In his memoirs Tony Blair wrote about a visit to Russia at the end of April 2003.
“Vladimir Putin launched into a vitriolic attack at the press conference,” wrote Blair,
“really using the British as surrogates for the U.S., and then afterwards at dinner
we had a tense, and at times heated, discussion [on the Iraq war]. He was convinced
the U.S. was set on a unilateralist course, not for a good practical purpose but as
a matter of principle. Time and again, he would say, ‘Suppose we act against Georgia,
which is a base for terrorism against Russia—what would you say if we took Georgia
out?’”[38] It is telling that Putin at that time gave exactly this example. The project was, apparently, already in 2003 on the mind of the Kremlin’s
master. There are other facts that support this interpretation. On August 7, 2013,
on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili,
in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in
Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told
Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration
of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think
for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your
territories for your geopolitical orientation . . . . And it meant ‘we will chop off
your territories anyway.’”[39] Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with
South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked
at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will
be much, much, much worse.’”[40]
This information came in the summer of 2012, a year after, quite unexpectedly, we
were allowed already a glimpse inside the Kremlin’s kitchen. On August 5, 2012, a
few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary
film “8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den” (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube.[41] In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev
of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the
other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev’s critics,
retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief
of the General Staff, “a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev
was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military
action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance.”[42] It is clear that these new facts support the interpretation, defended in this book,
that, far from being a spontaneous Russian reaction to rescue its peacekeepers and
“prevent a genocide,” the Russian invasion of August 2008 was a carefully planned
operation. After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army
General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It
was prepared “at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007,” he said.[43] Interestingly, Putin also said “that the decision to ‘use the armed forces’ had
been considered for three days—from around 5 August,”[44] which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only
reacted to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy
weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary
units were trained to support the Russian invading troops. Pavel Felgenhauer commented:
