But it was not only Russian passports that were distributed. The de facto deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia, Maksim Gvindzhia, declared on September
6, 2006, that at that point roughly 80 percent of the population held a dual Abkhaz-Russian citizenship.[12] This means that the Abkhaz government had already started to distribute its own—illegal—passports two years before its independence was recognized by Russia.[13] Because holders of Abkhaz passports could obtain a dual Russian-Abkhaz citizenship
(which gave Abkhaz citizens the right to receive Russian pensions and to travel to
Russia without restrictions),[14] it became clear that from 2006 Russia was conducting a double track strategy, leaving both options open: either the independence for Abkhazia, or its
incorporation into the Russian Federation. The extent to which these options even
remained open after the August 2008 war, emerged from declarations by the presidents
of the two breakaway provinces on September 11, 2008. According to the Russian news
agency RIA Novosti, “South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said his republic planned
to merge with the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia, and become part of
Russia, a statement he later withdrew [apparently under pressure from the Kremlin,
MHVH]. Meanwhile, Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh said Abkhazia would not pursue to
obtain ‘associated territory’ status with Russia, but would seek to join the post-Soviet
Commonwealth of Independent States and the Russia-Belarus Union State.”[15]
In December 2001 Eduard Kokoity replaced the more moderate South Ossetian independentist
President Lyudvig Chibirov. Kokoity was Moscow’s man. A former Komsomol apparatchik
and ex-Soviet professional wrestler, Kokoity was accused of links with organized crime.[16] As a member of Aleksandr Dugin’s revisionist International Eurasianist Movement
that propagated the reintegration of former parts of the Soviet Union into the Russian
Federation,[17] he was never interested in any negotiated compromise with Tbilisi. For Moscow,
Kokoity was the right man in the right place to block, definitively, the eventual
reintegration of South Ossetia into Georgia, opting for a solution that would make
the secession of the region permanent.
It is important to note that this aggressive strategy by Russia toward Georgia started
in the years 2000–2002. It was, therefore, neither a reaction to the Rose Revolution
nor to Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership: during those years the Georgian
president was Eduard Shevardnadze and not Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Rose Revolution
had not yet taken place. Also a Georgian NATO membership was not on the political
agenda. After the Rose Revolution in 2003, however, the relationship rapidly deteriorated.
When, on September 27, 2006, Georgia arrested four Russians diplomats suspected of
espionage for the GRU, the Russian military secret service, and extradited them some
days later, the Kremlin launched a full-scale economic and diplomatic war. It was
a case of pure and deliberate overkill. Russia suspended all air, rail, and road traffic between Russia and Georgia, including
the postal services. It stopped issuing visas to Georgians and imposed import bans
on Georgian wine and mineral water. Putin declared “that Georgia’s home and foreign
politics was similar to that conducted by KGB during Stalin’s times,”[18] which is a surprising remark for a former KGB agent who has never hidden his deep
personal pride in being a Chekist. The economic blockade was accompanied by a vehement
anti-Georgian campaign within the Russian Federation, targeting the approximately
one million Georgians who lived and worked in the country. Georgian businesses in
Moscow were raided; illegal immigrants were hunted and expelled. The Russian action
clearly constituted a “racist campaign,” wrote Salomé Zourabichvili, who was Georgian
foreign minister from 2004 to 2005. “[It was] apparently supported by the official
authorities, [and took] the form of a “hunt for the Caucasian” in the streets of Russia’s
main cities.”[19] The Moscow police asked schools to provide lists of children with Georgian names
in order to check out their parents. The government sponsored raids on Georgian migrant
workers and market traders soon started to give off a whiff of ethnic cleansing, which
led the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) to start a campaign
asking their listeners to wear a badge with the slogan Ya Gruzin (I am a Georgian).[20]
