Ivan The Slicker

Though we'd be reluctant to call this kind of herding Information Warfare (admittedly, it does ring sexier than a plodding public diplomacy initiative), it is definitely an improvement over the running dog hind leg lackey of American imperialism pontifications by indignant people's spokesmen of old.

TSKHINVALI -- Under the standards of information warfare, it was an easy job by all accounts.

The Kremlin only had to charter a plane, take about 60 foreign and Russian reporters to Beslan, bus them through the nearby Roksky Tunnel to South Ossetia, and stand back.

The journalists did the rest. They were free to speak to whomever they wanted and ask any questions.

The comments that they heard on all sides -- from South Ossetia leader Eduard Kokoity, local officials and ordinary residents -- matched the Kremlin's official line perfectly. Everyone said they had waited for years for Russia to recognize the breakaway Georgian republic of 70,000 people as independent and hoped for a future together.

"We've been waiting for this for 18 years," said Tsiala Gergaulova, a Tskhinvali resident whose 24-year-old son was injured in the Russian-Georgian war last month. "I would like for us to be part of Russia. I believe everybody wants this."

Boris Bagayev, an 85-year-old artist and official with the local administration, said he was more than happy that Moscow had recognized his republic last week. "It gives meaning to my life," he said.

Two weeks after the short but intense war, life in the South Ossetian capital appears to be coming back together. On Monday, damaged government buildings, ruined neighborhoods and a statue with a missing head in a central square stood as grim reminders of the fighting. But the streets were being patched up, reconstruction was being planned, and most children attended their first day of the school year -- just like their peers in Russia.

For the situation to improve further, Kokoity said, the world should recognize South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia, as independent.

"The recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will stabilize the situation in the Caucasus," the South Ossetian leader told reporters, standing in front of green netting covering the remains of the local parliament building. Russia so far has been the only country to recognize the breakaway republics, although Belarus and Venezuela have expressed support. Western powers have denounced the decision.

Kokoity said the immediate task for his government was to strengthen South Ossetia's independence and then to officially become part of Russia. He urged foreign reporters to ignore criticism from their governments and "listen to the voice of people and common sense."

A Kremlin official supervising the journalists on the trip, Vladislav Petrushin, said the main purpose of the visit was to give the foreign reporters access to the administration led by Kokoity. "We've provided an opportunity to talk. It's not like we've given him a cheat sheet. He said the truth," Petrushin said.

The trip also indicates how far the Kremlin has evolved in communicating with the outside world. When the fighting broke out Aug. 8, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and other senior officials made their case in interviews with major Western media outlets. Top Russian officials, meanwhile, were shown on state television holding meetings. As international sentiment grew in Tbilisi's favor, the Kremlin mounted its own campaign of informational warfare. President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have offered a series of interviews in recent days.

"They've understood they can't neglect communications," said Anthony Orliange, a television reporter with Capa, a production company, on the Kremlin trip to South Ossetia.

"The whole point of me being here is that the Kremlin wants to communicate," said Orliange, who came with a colleague from Paris after receiving their Russian visas in record time. "I didn't have a visa three days ago," he said.

During the war, access to the conflict zone was tightly controlled for foreign reporters. While Monday's visit was vastly different from seeing the war itself, it was still helpful, Orliange said. "I am getting the vibe of this place," he said. "It will change my perspective."

A hacked & jacked The Moscow Times via Johnson's Russia List

Revolutions In Revolutions

Indeed, posting has been tardy despite dubious ambitions of saturation flaunting. No apologies, to be sure - we've been aggressing on other time-devouring and invoice-able fronts, as well as hermetically delving into arising revolutions within significant ongoing revolutions; much creeping decisiveness is in motion and much of this tip-toeing choreography has been afforded our selfish attention afore hacked 'n jacked scribblings in this our admitted forum of narcissistic relief.

Pegging of the dollar - to what now?

Iran so more now than ever.

A perfect and kinetically laced IO aimed at Western Europe. Thanks Georgia's Poor Villy: God save a NATO embedded amidst an aspiringly recalcitrant EU.

IO Meister Petraeus to CENTCOM.

Pakistan - graft up for grabs. (Are we the best of bidders?)

Things are coalescing out there in the night - radiation from countless stars with the radar emissions of FAA regulated flight control towers. All the while everything important relentlessly expands.

Brewskies For A Georgia Downed

Anti-Georgian Cyber war - a twinge of the oxymoronic for sure given a Georgian internet penetration per capita rivaling that continent of promesse de la Chine (Ahfrika, of course) for last place in the Paralympic bathtubs per capita square off. Whatever that doesn't mean, some interesting points from the strong and free of the True Boring North; a modicum of heed, perhaps - and near certainly seed for rigorous Molsonic brainstorming.

As Russian troops stormed into Georgia this month, they had some novel help from cyber-savvy countrymen who unleashed an assault of their own - hacking into government and commercial websites.

NATO calls it iWar, and it has the potential to disrupt lives and wreck economies, particularly in Internet-dependent countries like Canada.

The Russian hackers were spectacularly successful to the point that some experts are now predicting that Internet-based attacks could be just as innovative to warfare as the advent of gunpowder.

(...)

Russia denies its military was behind last week's three-stage cyber attacks, claiming that "patriotic" civilian hackers were simply joining the fray unprompted in taking down Georgian websites.

The denial of service attacks on Georgian government Web sites started just before Russian troops started to move Aug. 8 and were quickly followed much bigger assaults on commercial institutions, including media outlets, using zombie servers. The final stage involved hacking into government Web sites, tampering with them and redirecting traffic to other some times nefarious sites.

An expert in information warfare says it's the first time cyber attacks have been sewn so tightly into a military campaign and used with such overwhelming effect.

"The question that remains is: was it planned or was it something that happened by coincidence - or was it a bit of both?" asked Rafal Rohozinski, of the Information Warfare Monitor, a Canadian group that studies iWars.

The patriotic hacker explanation is the most troubling because it represents a "riot in cyberspace" - a kind of chaos governments and militaries would have a tough time anticipating, said Rohozinski. [The meat that caught our eye]

But the timing of the cyber assaults makes him suspicious. [Party poopin' Canucks]

That the Russians would not admit it was part of their Georgian battle plan isn't surprising because attacks across cyberspace travel through servers in a number of countries, exposing Moscow to possible retaliation, principally from NATO, Rohozinski said.

[Warning - Yawn & Sigh section follows.]

Chris Corrigan, a retired colonel Canadian tank commander, said Western militaries have faced this kind of threat since the days of radar jamming.

"What makes this different is that the targets are no longer strictly military communications infrastructure and we're now talking about destroying civilian (Internet) sites," said Corrigan, who watched the attack on Georgia while training officers in the nearby Ukraine.

Rohozinski describes it as a rapidly evolving field, where even definitions are being refined.

Cyber war refers specifically to assaults on virtual military targets and communications, while iWar is the 21st Century equivalent to the concept of total war, where nothing is off-limits.

The flattening of heavy industries was a key pillar of the Allied strategy to defeat Germany and Japan during the Second World War.

The same kind of economic devastation may no longer require waves of heavy bombers. It might be wrought through targeted virtual attacks on a country's financial system, media and government institutions.

Such attacks are cheap and relatively easy to mount.

Developed nations, especially Canada, face the greatest risk because so much business is conducted and information exchanged online, said Appathurai.

Corrigan, who was the Canadian Forces point man on the Y2K glitch, said militaries and businesses have a lot of "built-in redundancy" to withstand attacks, but added the threat is real and geography cannot isolate a nation the way it did in past wars.

Western commanders, who once trained almost exclusively to turn back tanks, troops and bombers, have added repelling Internet assaults to their training regimes.

NATO recently created its own real-world crisis response team to handle calamities in the virtual world.

And not a moment too soon.

Estonia and Lithuania - two former Soviet republics - suffered through repeated hacker attacks, which may or may not have been state-sponsored. The latest blitz took place just a few weeks ago and shut down the Lithuanian tax registry office.

The centrepiece of the North Atlantic Alliance is the common defence clause of the NATO charter - known as Article 5.

It stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all members and alliance countries are obligated to respond.

Does that extend to cyber attacks? [We hope not]

Appathurai conceded that Article 5 is "vaguely worded" and future interpretations could encompass Internet warfare. [Mon Dieu, non!]

Last word here heard on matters of worthy & classic bear-probing pokes & jabs of diagnostic intent...and prankish electioneering gambits.

Last word, kinda'.

Beautiful Little War

Such a sweet little war as substrate for introductory level IO study.; a set piece battle garnished with IO condiments.

Today - a few tenuous observations teetering on speculative commentary followed up with a background briefing by a friend (friend as in; we pitched in a few PayPal bucks to help stave off the demise of a rag he oft wrote for - itself victim of brutish public diplomacy of sorts.)

Vladimir Putin nomenclatured Georgia's artillery strikes on Tschinvali as downright genocidal, Russian sources claiming some 2K South Ossetians being killed. (Human Rights Watch -among others- proposed the Russians were exaggerating the numbers of killed and displaced.) Micheil Saakasjvili shot back with claims that Ivan was up to ethnic cleansing. Yet not even the International Red Cross seems to know if the number of injured and displaced on each side of the skirmish is 15K or 30K. "We're seeing different numbers and they're changing all the time", according to a spokeswoman we caught a chatting with the BBC.

On reporting own successes and enemy losses, the differences between each side's claims has Baghdad Bob looking not quite so goofy. The other day Saakasjivilli claimed Georgian forces had killed hundreds of Russian troops and shot down over 80 Russian birds. Russian General Staffer Anatolij Nogovitsyn admitted only to 18 KIA and 4 lost planes. Of course it's militarily impossible for Georgia to shoot down 80 planes.

At best, the skirmishing parties' media aren't always the most reliable sources of actionable information in calmer times but it would appear that Russian media now have had the edge on truthiness over the state run Georgian media outlets in the heat of battle. Nontheless, reports have been surfacing recently that the Russian English language television channel Russia Today has been tweaking reports from the field not lining up neatly with what government officials prefer reported.

Cyberattacks have been perpetrated against both Russian media and Georgian authorities who themselves in turn have shut down Russian television channels at home in Georgia.

Journalists are coming under fire and it would appear that somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen journalists have been killed in clashes. For the journalists left standing it remains problematic keeping wits and getting things close enough to right.

Gavin Hewitt of the BBC reported the other day how his crew was attacked by a Russian jet [Youtube video] on the outskirts of Gori. Footage shows the plane attempting to attack the crew's car and Hewitt recapitulates, "...although Georgian troops have pulled back, Russian planes are still conducting bombing raids - flying in very low, and on that occasion directly targeting our vehicle".

Now it just so happens that the plane in question was a Frogfoot (Sukhoi 25), a plane deployed by both Russia and the Georgia. In the video it appears that the jet flew alone and fired rather mundane munitions - hardly the typical behavioral profile of such Russian birds. At that, there seem to be some lingering suspicions from UN folks that the Georgians are not completely adverse to, if only occasionally, putting their own citizens in harms way to score points in the propaganda game. Was it a Georgian Su-25 strafing the Brits and their own? Who knows. Hey, last fall the Russians denied a missile attack against Georgia yet international experts concluded that such was indeed the case. Deception abounds.

Before I break to promised jacked & hacked other, here's a link to a package of great tips for tracking Russian language news from South Ossetia without reading Russian. Now to the beef:

This is the war of my dreams—both sides using air forces! How often do you see that these days?—so I’ll skip the history. Just remember that South Ossetia is a little apple-shaped blob dangling from Russian territory down into Georgia, and most of it has been under control of South Ossetian irregulars backed by Russian “peacekeepers” for the last few years. The Georgians didn’t like that. You don’t give up territory in that part of the world, ever. The Georgians have always been fierce people, good fighters, not the forgiving type.

So: hard people on every side in that part of the world. No quarter asked or given. No good guys. Especially not the Georgians. They have a rep as good people, one-on-one, but you don’t want to mess with them and you especially don’t want to try to take land from them.

The Georgians bided their time, then went on the offensive, Caucasian style, by pretending to make peace and all the time planning a sneak attack on South Ossetia. They just signed a treaty granting autonomy to South Ossetia this week, and then they attacked, Corleone style. Georgian MLRS units barraged Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia; Georgian troops swarmed over Ossetian roadblocks; and all in all, it was a great, whiz-bang start, but like Petraeus asked about Iraq way back in 2003, what’s the ending to this story? As in: how do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a whack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel.

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help.

[T]he more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naïve because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the US, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and ipods.

Their part of the deal was simple: they sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then a surprisingly huge 2000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than five million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the US and Britain.

You might be thinking, Wow, not a good time to have so many of your best troops in Iraq, huh? Well, that’s true and it goes for a lot of countries—like us, for instance—but at least we’re not facing a Russian invasion. The Georgians are so panicked they just announced they’re sending half their Iraqi force home, and could the USAF please give’em a lift?

We’ll probably give them a ride, but that’s about all we can do. We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline’s staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the US Army’s learned recently.

Now here’s the joke—and military history is just one long series of mean jokes. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in NE Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green-Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in DC, that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry CI force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

The American military’s response so far has been all talk, and pretty damn stupid talk at that. A Pentagon spokes-thingy called Russia’s response “disproportionate.” What the Hell are they talking about? They’ve been watching too many cop shows. Cops have this doctrine of “minimum necessary force,” not that they actually operate that way unless there are video cameras around. Armies never, ever had that policy, because it’s a good way to get your troops killed needlessly. The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible. If you’ve got it, you use it. Thank God we never fought “proportionately” in Viet Nam. The French tried that, because they never had much of an air force, and got wiped out. By the time the French withdrew from Indochina, their Lefty Prime Minister, Mendes-France, made a big show of promising peace withing 30 days of taking office—and his commanders in Indochina said privately, “I don’t think we can hold out that long.” That’s what fighting “proportionately” gets you: Dien Bien Phu.

If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is—well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”

The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies—but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi just ten years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: the bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the US is all tied up in that crap Iraq war and can’t do shit; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit for tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naïve idiotic allies like Georgia.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

What’s happening to Georgia here is like the teeny-tiny version of Germany in the twentieth century: overplay your hand and you lose everything. So if you’re a Georgian nationalist, this war is a tragedy; if you’re a Russian or Ossetian nationalist, it’s a triumph, a victory for justice, whatever. To the rest of us, it’s just kind of fun to watch. And damn, this one has been a LOT of fun! The videos that came out of it! You know, DVD is the best thing to happen to war in a long time. All the fun, none of the screaming agony—it’s war as Diet Coke.

See, this is the war that I used to see in the paintings commissioned by Defense contractors in Aviation Week and AFJ: a war between two conventional armies, both using air forces and armored columns, in pine-forested terrain. That was what those pictures showed every time, with a highlighted closeup of the weapon they were selling homing in on a Warsaw Pact convoy coming through a German pine forest. Of course, a real NATO/Warsaw Pact war would never, ever have happened that way. It would have gone nuclear in an hour or less, which both sides knew, which is why it never happened. So all that beautiful weaponry was kind of a farce, if it was only going to be used in the Fulda Gap. But damn, God is good, because here it all is, in the same kind of terrain, all your favorite old images: Russian-made tanks burning, a Soviet-model fighter-bomber falling from the sky in pieces, troops in Russian camo fighting other troops, also in Russian camo, in a skirmish by some dilapidated country shack.

No racial overtones to get bummed out by—everybody on both sides is white! And white from places you don’t know or care about!

The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

What will last is those beautiful videos, like some NATO-era dream, like God giving me one last chance to see the weapons I spent my twenties dreaming about in action. Even the wounded-civilian videos are interesting because a lot of the wounded are fat and old, which you didn’t see much in classic Korean or Normandy or Nam footage.

We’re the new normal, but damn, we sure are ugly casualties. Skinny people just look better sitting in rubble with bloody faces, I can’t lie.

As the war fades out—and it will; countries don’t fight to the death these days—there’ll be time to see how the various weapons systems played. I’m especially interested to see how well the Georgian air defense missiles, some very good recent Russian models, worked. But there’s plenty of time to debrief later. For now, just go to LiveLeak or YouTube (LiveLeak has better stuff right now) and enjoy yourself. This is when us war nerds get all the free porn we can handle. Call in sick, take your comp time, whatever—just don’t miss those videos.

Nato Stooges Unplugged: Georgian President Praises Financial Times’s Role In Propaganda War

Are the leaders of the pro-Western "color revolutions" fulfilling the freedom-loving aspirations of their people, or are they merely servants of a NATO plot to dominate the world, with key support from Britain's Financial Times newspaper?

Until a few weeks ago, the answer to that question depended on whose propaganda you believed: the West's, or the Kremlin's.

But then the Ukrainian press got a hold of secretly recorded telephone conversations between Ukraine's pro-Western president Viktor Yuschenko, who led the Orange Revolution and his pro-Western counterpart in Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, leader of the Rose Revolution.

Not since the salad days of Russia's "kompromat wars" have we been treated to such an unobstructed view into how Powerful People in this part of the world talk to each other. In fact the last time something this juicy was leaked, it was when former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma was taped swearing like a lowlife thug to his security chiefs to "do something" about journalist Giorgi Gongadze, whose headless corpse was subsequently discovered in the Dniepr River in 2000.

So how different are the pro-Western leaders from those they overthrew? The Yuschenko-Saakashvili tapes aren't as overtly evil as Kuchma's, but if you're a Westerner, they do kind of turn your world upside down. They're also quite funny in how they reveal the enduring spirit of sovok. For one thing, it takes forever for Yuschenko's secretary to negotiate the labyrinth of bad phone lines and the heavily-accented Georgian secretaries before connecting her boss to Saakashvili. For another thing, the two anti-Russian leaders communicate in the only language they're both comfortable in: Russian.

Here is how it starts:



YUSCHENKO'S SECRETARY: Good afternoon, this is Ukraine calling.

SAAKASVHILI'S SECRETARY: Yes, hello.

YUSCH SECTY: Good afternoon. Is it you who talked with us, or was it someone else?

SAAK SECTY: No, no, I didn't speak with you today.

YUSCH SECTY: Well maybe, well, it was also a woman's voice that spoke to us.

SAAK SECTY: Yes, well, so what are you calling about, excuse me?

YUSCH SECTY: Well the presidents wanted to discuss... Mr. Saakashvili wanted to speak with Yuschenko.

SAAK SECTY: Ah, President Yuschenko? With Yuschenko our president he wanted to speak?

YUSCH SECTY: Yes, yes.

SAAK SECTY: And you this morning spoke with our people?

YUSCH SECTY: Well the thing is your side called ours several times this morning but our president wasn't available.

SAAK SECTY: No, it wasn't from us. Maybe it was from the President's secretary's office, if you hold on I'll find out. Just one minute please...


From there the tape lapses into long pauses as secretaries are put on hold, transferred to other secretaries for another round of comedy-of-hijinx, like something out of a Voinovich satire from the 1970s, until finally, after several long minutes, the two great hopes of the former Soviet Union are finally connected.

This is where the tape goes from light comedy to what-the-fuck paranoia fuel. Remember, so far no one has denied the authenticity of the tapes, they've only accused the enemies of the pro-Western leaders, namely The Kremlin, of trying to discredit them. In the great kompromat days, this was how victims of leaked conversations used to essentially confirm the tapes' authenticity: by blaming the leak on their enemies, rather than denying that the conversations ever took place.

Also note that while the Ukrainian media, particularly the pro-Yanukovich media, made much of the tapes, the government-controlled Russian press largely ignored it, as did the free Western media. One reason might be the way that Saakashvili praises the Financial Times' role in the larger propaganda war, not so much the war between Russia and the West as the battle between Europe's democratic peaceniks who might recoil at Yuschenko's authoritarian tactics, and hard-asses like NATO, who want Yuschenko to win no matter what.

The conversation begins with the hotbutton issue in late May: Whether or not Yuschenko's attempt to dissolve Ukraine's parliament, a move which has been criticized as illegal and undemocratic, will gain the support of the West or not. Yuschenko was preparing to force new elections in September, and Saakashvili called him in order to provide Yuschenko with moral support and big-brotherly advice.


SAAKASHVILI: Hello? Hello, hello?

YUSCHENKO: Hello?

S: Greetings Viktor Andreevich.

Y: Misha, glad to hear from you.

Y: I think that everything will be all right.

S: I think that you're holding up great and, in principle, you're on the right track. I talked to them about that thing you asked me to. Most basically everyone support the idea of early elections [which Yuschenko forced on the parliament, a move criticized as illegal and undemocratic by many inside Ukraine and in the West]. Solana [Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy -Ed.] over there, like always, he started saying, "Maybe we should discuss..." You know Solana already ruined things for us during the revolution.

Y: Right now, Misha, I can tell you that after yesterday, after the decision of RNBO [Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council -Ed.], I think that we've managed to break the key players regarding early elections and everything is now official...

S: No, to go against the elections simply means the end of Ukraine. This is very obvious.

Y: That's why I think that there's about a 90% chance that there'll be early elections.

S: I also think that they [i.e.: Yanukovich and the pro-Russian opposition in Ukraine - Ed.] are psychologically prepared for this. I'd like to point out that they are already in a weak position. If the election takes place, they will lose. They know this, but they still are going along with it. This is just amazing! The only thing that worries me is all their hooligan shenanigans. If they get used to them, then it will have a lasting effect on things. There are various break-ins, takeovers, etc.

Y: I answered back at this with my new ukaz, and fired this guy [presumably Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun, who was fired in late May in a move that nearly sparked violent clashes - Ed.]...

S: I know.

Y: This means that there won't be anything bad. I mean for democracy. But these people, they are facing criminal charges.

S: Yes, that's very important. They must understand. You must set a precedent that they will be punished. An amazing thing happened. You brought people out. And they tried to bring people out, but couldn't. This was very apparent.

Note here, before reading on, the tone adopted by Saakashvili towards Yuschenko. Clearly the Georgian president is the topper in this relationship. What should strike readers and listeners as odd is the fact that Georgia's president seems to be guiding Yuschenko through his political crisis, at times encouraging him, at times praising him, but all the while essentially controlling the rather sheepish Yuschenko, who despite his age, talks like he's Saakashvili's baby brother. In other words, Ukraine's fate once again is being guided by outsiders, rather than by the will of its own people.

Now it gets even weirder.


Y: I told Yanukovich yesterday, because at 11PM at the building of the Secretariat of the President [The cabinet of Ukraine's president. - Ed.] there was supposed to be five to eight thousand protesters here, skinheads and the like... I tell the prime minister, "Victor Fedorovich, keep in mind that all the gates are going to be open..."

S:Aha

Y: "...and it would be nice if they would vandalize the first floor a little bit, break some windows or maybe something else too. Please, do what you want..."

S:Aha

Y: ".. but keep in mind that if this happens, if there will be violence from you, Kiev is going to answer you." I asked him to not do this. Let Kiev celebrate normally and put their trust into politicians to solve problems in a political manner.

S: No. What they did yesterday and the day before yesterday is clearly bringing Kiev's sympathy over to your side. This is obvious. The main thing is for you to be calm and fierce. This is something that people long for...

Y: Sunday showed this. You know, they bussed in 15,000 people. They counted 20,000. But in Kiev, there are 140... 140,000 came out simply because we sent out 1.5 million invitations.

S: Yes, and yesterday I talked to Hoop Scheffer. [Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is NATO's Secretery General - Ed.] He said that he'll call all the Europeans, but that they should all support the idea of early elections because elections are the only way out of this crisis in a normal democracy. There is no other way.

Y: The courts are powerless now. The courts are demoralized. They are in such shape that when the question became a political one, the Constitutional Court could not answer it. [Note: Yuschenko also fired three members of the Constitutional Court who opposed him, in another move whose legality has been highly criticized - Ed.]

S: But even if the court does something, it is because someone bribed it. It needs to be ignored. What is a court? What can a court decide in a political situation?

Y: Absolutely. The court is not an expert on political issues. It can decide questions of rights, but cannot answer political questions. This is what the government is for. It's hard for the courts.


You read that right, folks: Saakashvili and Yuschenko openly tell each other that in a democracy, what matters isn't their courts, since they don't know anything about politics, but rather, what NATO's secretary general wants. And if the head of the NATO military alliance supports a legally-questionable presidential decree calling for new elections that Yuschenko feels assured he'll win, then that's better for developing Ukraine's democracy than letting Ukraine's courts decide the legality of the matter.

At this point, as if subconsciously sensing their neo-Soviet villainy, the old Russia bogeyman makes a surprise appearance:


S: I think that... Hey, have you been watching Russian TV? They're showing crazy hysteria. They're showing some sort of...

Y: Well, have you read the [Russian] State Duma's statement?

S: No I didn't. But the propaganda is crazy.

Y: Anyway, they've issued a statement saying that I've issued an illegal order, that the [Ukrainian] parliament has been disbanded under my direct threat, etc.

S: Yesterday they were discussing the possibility of sending a peacekeeping force openly on Russian TV...

Y: They want an international initiative headed by Russia...

S: The Financial Times showed very good initiative, I mean by publishing that article. They are great. Shows that their team is working well. I think that even if Solana and some other Europeans are going to insist that we "work together" or saying something like "maybe let's live peacefully" [i.e., that Yuschenko negotiate with his opponents in the parliamentEd.], that the majority of Europeans will understand. Of course, we'll have to work on them a bit. The Americans understand the importance of elections. There [Apparently meaning Russia, not America. -Ed.] , my brother, the politics were precise. They knew before the elections they wanted Yuschenko's head on a platter. They had a clear plan, but you got them first. You've mixed up all their cards. This is for real.

That's right: Misha Saakashvili feels certain that the Financial Times team are doing their propagandist-best to ensure that crunchy tree-hugging democrats like Javier Solano won't force their version of democracy down Ukraine's throat, a version that relies on dialogue with the elected opposition and hippie peace; instead, the FT will help promote to its readers a more NATO-friendly, gangster-like version of democracy favored by Saakashvili, a version of democracy in which the toughest man with the biggest krysha wins. This begs the question: are the Kremlin rulers really cynical and paranoid, or is their cynicism and paranoia the result of listening to more conversations like this?

Y: That's why, Misha, we're going only forward. I'm about to meet with Yanukovich. My feeling is that Victor Fedorovich is already in favor of early elections There are of course some legal questions tied with the 60 day election period.

S: With financing and stuff?

Y: Not just that. It's about the meeting of the parties and official party lists. We have a proportional system, we need to work it through these procedures, these procedures are dictated by law... We need to carry them out. That's why in the next four days, all the parties need to meet.

S: But, the most important thing is to have decisive action. Your decisive actions are going to be supported by the people. This is obvious, even to an untrained eye. The main thing is to act decisively, to show your steely will. The other side is wavering all the time. This can be seen. One can sense that they are nervous. The more ruth-lessness you show, the better the results will be for you in the elections.

Y: Well, my own reading of the situation is that it's stable and good for me. From the point of development, it is all going fine.

S: Absolutely. Keep it up.

Y: Thanks.

S: And seriously, this is the real Yuschenko, this is who he is, and the whole world likes him. Exactly.

Y: Thanks. Ok.

S: Ok. Hugs to you.

And somewhere in this sordid tale, there were the hopes and aspirations of the Ukrainian people.
-Exile