Powrót do lekcji płynących z wojny rosyjsko-gruzińskiej

VAZHA TAVBERIDZE: Let’s start with the legacy and importance of the Tagliavini study and get the position of the individual who most likely had the most say on it.

HEIDI TAGLIAVINI: Our study was based on the information available in 2008 and early 2009, erstwhile it was compiled any 15 years ago. It brought transparency to a dark chapter in the past of the conflict between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Our study besides established a number of crucial standards in global law, in humanitarian law and in human rights. Finally, it calmed down a very heated situation, both in Georgia and internationally.

Crucially, the study was accepted by both sides: the Russian Federation and Georgia. It has been considered a mention paper up to now as it states that circumstantial global standards request to be respected. This is applicable far beyond the Russian-Georgian context.

It has been 16 years since the war, has your position changed on what happened?

From today’s perspective, the war in Georgia in August 2008 looks someway like a dress rehearsal for what would later happen in Ukraine. And, in hindsight the study has aged very well. It continues to be valid, especially in the legal field, but besides in giving an adequate description of the past and context of the conflict. It defined standards that should be commonly, and internationally, accepted. I can give a fewer examples. The study developed the full issue of the legal position of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; it elaborated on the right to self-determination or to secession; it besides addressed, for the very first time, another highly crucial question of the alleged “passportization” issue (a practice whereby Russian authorities would grant Russian citizenship to people surviving in occupied lands – editor’s note). Another very crucial chapter that continues to have large implications was the usage of force. We elaborated very much in item who would have had the right to usage force at what phase and for what reasons. It looks like almost nobody did. All these elements, especially the legal part, stay valid up to now and besides in another global conflicts.

Fifteen years is inactive a rather a long time. Is there anything you would want to change in it, given the chance today? Any corrections or revelations that you might have had since?

No changes, no corrections, no speculations. The text is inactive valid, as well as up to date. What we can say present is that, unfortunately, the conclusions that should have been drawn from our study haven’t truly been taken into account. In 2009 any countries, especially those of east Europe, were already informing the European Union, asking who would be next [to face Russian aggression]. And this informing was not heeded. But you know what it is like in politics: erstwhile a war is over, erstwhile a ceasefire or peace has settled in, relations resume. This is average political practice.

When the study came out, a fierce information conflict ensued to usage the study as leverage. Who do you think were the winners and losers of the report? Or, rather, who benefitted the most?

At the time the study was published, I thought there were no winners in the war. Today, I would be a bit more cautious as we have the impression that, in the long run, Russia was the winner, and all others the losers. While working on the report, we besides had to deal with this huge, uncontrollable cloud of speculations and, therefore, we came to the conclusion that the complete study should be published immediately after its release and presented to those who commissioned the report, which was the European Union Council of Ministers in Brussels. Still, you can’t prevent people from writing what they want, regardless of the facts on the table, but you can effort to minimize the harm.

The study was initiated by the EU. It was a concern of Europe and European citizens. Speculations on the study were seen mainly in Georgia and Russia, not in Europe, which means that, internationally and historically, the speculations and abusive interpretations will not persist. What will persist, in my opinion, is the consequence of our investigation into the facts as well as the legal findings. erstwhile individual present examines the August 2008 war in Georgia, that individual will be incapable to avoid our report, being the universally-acknowledged mention document. past is simply a very malleable element, but our study is an expert opinion mandated by an global institution. And, most important, the credibility of this study has been accepted by the Russian Federation and by Georgia.

Yet the Georgian position to this day remains that Russia benefitted from it more due to the way it was worded, that Georgia was blamed for starting the war. Was it a just accusation?

This is the Rubicon question, the Tskhinvali shelling. We worked a lot on the exact wording. In the study we call it “the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict”, but it was besides the culminating point of a long period of expanding tensions, of provocations and incidents. This is truly the formulation we wanted to give it. I myself worked for 5 years in the conflict region between the Georgians and the Abkhaz, and I saw so much tension, more on the South Ossetian side towards 2008, but this tension was a constant feature. And, erstwhile I inactive was working in the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, up to 2006, all summertime we established that in South Ossetia there were skirmishes to a greater or lesser extent. The question is, erstwhile do you trigger a war? It was that trigger minute which is the headache for the Georgian side, a trigger for a kind of invasion by Russian troops, who, in fact, from a strictly legal point of view, had the right to defend their peacekeepers in South Ossetia. But that was the only force that had the right to be utilized in the region, so as to free the peacekeepers. They should have withdrawn immediately afterwards, alternatively of invading Georgia. Unfortunately, from a legal standing, the Tskhinvali shelling was the trigger minute that led to the full-scale invasion. We can speculate a lot about what would have happened had Tskhinvali not been shelled on that night from the 7th to the 8th of August. But this was the trigger minute and that is why we couldn’t have described it another way.

On the Russian peacekeepers – was it truly peacekeeping that they were doing?

Let me mention you to a part of our investigation report, which is called “observations”. We intentionally did not make conclusions in our report, we made observations. 1 of the most crucial observations for us was erstwhile we stated that no organization to a conflict, or organization that is powerfully supportive of any of the sides, should presume the position of “peacekeeper” as peacekeeping is founded on the notion of impartiality. We couldn’t have said it in any better way, and that is the maximum we, as an independent fact-finding mission, could say. We can’t say “it’s forbidden” due to the fact that even if you say it is forbidden, you won’t halt it. That was not the intent of our report. It was not going to consequence into a policy change in Russia.

Are they inactive peacekeepers if they aren’t impartial anymore, if they have become organization to the conflict themselves?

You can argue like that in legal terms. The study besides admits that there were Russian non-peacekeeper forces present in Georgia, but that they did not have a massive influence, and so it could not be qualified as a Russian invasion.

So in that vein, if 1 single solitary Russian tank or soldier crossed the Swiss border, for example, would your country consider it an act of aggression or invasion?

You can’t compare apples with oranges. We said everything in our report. We did not get any paper from the Georgian side that would have proved that 1 tank was already in South Ossetia that was not attributable to the peacekeepers. That is 1 of the questions we asked the Georgian authorities at the time. We asked for papers to prove the Russian military presence, but what we got did not confirm with 100 per cent certainty that this happened. We were not in a position to get absolute clarity on this question.

I wanted to ask whether the established western dogma at the time – the belief that any common ground was needed with Russia in order to avoid having Russia as an adversary – inadvertently influenced the report?

No, absolutely not. erstwhile you look at the EU mandate, which you can find in the first volume of our three-volume report, it says that the independent global fact-finding mission on the conflict in Georgia could work in full independence. And this is precisely what happened. We worked in full independence. 1 of the purposes at the time was to get more clarity on what truly happened. There was a cloud of propaganda surrounding the war and, surely in the European Union, there was no clear thought of what had been truly going on. I was explicitly told: the intent of the investigation is that we want to realize how to resume relations with Russia and Georgia. The intent was to step back, look at what happened, look at what we could find, and then after the report, decide on how to proceed relations. The post-war period was truly an obstacle. You can’t go on with regular business pretending nothing happened. And that was the main aim of the report.

Speculating now, had the study full blamed Russia, do you think anything would have changed in the way the West approached Russia?

That is very hard to say. I can surely say the EU, in principle, wished to have average relations with both Russia and Georgia. It is clear that it would have been a bit more hard to go back to “normal” with a study that said no side is innocent in this conflict, that all bear the responsibility. The aim was to bring as much clarity on the crucial questions as we could. We were asked only to assemble the facts, facts that could be assessed as actual or factual, and then not draw political conclusions, but simply describe. We were not preparing proceedings for a legal or political tribunal but were on a fact-finding mission in order to better realize the conflict and the underlying situation.

Thus, the study concluded that there is any blame to be attributed to each organization involved?

No, I would say that’s just 1 part of a much broader investigation. All sides made mistakes in the legal field, as I mentioned already. The fact that distributing Russian passports on a massive scale is considered contrary to global law; the fact that supporting separatism, as we called it, is not supportive of a peaceful coexistence; and, most importantly, that no organization had the right to usage force, but Russia in 1 very circumstantial case, i.e. solely to free their peacekeepers. There are many another facts that could be mentioned. If you read the full legal part it says adequate about where a conflict can go and that it can be triggered by a side event. But the responsibilities are shared. We besides stated that the Russian claims of Georgians committing genocide are not substantiated – we couldn’t find any indications of genocide. But we did find signs of cultural cleansing committed by the South Ossetians and that the Russian armed forces did not prevent it. There is simply a full scope of findings which came out of this report, and they are all important.

In an interview respective years ago, erstwhile president Mikheil Saakashvili told me that signing off on the report’s findings was contingent to receiving humanitarian assistance from the EU, totalling over 4 billion euros. Could you shed more light on this?

I have absolutely no information of specified a declaration on the basis of the study to the EU Council of Ministers. I presented the study to the EU Council in September 2009, and there was an ensuing discussion, but I have no thought what erstwhile president Saakashvili is alluding to.

Do you anticipate a akin investigation to be launched into the Ukraine war, whenever it ends?

It is very hard to say. It depends on the result of the war. I believe all conflict, insignificant or major, should be thoroughly investigated to avoid any legends, incorrect narratives and speculations. The problem is that you must have the parties agree, though you can inactive analyse if the parties do not cooperate. You will inactive have a very rich material basis on which you or future historians can work and effort to establish what happened, but it will not have the same impact. I believe this is truly important, especially in the times we are presently going through, where we frequently have difficulties knowing where the fact lies.

Heidi Tagliavini is simply a erstwhile Swiss diplomat. She was charged with leading the European Union’s fact-finding investigation into the causes of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. She besides represented the OSCE in the 2015 negotiations concerning the Minsk II agreement related to Russia’s war in Donbas.

Vazha Tavberidze is a Georgian writer and staff author with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. His writing has been published in various Georgian and global media outlets, including The Times, the Spectator, the Daily Beast and New east Europe.