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Insecurity Zone
// Russia withdraws its forces from Georgia
Today, in accordance with the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan, Russian forces are supposed to be withdrawn from the territory of Georgia. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is visiting the “buffer zone” between Georgia and South Ossetia today to see how well the plan is being implemented. Kommersant’s special correspondent Mikhail Zygar inspected the zone yesterday to see if the Russian forces would leave early.
Checkpoints
The Georgian village of Ergneti is the last one before you reach the border with South Ossetia. On Wednesday, that territory was still part of “security zone” controlled by Russian forces. Yesterday, for the first time in several weeks, local residents returned to see what had become of their homes.
We approach the Georgian checkpoint just as Secretary of the Georgian Security Council Alexander Lomaya is viewing the village. There is a bit of a ruckus at the checkpoint. Georgian special forces troops are pulling a pair of binoculars out of each other’s hands in an attempt to get a glimpse of what is now the border. Three hundred meters away, near an old filling station, is the Ossetian military checkpoint.
Lomaya looks concerned, but describes the situation in a calm, casual tone.
“As the Russian occupational forces stand down,” Lomaya said, “our law enforcement organs will be restored. The prosecutor’s office is beginning to work and is already questioning witnesses and investigating ethnic cleansing and other crimes committed by the Russian military and the illegal Ossetian formations. A special commission will estimate the losses so that assistance can be provided to the victims.”
“Is the withdrawal of the Russian forces completed yet?” I ask.
“No. Russian forces are still in Perevi. That is in western Gerogia. And in Akhalgori, toward Tbilisi from here. We are waiting. They have a whole day still.” Lomaya glances toward the Ossetian checkpoint.
“Will the border remain here? With the Georgian checkpoint here and the Ossetian one by the filling station?”
“They will advance farther,” he said with a barely perceptible smile. “Everyone knows very well where whose position was before the war. There was a Georgian post there before.”
“What will happen after October 10? Are EU monitors to appear?”
“Of course. EU monitors will be located throughout the territory of Georgia and will keep track of the Russian withdrawal from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”
“But Russian authorities have said many times that they will not allow EU monitors into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, only into the surrounding territories.”
“Yes? They say that? But the European Union thinks there should be no Russian forces remaining in Georgia. And the monitors’ mandate requires – it’s written in black and white – the placement of monitors throughout all of Georgia, including the Abkhazian and South Ossetian regions.”
As we came to Ergneti, we passed through the village of Karaleti, where the buffer zone ended on Wednesday. The site where the Russian checkpoint had once stood was dug up like it had been a field of potatoes. Just a day before, there had been tents with Russian soldiers and a filed kitchen. “They drank coffee here,” a local resident told me. Now there was nothing to recall the checkpoint from. Wednesday evening, bulldozers came and turned the earth to wipe out every trace of the Russian military presence.
But on the road from Karaleti to Ergneti there are quite a few traces of it. Overturned cars can be seen along the road. Apparently they met up with tanks. Windowless, scorched houses also recall the war, and the asphalt of the road still bears the imprint of tank tracks.
After speaking with the secretary of the Security Council, I walked over to the Ossetian checkpoint. When I was about half way there, I see a green military jeep set out in my direction, followed by several heavy tractors.
When it pulls up to me, a soldier calls out from behind the wheel, “Be careful as you go. They said they would shoot anyone who approaches.”
“Where are you going?”
“To gather our belongings, of course.” The jeep speeds off toward the Georgian checkpoint. Five huge tractors follow.
Border Forces
About ten meters from the checkpoint, I am surrounded by about ten people wearing camouflage without markings. All of them are Caucasians and many of them spaek Russian among themselves with heavy accents. That meant they aren’t all Ossetian.
“Are you volunteers?” I ask as they escort me to headquarters, a rundown stone house with a table and bed inside.
“Who? We are the South Ossetian border forces.”
“The Republic of South Ossetia,” another one corrects him. “Soon we will have our own state.”
They check my passport and press credentials several times, write down my name and date of birth on separate pieces of paper, call someone on the telephone repeatedly and dictate my information. There is clearly a single Russian soldier in the group. He is also in unmarked camouflage and his name is Slava. He gives instructions as though I weren't there.
“Don’t make comments. Don’t introduce yourselves.” Then he turns to me. “What are they saying about us there in Georgia? The usual? The same things Mr. Saakashvili tells them to? Are there a lot of people in the Georgian checkpoint? Are there special forces? Do they have weapons? That’s a violation. Under the agreement, no one on the Georgian side can have weapons in the security zone until October 10. By the 10th, we will all have withdrawn. Then let them have them.”
Slava begins to leave several times, but doesn’t. It seems that someone is supposed to come from Tskhinvali to talk to me.
I begin to talk to the most senior Ossetian border guard, whom his subordinates call Ilyich.
“Do you plan to back up farther toward Tskhinvali, or will you stay here?”
“Back up? This is our land. The border will be there.” He points to the old filling station. There is a sign that says “Petrol” in Latin letters and the Russian and Ossetian flags on it. “Do you know that no one is allowed to approach the border within 50 meters? We could have shot you.”
“I shouted, ‘Can I?’ and your people gestured at me to come.”
“Well, if you came to visit me at my house, I would let you come in. But this is the border. You can’t do that here. We’re not mean, but we’re mad at what we have to do now. And what are you asking me questions for? You probably know everything already, and still you’re asking. I don’t know anything here. And I won’t answer your questions.”
I get ready to go, but they don’t release me. We wait for the car from Tskhinvali for 20 minutes. They come and tell me that, next time, I have to contact the State Information Committee to receive permission before coming to South Ossetia.
As I go back, a new group of journalists is being questioned by the Ossetian border guards. They are Italian, French and Chilean.
“What are they doing here?” Ilyich asks angrily. “They should stay home and keep their noses out of it.”
Refugees
Orange buses are arriving from the direction the Russian soldiers went off in to “collect their belongings.” The buises are full of local resicdents who haven’t been home for weeks.
“Today is the first time I’ve been here since August. It would have been better to stay away,” an elderly Georgian lady named Nino tells me. “That’s my house, you see, the first one on the street. You see? It’s been burned. There were 15 houses on that street. Now there’s only three.”
“Where will you live now?”
“In the tent city near Gori. I probably won’t come back here again. I’ve lost everything. What are they saying there?” She nods toward the Georgian and Ossetian checkpoints. “What else do they want to do to us?”
There are tears in her eyes, but she doesn’t cry or moan. The bus is already waiting, so she tries to tell me her story as quickly as possible and not hold up the others. There are several old men carrying baskets with rags over the top of them who are watching her from the bus. A boy about ten years old holding a toy machinegun is watching from the window too.
I am going to the village. There are two people from the UNHCR Refugee Agency standing in the street listening to townspeople tell their stories.
“You want me to show you my house? It didn’t burn down. Our roof is made of earth. They didn’t shoot it up, they didn’t set it on fire,” asks a resident of Ergneti.
Her name is Svetlana. She is Russian and lived in Ergneti with her Georgian husband, her mother-in-law and two daughters. When Russian forces had occupied the territory and began moving toward Tbilisi, looters followed them into the village and almost all of the locals fled to Gori.
“They took everything I had. The refrigerator, television, furniture, everything. What they couldn’t take, they broke. My daughter’s piano. They were probably looking for gold. They didn’t take the tins of flour. They just poured them out on the floor. When they looters arrived, they started beating everybody. A lot of Ossetian women lived in the village, and they shouted ‘We’re your people.’ And they answered, ‘It’s all the same to us.’”
She asks her husband to close the gate behind us, even though there’s nothing to protect, and she leads me into the garden.
“This is where we buried our grandfather. They killed him on August 12, by accident, in crossfire. We buried him right here. I don’t know how we will rebury him now. The first time I came back, I found dogs living here. Everything around the house had burned down, and the homeless dogs came to me. They probably lived here a month.”
There are no windows or furniture. The ceilings are bullet-scarred. The floor is littered with things the looters throw down in their search for valuables. There are several Soviet banknotes and a portrait of Lenin in the rubbish on the bedroom floor. On the verandah there are pots with flowers in them.
“All they left were the flowers. Strange they didn’t water them. I’m trying to save them,” Svetlana says. “We have nowhere to go. We’re going to live here. No one is helping us. The government isn’t giving us a kopeck. Here in the village, we think Saakashvili should be hung by the …”
I am leaving Ergneti for Akhalgori, the village where there were still two Russian checkpoints as of yesterday. Orange buses full of returning refugees pass me on the road. Lomaya told me that 20 percent of the refuges have already returned to their homes.
I pass several long funeral processions alongside the road. It is unclear whether they are burying or reburying people.
I couldn’t get to Akhalgori before night. The road is very scenic as it winds through the mountains. And it is closed. Georgian police say they received orders not to allow any journalists through.
“They are digging something over there. Look, you can see from here,” a policeman tells me, pointing at the checkpoint 300 meters away. “What are they saying there? Are the Russians leaving?”
“They say tomorrow French Minister Bernard Kouchner is coming here,” I say.
“I wonder if he knows that.”
Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 10, 2008
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