Translated material
Thawing War
Peacekeepers in South Ossetia are unable to prevent fire contact between the parties
On Wednesday, the aggravation of the situation in the zone of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, which is usually considered frozen, reached another peak. It is now difficult to disagree with the assessment of the authorities of the self-proclaimed South Ossetia, made after the shelling last weekend, that the crisis is comparable in scale to the summer aggravation of 2004. Simply put, there is a war going on in the vicinity of Tskhinvali.According to Vremya Novostey, local residents heard intense shooting throughout the first half of the day on Wednesday in the area of the so-called Zar road - a dirt road laid through the mountains northwest of Tskhinvali, which the Ossetian population uses to bypass the one located on the Trans-Caucasian Highway an enclave of nine villages inhabited by ethnic Georgians. The shooting died down in the afternoon, but later resumed.
The Ministry of Defense of the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia announced that another shelling began at about 11 am on Wednesday from the village of Nuli, populated mainly by Georgians and therefore recognizing the jurisdiction of Tbilisi. The fire came from sniper rifles and heavy machine guns. The South Ossetian Ministry of Defense “decided to suppress the enemy’s firing points” - in civilian parlance, to shoot at Nuli until they stop responding. A little later, the head of the South Ossetian Press and Information Committee, Irina Gagloeva, announced that the Georgian military had been ousted from the Zero Heights: “Our (South Ossetian - Ed. ) units have ousted the Georgian side from the Zero Heights, and now the firing points of the Georgian troops are being suppressed.”
In the evening, the head of the analytical department of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Shota Utiashvili, denied Irina Gagloeva’s report. According to Mr. Utiashvili, it is not the troops who are in Nuli, but the Georgian police. The police did not leave their checkpoint on the Null heights and did not leave the village of Nuli, which was shelled from the South Ossetian side throughout the day. The day before, on August 5, the Georgian side had already reported a grenade attack on Nuli: two grenades hit the police station, one exploded right in front of it.
Be that as it may, intense fire contact between the Georgian and South Ossetian sides took place in the area of responsibility of the peacekeepers, who were unable to prevent it. Moreover, the South Ossetian side, which usually values the prestige of the peacekeeping corps, itself admitted that South Ossetian units were operating near Nuli, which, like the Georgian ones, theoretically have nothing to do in the conflict zone precisely outlined on the map. This circumstance, without a doubt, gives another trump card to the Georgian side, which believes that the format of the peacekeeping operation in South Ossetia needs to be changed.
Yesterday, the JPKF command limited itself to a restrained comment related to the monitoring carried out by peacekeepers and OSCE observers in another sector of the conflict zone. In the area of the Georgian villages of Prisi and Ergneti, the peacekeepers had to admit that in their area of responsibility the parties to the conflict, which they were supposed to separate in order to avoid the resumption of fighting, were hitting each other with grenade launchers. Assistant commander of the SSPM Vladimir Ivanov counted 14 explosions from FOG (fragmentation grenade launcher shots) and two holes in the roofs of non-residential buildings in these two villages.
But the JPKF headquarters is angry with the eight flights of jet planes over the conflict zone. The planes flew from north to south, from the Georgian regional center of Gori in the direction of the South Ossetian village of Java, from 20:00 on August 5 to five in the morning on August 6. “The appearance of military aircraft over the territory of the conflict zone is a gross violation of the provisions of the decision of the Joint Control Commission for the Settlement of the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict dated July 30, 2002 “On unauthorized flights of aircraft over the territory of the JPKF zone of responsibility,” the headquarters said in a statement. The flight of Russian Air Force aircraft over the conflict zone on July 8, 2008, officially recognized by the Russian Foreign Ministry, was apparently authorized, because it was not considered a gross violation.
President of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity, who announced the beginning of a general mobilization of reservists over the weekend, yesterday demanded from the Minister of Internal Affairs of South Ossetia, Mikhail Mindzaev, to recruit “immigrants from South Ossetia living in the territory of the Russian Federation” into the ranks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic. That is, mainly in North Ossetia, where the majority of ethnic Ossetians live and where in recent years many young people from the unrecognized republic have left in search of education and employment. Mr. Kokoity also said that he was conducting telephone conversations with “representatives of the republics of the North Caucasus” with a view to sending volunteers to the republic on the model of the Abkhaz confederates in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992-1993. So far, only representatives of the Great Don Army, whose ataman Nikolai Kazitsyn is now in Abkhazia, have responded to this call out loud. The Georgian Foreign Ministry has already expressed concern over reports of the appearance of volunteers in South Ossetia, which de jure continues to be considered an integral part of Georgia.
Georgia repeated its call for direct negotiations with the Tskhinvali authorities, and yesterday it was reported that a preliminary agreement had been reached for a meeting between Georgian Minister of Reintegration Temuri Yakobashvili and the co-chairman of the Joint Control Commission from South Ossetia, Boris Chochiev. The meeting was scheduled for today, but yesterday South Ossetia refused this format of negotiations. In return, South Ossetia proposes to hold a full meeting of the JCC in the coming days - that is, one in which co-chairs from Russia, Georgia, North Ossetia and South Ossetia would take part. This proposal does not seem sincere. In Tskhinvali, as in Moscow, they are well aware that Georgia withdrew from this peace settlement format back in March because it was not satisfied with the ratio of votes - one Georgian against three South Ossetian lobbyists.
The President of unrecognized Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, recalled yesterday that his republic is connected with South Ossetia by a mutual assistance agreement, and therefore cannot remain indifferent to the aggravation of the situation. Mr. Bagapsh made Abkhazia’s participation in the meeting of the Group of Friends of the UN Secretary General for Georgia, scheduled for August 15 in Berlin, in which Russia, the United States and a number of European countries that have prepared a draft settlement of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, dependent on the development of events around Tskhinvali. President Bagapsh is ready to take part in the meeting, but only if tensions in South Ossetia decrease. Thus, it is difficult to escape the impression that the escalation of tensions in both conflict zones is being used to disrupt negotiations, which in the future could help change the current situation. According to some reports, the possibility of an attack on Georgian positions in the Kodori Gorge at the beginning of the second ten days of August was discussed in Sukhumi several weeks ago. This, like the current skirmishes in South Ossetia, would call into question the very possibility of negotiations.
The Russian Foreign Ministry unexpectedly announced yesterday that “the situation is difficult, but there is no reason for panic.” Deputy official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Boris Malakhov believes that it is necessary to “calmly understand the situation and take immediate measures to reduce the level of armed confrontation between the parties.”