Said-Husein Tsarnaev, a journalist with the press agencies RIA Novosti and Reuters,
arrived in Tskhinvali on August 4. He was very surprised when he entered the lobby
of his hotel in this small provincial town in an isolated and desolate region, far
from Moscow, and found the lobby invaded by a crowd of Russian journalists. “We’ve
arrived in Tskhinvali three days prior to the attack on the city . . .,” he wrote
later, “we’ve got accommodation in the hotel ‘Alan.’ At once, I’ve noticed about fifty
journalists of leading TV channels and newspapers gathered in the hotel. I have experience
with two Chechen campaigns and such a crowd of colleagues at the headquarters of peacekeeping
forces I took as a disturbing signal.”[4] It was, indeed, a disturbing signal. What were these journalists—many of whom were
celebrated Russian star reporters—doing in Tskhinvali, an outpost in the Caucasus,
in the first days of August 2008? Who brought them there? What for? And why had the
Russian government closed Tskhinvali to non-Russian reporters (except two journalists
from Ukraine)? Russian websites have since published lists of the journalists’ names.[5] And, indeed, the fine fleur of the Russian media was present. The journalists represented almost every prominent
paper, magazine, and news agency, including Izvestia, Novoe Vremya, Moskovskiy Komsomolets,
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Regnum, ITAR-TASS, and RIA Novosti, not to forget the most important
Russian television channels: NTV, REN TV, TVTS, TV Channel “Rossiya,” TV Channel “Mir,”
as well as the First and the Fifth TV Channel. Some of the journalists had already
arrived on August 2, others on August 5 and 6. Why were they there, in Tskhinvali,
a deserted ghost town left by its inhabitants for “holidays” in the Russian Federation?
The journalists were obviously waiting for something to happen. They were waiting
for what?
On August 6—two days before the start of the hostilities—the pro-Kremlin paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta published an article with the title “Don Cossacks Prepare to Defend the People of
South Ossetia against Georgian Aggression.”[6] The Cossacks are fighters who historically played an important role in defending
the frontiers of the Russian empire. After having been repressed by the communists,
their hosts (locally organized groups) made a glorious comeback in the Russian Federation,
and they have fought as mercenaries in many conflicts in the post-Soviet states. In
the article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta the ataman (leader) of the Don Cossacks announced that Cossack fighters were preparing
to go to South Ossetia. He said that “Cossacks from the whole of Southern Russia were
united in their effort to help the unrecognized republic.”[7] The question is why the Cossack militias were actively preparing to fight in South
Ossetia on August 6, yet the war that broke out one day later was represented by the
Kremlin as a complete surprise.
