Translated material
"You can't move mountains"
Ossetians and Georgians are preparing to fight each other without wanting to
A week ago, the Georgian parliament adopted a sharp resolution regarding Russian peacekeepers located in the zone of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. Georgian parliamentarians assessed the activities of the Russian military as extremely negative and recommended their government to seek a change in the format of the peacekeeping mission as soon as possible. This set in motion an unprecedented political confrontation between Moscow and Tbilisi. A special correspondent for Vremya Novostey talks about what, in addition to peacekeepers, there are in South Ossetia.Bad weather
The spacious square in front of the railway station in Tskhinvali is filled with heavy trucks loaded with apples and tangerines. Apples and tangerines are brought to Russia: apples are mainly from South Ossetia itself, tangerines are mainly from Georgia. Drivers claim that the trucks have been stationary in Tskhinvali since February 3. At first, the weather held them back: avalanches blocked traffic on the Transkam, the only road connecting the unrecognized republic with Russia, for several days. When the road was excavated, political frosts set in: in response to the Georgians’ attempt to blockade Tskhinvali this Sunday (see Vremya Novostey, February 21), the South Ossetian authorities banned the movement of Georgian cargo through the territory of the republic. Those trucks that had not yet entered Tskhinvali at that time remained at the post in Ergneti. Those who have moved in continue to “wait for the weather” on the station square.
About 200 anxious drivers are crowding around the residence of South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity for the second day: after several cold days, real spring has arrived, which means that a little more and the cargo will begin to deteriorate. The policemen guarding the residence lazily move the crowd of drivers from place to place so that it is not too conspicuous.
“For two days not a single living soul came to us,” say the offended drivers. - There is not a single Georgian among us, only Ossetians, and then mostly northern ones. And there are Dagestanis. All Russian. And our cargo is all from here, nothing from Georgia. But they are holding us because they don’t want to let Georgian goods through.”
The drivers, of course, are a little disingenuous: the South Ossetian winter is not like the Abkhazian one and is stingy with citrus fruits, which most likely actually come from Georgia. But their reaction is quite understandable: the snow on the highway has already been cleared, and even the Georgians have opened the border, and their own South Ossetian authorities, who so love to emphasize their citizenship - by passport and conviction - to Russia, threaten to rot the goods, while maintaining an arrogant silence. “If they don’t let you in further, will you go back?” - “Why do we need to go back? If they don’t let me in, we’ll go straight to Russia.”
In addition to vehicular traffic, the snow also knocked out a power line: the South Ossetian capital receives light from Russia, and bad weather knocked over one of the power line supports on the Russian side of the Greater Caucasus Range. The city remained without electricity for about a day and a half. However, for Tskhinvali, which has existed in a zone of suspended hostilities for about 15 years, this situation is quite familiar. In those houses that do not have their own autonomous electric generators, in the event of another “blackout,” they usually switch to candles.
When Russian gas stopped flowing to Georgia, things were much worse. South Ossetia receives gas directly from Georgia, and it is with gas that the majority of Tskhinvali houses are heated in the current unusually cold winter for these regions. However, people here have also long been prepared for such blows of fate. Anna, my landlady, points to the large gas fireplace that heats most of her two-story house in the center of Tskhinvali: “They just put a potbelly stove instead. And there is always a supply of firewood in every yard.” Gas is not cheap: in winter Anna pays up to 1,500 rubles for gas. per month - by Tskhinvali standards, this is a very decent salary: this is what her husband, a first-category doctor and the only emergency surgeon in the city, receives. The family's survival is helped by children who work and study in Russia, and a small private beauty salon located right in the house. Anna works there with one or two students. After the war, this salon was the only one in the city for a long time.
Some of the townspeople suspect that “commercial” prices for gas are set not so much by the Georgian side that supplies it, but by the local authorities carrying out gas payments with Georgia. It is expected that the gas situation will improve next year: there is information about a project for direct gasification of South Ossetia, which Russia is implementing through the construction of a gas “line” through the mountains from North Ossetia. But so far construction has not moved to the southern Caucasian slope.
Dead end
Tskhinvali, located right on the Trans-Caucasus Highway, in what could be the busiest crossroads of trade between Russia and the Transcaucasus, paradoxically does not leave the feeling of a dead end - in the literal and figurative sense of the word. The one-story building of the Tskhinvali railway station, recently renovated and neatly painted light green, is buried in snow. The station is locked and no one needs it: there is nowhere to go from there anyway.
Previously, Tskhinvali was the final station on the railway line running from Tbilisi through Gori and Nikozi. Several years ago, under the auspices of the European Union, they tried to restore this line; as part of the reconstruction, the station was also renovated. But the South Ossetian authorities considered that launching trains to Tskhinvali would mean an encroachment on their unrecognized sovereignty. Therefore, the Georgian train now runs only to Nikozi (this is a large Georgian village about 2 km south of Tskhinvali, formally on the territory of South Ossetia). And the Tskhinvali railway station with new double-glazed windows in the window openings only looks sadly at the dismantled and snow-covered canvas and poles with broken wires. Life glimmers only in one of the wings of the building, where one of the enterprising townspeople has opened a small eatery. The main premises of the station are hopelessly waiting for their future passengers. Through the glass you can see puddles spreading across the renovated floor and eerie dark stains of leaks on the whitewashed ceilings.
Those wishing to travel crowd very close to the ghost station, near the temporary bus station. On the wall of the temporary hut there is an extensive schedule of buses and minibuses. Among the terminal points there are Russian (Vladikavkaz, Pyatigorsk, Nalchik) and Georgian (Gori, Tbilisi, Akhaltsikhe, Kutaisi, Zugdidi). “Can I buy a bus ticket to Zugdidi?” - I ask the cashier. She looks up from the newspaper with the crossword puzzle and answers, looking sympathetically over her glasses: “They haven’t traveled to Zugdidi from here for a long time, young man. Since the war itself. From here it’s only across the republic. You go up, from there you can go to Gori, and from there you will get to Zugdidi - if, of course, your documents are in order.”
"When there is a common cause, people have no time for war"
“Upstairs”, about a five-minute drive from the station square, is the village of Ergneti - the actual border of South Ossetia and Georgia. Tskhinvali itself is located on the southern edge of the unrecognized autonomy and, due to the terrain, resembles a saucer, slightly tilted towards Georgia. Local residents complain about this situation: the artillery positions of a potential enemy, located on the heights surrounding the city, can completely take control of it - this has happened several times in the recent past.
From Ergneti, where the highway connecting South Ossetia with Gori, Tbilisi and the rest of Georgia begins, Tskhinvali is truly visible. The closest thing is the republican court building with shrapnel gouges left in the walls from the early 90s, decorated with an upside-down Russian tricolor for some reason. Nearby is a burnt, rusty Ferris wheel of a children's park that has turned into a jungle. A little further, behind the humpbacked bridge over Liakhva, there is a small cathedral church of the Mother of God, a vertical matchbox of the presidential administration. And a sea of one- and two-story roofs, diluted here and there by rectangles of five- and nine-story buildings, huge warehouses and skeletons of production buildings. On the opposite edge of the “saucer” is a military camp for sappers, which is now occupied by peacekeepers.
Ergneti begins with a post of the South Ossetian traffic police and a booth of the South Ossetian migration service. Then there is a strip of neutral territory about a kilometer and a half long. Here on both sides of the road there are Georgian and Ossetian taxi drivers. Georgians travel to Georgia, but do not go to Ossetia, Ossetians do the opposite. At the same time, they cooperate well with each other and are even friends. Behind the taxi drivers is a Georgian checkpoint manned by brave guys with Kalashnikovs, wearing NATO camouflage and woolen black cap masks. Member of the Georgian Parliament Guram Vakhtangashvili, with whom we meet right at this post, says that this is the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is not immediately clear what the special forces of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs are doing in the conflict zone, where, of all possible armed formations, only peacekeepers from the Russian-Georgian-Ossetian peacekeeping forces are supposed to be present. While the owner of the cap is closely studying me through his eye slits, the deputy remembers that the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs can be considered the police, and the police are allowed in the conflict zone: the Tskhinvali traffic cops are standing one and a half kilometers from here. “The kids need masks because they are fighting smuggling,” explains Mr. Vakhtangashvili. Anti-smuggling fighters indeed from time to time stop cars moving to Georgia and meticulously inspect the contents of the trunks to see if there are any non-excise cigarettes. In addition to cars, their attention is attracted by women who walk to Georgia and carry food from the Ergneti market in their bags.
Of course, you can’t carry much contraband in your bags, and in the last two years there hasn’t been much to buy in Ergneti. The fight against smuggling destroyed the gigantic fair, which used to stretch from post to post and literally to the horizon on both sides of the road. As a monument to the Ergneti market, along the road there are rusty fuel tanks with the inscriptions: “Kerasine”, “Diesel fuel” and “Gasoline - Russia - 100% Guarantee”. The gasoline trade, however, is still a little warm, although in South Ossetia they say that it is monopolized by the ruling elite. There are two or three more rows of tents with food, but now they operate mainly for the surrounding villages. Previously, there was a gigantic purchasing base here, which was used by half of Georgia.
“My brother always came here, bought cookies, sausage, cigarettes,” a Tbilisi Auto driver tells me. - It was cheap here, and the products were good. My brother brought it to Tbilisi, gave it to the store - and he earned money himself, and the store had enough. And now all these smuggled cigarettes are still being brought from Azerbaijan, only the government is doing this. But in Ergneti there was a place for common cause. When there is a common cause, people have no time for war.” “The market still had to be closed,” says Deputy Governor of Shida Kartli, member of the Mixed Control Commission for the settlement of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, Gela Zoziashvili. - It did not meet any sanitary standards. Imagine sausage, canned food, fruit lying in the mud..."
Mr. Zoziashvili is a member of the organizing committee for civilized economic rehabilitation of the conflict zone, created under the JCC under the auspices of the OSCE. The organizing committee has three working groups - Ossetian, Georgian and international, with the participation of two Russians. So far, the groups are mainly studying proposals regarding the restoration of energy, roads, water intakes, residential buildings, schools and other social facilities in the vicinity of Tskhinvali. In his opinion, the complete restoration of the region requires about $70 million and three to five years, provided that there is no war. “Let's leave ambitions,” says the vice-governor. - No one will move mountains, everyone understands this perfectly well. I myself lived in Tskhinvali for 25 years. This is my city, I want to be able to calmly restore its water supply.”
"Let's get to Mtskheti"
Restoring water supply in Tskhinvali will not be easy, because it will not be easy to avoid war. Many are ready to fight in Tskhinvali. You can estimate the potential strength of the armed forces of South Ossetia by simply counting the working-age male population. “Those who are older still remember normal life,” says Kosta Dzugaev, associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Ossetia, former head of the press committee, and even earlier, chairman of the South Ossetian parliament. “And now a generation has grown up in whose eyes the last war has acquired a romantic connotation. For them, Georgians are enemies.”
Representatives of the “old guard” and the “new generation” spend nine hours a day at training grounds. For many of them, the army is the only opportunity to earn money. The escort officer asks not to film a group of bearded middle-aged people practicing their actions in an open area. “Don’t film it, this is an illegal formation,” he says, half-jokingly. But the fighters of the illegal formation are quite sociable. Squat and stocky machine gunner Misha in an old camouflage jacket says that besides the army, he has no other permanent job, but here he earns up to 3,000 rubles. He remembers the first war as a very young man; during the aggravation in the summer of 2004, he also did not sit at home and now has not lost his fighting zeal: “I don’t promise to get to Tbilisi, but we will definitely get to Mtskheti if something happens. Moreover, this is our land.”
The South Ossetian military appears to be confident that Moscow is ready to support them to the end, and consider war inevitable. “We don’t need war, and neither do ordinary Georgians,” the officers reason. “But their leadership seems willing to do anything to save their declining reputation.” They have a lot of equipment and NATO instructors. But our instructors are no worse. If they come into the city, we will use the tactics that the Chechens used when defending Grozny. If a big war breaks out here, it will last as long as the Georgians are ready to put up with their victims.”
"I want to plant a tree"
Less militant residents of Tskhinvali regret that Georgia has effectively missed its chance for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. “Under Shevardnadze, the conflict was already fading, it is quite likely that the opportunity to reach a political settlement could arise,” says Kosta Dzugaev. - But the new Georgian authorities were completely in vain to escalate the situation, and even more so to carry out shelling in the summer of 2004. Now we sometimes jokingly raise a toast to Saakashvili as the savior of the idea of independence.”
Mr. Dzugaev remembers well the events of the early 90s of the last century. When the threat of artillery shelling of Tskhinvali again arose in the summer of 2004, he took his family to Russia. He decided to return his wife and children to Tskhinvali only in September last year, after much hesitation. While Kosta Dzugaev is working on his doctoral dissertation, his children continue to go to school in Tskhinvali. “You see, if I decide to leave, another 200-300 people of friends and acquaintances will leave with me, who are already monitoring how Costa is doing every day. And each of them has the same circle. In the end, everyone can leave this way. According to my calculations, the population decline in Tskhinvali is already up to 10% per year, and this is a terrible figure. We need to take care of this city if we want to save it. Many of my friends now want to do major renovations in their homes - if this summer is calm. Creative activity is very important. I have relatives living in another area of the city, and a couple of years ago I dug up a young tree from them to transplant into my garden. I carried it across the whole city, and everyone asked me: “What, Kosta, do you want to plant a tree? Yes, I answer, I want to!”
“It’s sad when a people’s future is their past,” says Mr. Dzugaev’s colleague at the university, Manana Parastaeva, and tells the story of Plutarch, who stayed in a small town so that it would not become even smaller. Manana is categorically not satisfied with the regime of information isolation in which, in essence, the population of South Ossetia finds itself. “I don’t want to be led by wild rumors,” says Ms. Parastaeva. “A person who does not understand what is happening is an easy prey.” To contribute to breaking the information blockade, she had just read aloud to several students - members of the public club "Civil Society" - a statement from the Russian State Duma, adopted in response to a resolution of the Georgian parliament. While students argue about the similarities and differences between South Ossetia and Kosovo, Manana talks to me about peace in Tskhinvali. In her opinion, the departure of Russian peacekeepers could be suicidal for South Ossetia, although she is not delighted with the quality of their work. Manana, unlike most of her fellow citizens, does not have a Russian passport - but not because of her convictions, but because of disorganization. “What kind of independence can there be? Only with Russia,” she believes.