Translated material
Front behind the front line
Mikheil Saakashvili announced Georgia's withdrawal from the CIS
President Mikheil Saakashvili's announcement yesterday about Georgia's withdrawal from the CIS hardly looks like a sensation. This had to happen - after what happened in Georgia in recent days, this country could not remain in the CIS. Having joined the Commonwealth as the last of a dozen post-Soviet states in the fall of 1993, Georgia was the first to leave.Then, 15 years ago, Eduard Shevardnadze, who returned to power in Tbilisi, said that they “had no other choice,” the war lost by Georgia in Abkhazia was behind them, and Tbilisi needed to improve relations with Moscow. The decision on Georgia's entry into the CIS was approved by the country's parliament on March 1, 1994.
Today history has come full circle, the war is behind us again, and now Mikheil Saakashvili apparently “had no other choice.” If only because practically the only reason why he refrained from such a step was membership in the Presidential Club of the Commonwealth and participation in CIS summits. It provided access to direct contacts with the Russian president. It is well known that one of the main intrigues of almost every Commonwealth summit was the discussion of the question of whether Saakashvili would come and whether his meeting with Putin would take place. Now, after in Moscow, through the mouth of the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, they said: “Mr. Saakashvili can no longer be our partner,” the Georgian president would hardly have received an invitation to participate in the CIS summits, either in regular ones, “in ties,” or in informal, “no ties.”
After such an affront, the best way out for Mr. Saakashvili was to announce his resignation from the presidential club, saying he didn’t really want to. However, this decision will become legally valid only after approval by the Parliament of Georgia.
Moscow was quick to react to this news yesterday. First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Andrei Denisov said that “if such an intention is confirmed, one can only express regret.”
If only yesterday's message on this topic from Tbilisi was limited to this information about leaving the Commonwealth, it would indeed look like a sign of a serious crisis within the CIS. But Mr. Saakashvili announced his decision in a highly emotional speech at a rally in Tbilisi, the theatrical pathos of which turned a serious political demarche into a populist performance. “Georgia today,” said Saakashvili, “is the border along which passes between good and evil (as in the text of the speech - Ed. ), civilization and uncivilization, and now the whole world sees that David is fighting Goliath and here is Georgia will win." David here, of course, is Georgia, and Goliath is Russia. Among the vivid images used by the Georgian president was a comparison of his country with “the forefront of the struggle between Europe and Russia,” where “we shed the first blood, and it was our choice...”.
It is obvious that the Georgian president was very worried, otherwise he would not have uttered such an ambiguous phrase about “first blood,” from which it was unclear whose blood spilled by Georgians Mr. Saakashvili was referring to—Georgian or Ossetian. Not to mention the fact that until now nothing was known about the existing “front between Europe and Russia.” There were some very strange definitions in the speech, for example, that Russia turned Tskhinvali into a “second Grozny.” It seems that Mr. Saakashvili believes that after five days everyone has already forgotten that it was on the orders of the Georgian president that his army began to “restore constitutional order” in South Ossetia, and primarily in Tskhinvali . Particularly impressive in this regard are his assurances that “Georgians have nothing to share with Abkhazians and Ossetians...”.
Nevertheless, it must be recognized that Georgia’s exit from the CIS occurs against the backdrop of a lack of obvious solidarity with Moscow on the part of its Commonwealth partners. Expressive evidence of this was the literal beating that the Russian ambassador to this country, Alexander Surikov, gave the authorities of Belarus. “We don’t really understand why the state authorities of Belarus remain modestly silent,” he said yesterday in Minsk, “except for the statements of a minor official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs... But we always share your grief in international organizations, including when economic sanctions are introduced when... at the initiative of some countries they begin to discuss the lack of human rights in Belarus, this is always followed by statements from Russia.” “We need to express ourselves more clearly on such issues, especially to the allies,” Mr. Surikov noted, not without irritation.
Moscow did not find any explicit support for its actions in South Ossetia in the statement made yesterday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan, which currently chairs the CIS. This document contained, among other things, only a call for “the return of the situation to a peaceful course” and for the “withdrawal from the conflict zone of armed forces that have no right to be there.” That is, including Russian ones.
In the capitals of the Commonwealth, there seems to be a certain dismay at the determination with which Russia has exercised its right “to protect its compatriots and Russian-speaking people outside the borders of Russia.” It was this formulation that French President Nicolas Sarkozy used yesterday at a meeting in the Kremlin with Dmitry Medvedev, calling this situation “completely normal.”