With the arrival of the new strongman in the Kremlin it was the strategy, not the
objectives, that changed. This strategy was no longer based on ad hoc initiatives
and on blocking solutions aimed at reintegrating the breakaway provinces into Georgia.
From this point on there was a well-organized long-term planning. Every single step
was deliberately calculated in advance, and a war with Georgia became an option. After
the war with Chechnya, the war with Georgia became Putin’s
the period of a Russian-Georgian cold war (December 2000 to spring 2008)
a period of a lukewarm war (spring 2008 until August 7, 2008)
the hot war (August 7–August 12, 2008)
The Russian-Georgian Cold War:
The Passport Offensive
The Russian-Georgian Cold War started in December 2000, when the Russian government imposed visa requirements for Georgians who worked in Russia—an unfriendly measure that was directed against the thousands of Georgian citizens who worked in Russia and sent remittances to their relatives at home. Georgia was the first and only CIS country for which visas were introduced. Moscow said the measure was necessary to prevent Chechen rebels from entering Chechnya via Georgian territory. This decision, taken in the first year of Putin’s presidency was the first sign of a more aggressive stance toward Georgia. In 2002 this anti-Georgian policy entered a new phase when the Russian authorities started distributing Russian passports on a wide scale to the inhabitants of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[7] This “passport offensive” made it clear that Moscow’s intention was to “thaw” the frozen conflicts in Georgia and then resolve them in a way that suited Moscow’s interests. By creating a majority of “Russian citizens” in the two breakaway provinces Russia seemed to be preparing these provinces for some form of integration into Russia. Ronald Asmus wrote:
Russian passports were welcome as a way to travel although in reality few residents ever left the country except to visit Russia. For Moscow it created a fake diaspora and another lever of control. Having handed out thousands of passports to individuals living on what it still recognized as Georgian territory, Moscow would subsequently claim the right to defend its newly minted “citizens.”[8] . . . [That] doctrine was reminiscent of what Nazi Germany had done in the Sudetenland in the late 1930s, using the German diaspora to agitate in favor of unification with Germany and then justifying the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia with the need to protect ethnic Germans suffering persecution in Prague.[9]
Some observers dubbed this policy “re-occupation through passportization.”[10] The EU-sponsored “Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia,” headed by the Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, was also very clear on the illegal nature of Russia’s passport policy, reporting that “the issuance of passports is an act based on governmental authority. To the Mission’s knowledge, the passports were in many cases distributed on the territory of the breakaway entities. To the extent that these acts have been performed in Georgia without Georgia’s explicit consent, Russia has violated the principle of territorial sovereignty.[11]
