Translated material
"The order will be fulfilled"
Russia may create three military bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia
On September 2, Russia and South Ossetia will sign an interstate treaty of friendship and cooperation, according to which a Russian military base will be located on the territory of the republic now recognized by Moscow . This was stated by the Chairman of the Parliament of South Ossetia Znaur Gassiev. According to him, the President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, instructed the parliament of the republic to prepare everything necessary for this, including the premises for the procedure for signing documents.Mr. Gassiev is echoed by the acting vice-speaker of the parliament of the republic, Tarzan Kokoity. Both of them do not specify how many bases are planned to be located, what the number of their personnel will be, since these issues “belong to the competence of the top leadership of Russia and South Ossetia.” It is unlikely that parliamentarians would begin to state all this without relying on a serious source of information.
After the statement by the Georgian side that the operation to restore the territorial integrity of Georgia was just beginning, that after the withdrawal of Russian troops Abkhazia and South Ossetia would be returned to Georgia, Eduard Kokoity for the first time made it clear that he would turn to Russia with a proposal to create a republic on the territory of permanent military base. The day before, Georgian State Minister Temur Yakobashvili actually said that Georgia would again raise the issue of restoring the country’s territorial integrity when Russian troops leave.
The President of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, supported his Ossetian colleague. Since the NATO navy is being built up in the Georgian ports of Batumi and Poti, he proposed creating conditions for the temporary basing of Black Sea Fleet ships in the republic. “Russia is interested in access to the sea, in Abkhazia’s 240 kilometers of coastal zone,” says Sergei Bagapsh. - The United States has national and geopolitical interests in Kyrgyzstan, why can’t Russia have interests in Abkhazia, which borders Sochi, its southern capital? Russia does not want NATO soldiers 15 kilometers from Sochi.” Let us recall that in 2005, the Abkhaz leader proposed to deploy Russian military bases withdrawn from Georgia on the territory of the republic.
The Russian military is restrained. “The General Staff has not yet been given the task of establishing military bases in the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” says Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn. “We have a peacekeeping task of developing territories.” However, in such hot situations, decisions are made that are often the opposite of yesterday’s. For example, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the missile cruiser Moskva, according to the military, was supposed to arrive in Sevastopol, but ended up in Sukhumi the next morning.
From the very beginning, the Russian Foreign Ministry did not exclude the possibility of signing an agreement on military cooperation between Russia and Abkhazia - it would become a prelude to the deployment of military units there. This issue was actively studied in advance by the Russian Foreign Ministry, since Dmitry Medvedev stated that, in making the decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia was guided by the interests of the security of its citizens. It is unlikely that these interests have become less relevant today.
In Russian military-diplomatic circles in Moscow they say: Russia can create three military bases on the territory of two newly recognized republics - in the Abkhaz cities of Gudauta and Ochamchira and in South Ossetian Java. It is clear that it is preferable to locate bases in places where military units were located during Soviet times. In the same Gudauta, where the base was closed on the basis of the Istanbul OSCE agreements of 1998, there is a military airfield where an airborne assault unit, aviation and air defense systems can be stationed, in the port of Ochamchira - part of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, in Java - a motorized rifle brigade.
The United States has already stated that it will have a negative attitude towards the possible appearance of Russian military bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They want the Russian armed forces to return to positions prior to August 6, when there were no Russian bases in this territory. “At the same time, the Americans themselves are trying their best to drag Georgia into NATO in order to then place their bases on its territory and thereby cut off the region from Russia,” say the Russian military. Therefore, as Anatoly Nogovitsyn put it, “we are ready to carry out the order of our leadership in the form in which it will be delivered.”
Some observers do not rule out that the deployment of Russian military contingents in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is only the first step towards the return of Soviet troops to their previous locations abroad, as well as to new ones. They suggest that in the near future there may be a strengthening of military-technical cooperation with states opposing the United States, in particular with Syria, a resumption of military presence in Cuba and a revision of foreign policy towards Iran. The military can offer the Russian political leadership two geographical points in strategically important areas of Iran: in the province of East Azerbaijan in the north of the country and on the island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf, in the south. The second point will make it possible to control the activities of the United States and NATO in the Persian Gulf and Iraq. In response, Iran may ask for air defense and missile defense missiles.
The Russian military is beginning to remember other strategically important Soviet military facilities around the world that were lost by the Russian Federation: the Vietnamese Cam Ranh Bay, a naval base in Syrian Tartus, electronic intelligence centers and intelligence bases in Angola, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Yemen, Nicaragua, two bases in Somalia - the air force in Hargeisa and the navy in Berbera, the powerful Ramona electronic intelligence complex in the North Korean city of Ansan.