Tornike Gordadze: Russia's maximum plan is to make Russia its satelite

PanARMENIAN.Net - "The war between Georgia and Russia had a brader areal," Tornike Gordadze, Director of Caucasus Studies Centre under French Institute of Anatolian Studies, said during the conference on "Observing Security in South Caucasus: Stability and Transformation". According to Mr. Gordadze, the conflict started on August 7, 2008. "The war was just an episode of Russian-Georgian conflict which had begun much earlier and probably continues to date," he added.



"The war can cerrtainly be viewed in a broader context. There were some activists who insisted on Russian-Georgian conflict being in process for 4 centuries," Mr. Gordadze noted, emphasizing that both parties' policies proposed very strange and non-academic interpretations of Russian-Georgian history. "One the one hand, RF Ministers argued that their country had created the Georgian state. Georgian politicians, one the other hand, argued that Georgia always led heroic battles with Russia."



"Russia's minimum plan was to make Georgia a neutral neighbor not belonging to any geopolitical group, and its maximum plan was to make the country its satelite," Gordadze said, noting that Georgia has been Russia's satelite since 1994-95, atlhough this led to nothing good.



Russian military bases were deployed in Georgia. The appointed ministers were representatives from Russia but that didn't produce a positive result either. This too, caused Georgia to change its geopolitical orientation. Certainly, war was not the only political tool. There were other tools such as energy resources, Georgia's internal conflicts, pressure upon diaspora in 2006, as well as econimic pressure," Mr. Gordadze said, adding that tensity in Russian-Georgian relations was observed under President Shevardnadze. Gordadze finds Georgia the only CIS country conflicting with Georgia on different issues.



Since the start of 2008, all this was likely to lead to war. Russia's reaction to Western countries' recognition of Kosovo was so harsh that its further steps in Caucasus were evident. And that will be a response to Caucasus and first of all, to Georgia," he said, stressing that on March 6, a few weeks after Kosovo's reognition, Russia denounced CIS Treaty on Blockading Unrecognized States. This was followed by the Bucharest Summit (held early in April), where Georgia was denied NATO membership. War could have been avoided had West been more active. But it's also thanks to West that the war ended so soon," the Georgian politician said, noting that West has changaed its attitide to Russia following the war.