gassiev is de facto Deputy Minister of South Ossetia for Migration Policy. He also observed the scene with the NURS in Tamarasheni and now he is demanding an inspection of the Ossetian village, which is surrounded by Georgians. And no one argues.

Sarabuki turns out to be an amazing place on earth, sprawling across a tall mountain, where it lays your ears, and the dark blue sky hugs your shoulders. On the right is the mouth of the Java Gorge, where, according to the Georgian side, Ossetian militants and mercenaries who came from Russia accumulate. Mr. Gassiev gives a lift to the sole of the highest point of the village - this is its outskirts, and here is the very house of the Guchmazov family, the roof of which is broken through. On the bright green lush grass of the slope leading to the house, the sheep do not graze - there is still the same well-known debris of the war. Shot blanks from artillery shells - it is clear that they were shot here. Coquettishly fluffy tails of small rockets. Well, the shells, of course, - zero attention on them, you just trample it into the turf, soft as a carpet.

At the foot of the slope are two women with restless faces. One is older, gray-haired and has a Russian face, the other is middle-aged, in a revolutionary red blouse and with a mobile phone under her arm. On the move, the women begin to swear not in Russian - in the direction of Colonel Kiknadze and his two assistants, who were dragged here by the Ossetian deputy minister. Of all the guttural phrases called out by women, only “Georgian muzzle!” is repeated many times in Russian, and again “Georgian muzzle !!”, and again “You are a Georgian muzzle !!!”. The intensity of passions no longer seems like a toy, and confirmation is not long in coming - the women called people dressed in Russian military field uniforms, hung with all conceivable types of hot and cold weapons. They also start yelling.

How dare you come here! Arrest!

— Who are you?

— Rural police. I am the boss, - a typical two-meter-high, either special forces soldier, or a militant with ten years of war experience, answers. Perhaps, in Georgia, the chiefs of rural police are like that, but it still looks strange.

The migration official, sensing something was wrong, begins to play up and turns everything upside down: it already turns out that it was not he who brought everyone here, it was "they were rushing to our firing positions." Ba! And indeed: right above their heads, on a high-rise, there are the most combat fortifications of the Ossetian side. And this, of course, is a sensation - here it is, the same “third force” that shoots at night. Exactly what the presence of which is categorically and constantly denied by both the Russian military, who flooded South Ossetia under the guise of a peacekeeping battalion, and the Kremlin, following General Nabzdorov.

From the Kremlin, of course, you can’t see firing positions on these mountains, but on the outskirts of Sarabuka, it’s just right, if you’re not blind.

Ossetian "policemen" declare those who arrived as Georgian spies - among them is UN Ambassador Lance Clark, the permanent representative of this organization in Georgia. All the time of the skirmish, he, so strange, almost curled up, hiding the body behind his jeep, not even trying to use his high mandate to release people who were invited to visit, and now they were detained by no one knows by what right. Ossetians take away all the films that are filmed here. Only by an absolute miracle, and I alone of all, manage to save the only one - these are photographic evidence of the existence of fire fortifications near South Ossetia, prohibited by all agreements concluded with the participation of international observers. Fortifications from which provocative strikes are carried out against Georgian villages in order to start a big war.

Did someone die in the house with the broken roof?

“No… The owners left a long time ago, and our soldiers were there,” reluctantly replies a woman in a red sweater, and on her hands there are characteristic circles for which people in Chechnya are paying with their lives today, “these are Kalashnikov stains.”

- And who are they - your soldiers?

- Who protects Tskhinvali and the gorge from the Georgians. We will no longer live with Georgians. They staged a third genocide for us.

The third genocide here is just the summer closing of the Ergneti market. Although both the first and the second, which happened in the 90s, really happened, and the blood shed then cannot be dismissed just like that either.

Continued in the next issue.