ISN, Switzerland
June 3 2006
The self-determination snowball
BBC
By Simon Saradzhyan in Moscow for ISN Security Watch (02/06/06)
After years of paying lip service to the territorial integrity of
Georgia and Moldova, Russia has moved to side with the separatist
regimes on the territories of these two newly independent states in
an apparent effort to pre-empt an increase in Western alliances’
influence in a region that Moscow views as a zone of its strategic,
if not exclusive interests.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry signaled the rhetorical shift on Thursday
with two senior diplomats publicly touting the idea that Moscow may
recognize the right of South Ossetia and Transdniester to secede from
Georgia and Moldova, respectively.
“The expression of will of the people is the highest instance for
determining the fate of those who live on a concrete territory,”
Ambassador Valery Nesterushkin, the Foreign Ministry’s special envoy,
said. “This is at least how a referendum is perceived through [the
prism of] international law.”
Officially, Nesterushkin was commenting on a statement by the head of
the self-styled Transdniestrian Republic, Igor Smirnov, who announced
earlier on Thursday that this separatist province in Moldova may hold
a referendum on independence by September.
In reality, Nesterushkin was also firing back at Belgian Foreign
Minister Karel De Gucht, who is also the chairman of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Gucht called on
Thursday for Russia to withdraw its 1,200 soldiers from this province
of 400,000 so that an international peacekeeping force could be
installed there. He even offered 10 million (US$13 million) out of
the OSCE budget to finance the withdrawal of those troops, which have
remained there since the separation of Moldova and Transdniester
after the two sides went to war in 1992, according to Russia’s
Kommersant daily newspaper.
“It is important to start discussions on transforming the
peacekeeping operation in Moldova into an internationally mandated,
recognized operation that could enhance security and stability for
both [Trans]Dnestr and Moldova,” De Gucht told a news conference in
Tiraspol, Transdniester’s capital.
And the Moldovan side has repeatedly accused Russia of supporting the
separatists to keep the conflict unresolved so that Russia can
maintain leverage on both sides and preserve its influence in the
region. Moldova has been trying to exit the zone of Russia’s
influence. Initially elected on a pro-Russian platform, Moldova’s
incumbent president Vladimir Voronin has been actively trying to
anchor this tiny republic to the EU and get the Western powers
involved in mediation of the conflict.
Voronin’s tactics resemble those of Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili. This US-educated lawyer has also been trying to win
Western mediation of Georgia’s conflicts with separatist Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, while criticizing Russia’s conduct as a mediator and
peacekeeper.
On Wednesday, the Georgian government fired yet another critical
salvo over what it deemed as the illegal entry of Russian
peacekeepers into Georgian territory because the servicemen failed to
obtain Georgian visas. Some 500 Russian soldiers were deployed to
South Ossetia from Russia as part of personnel rotation of the
peacekeeping operation there.
Given lack of visas, “this operation is no longer peacekeeping, but
rather an operation of force conducted by the Russian military”,
Georgia’s Conflict Resolution Minister Georgi Khaindrava told
journalists in Tbilisi Thursday.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry blistered at the accusations, noting that
Georgia did not control the territory of South Ossetia and hinting
that South Ossetia’s aspirations to secede from Georgia may be viewed
as legitimate by Russia.
“We treat the principle of territorial integrity with respect. So far
as Georgia is concerned, however, its territorial integrity is rather
a possibility, than the present-day political and legal reality,” the
ministry’s chief spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a Thursday
statement.
“It could become a reality only as a result of difficult talks, in
which the stand of South Ossetia will be based, as we understand it,
on another principle, which is equally recognized by the world
community – the right to self-determination,” the statement said.
While commenting on the right of self-determination of South Ossetia
and Transdniester, Russian diplomats have remained silent on whether
the separatist republics of Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh should have
the same right. However, Russia may introduce a resolution to the UN
Security Council, which would make no reference to Georgia’s
territorial integrity and allow for the possibility of Abkhazia’
secession, the Friday issue of Kommersant quoted an unnamed source in
the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying.
Previously, the official position of Russia, which has been involved
in mediation of both conflicts and has peacekeepers stationed there,
has been that it respects the territorial integrity of both Georgia
and Moldova, but stands for the peaceful resolution of both conflicts
on the basis of mutual compromises. In reality, Russia offered not so
tacit support for Transdniester, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia by
granting Russian citizenship to tens of thousands of residents in the
separatist provinces. Yet Russian diplomats still pay lip service to
the idea of territorial integrity. With the conflicts frozen and
unresolved, Russia can count on maintaining its leverage over all the
stakeholders.
But that “frozen” strategy has been increasingly undermined as the
new governments of Georgia and Moldova seek to anchor themselves to
the West and the latter reciprocates by boosting its support for the
two governments vis-à-vis the separatist regimes.
Sensing the increasing pressure, both Russia and the separatist
regimes are digging their heels in. The efforts of the separatists to
legitimize their cause may see a major boost from the pending
referendum on Kosovo’s independence, as well as a recent referendum
in Montenegro in which voters chose to split from the state union
with Serbia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the debate on the issue in
Russia and neighboring states by pointing out at a press conference
in late January that Kosovo’s independence would bolster similar bids
by de facto independent republics in the former Soviet Union. He
returned to the issue of self-determination referendums on Friday by
citing the 21 May plebiscite in Montenegro.
“Such precedents would negatively affect the situation not only in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose people would ask why the Albanians
in Kosovo could separate from a state they are part of, while they
cannot,” Putin told a meeting of foreign editors and reporters
outside Moscow.
While Russian diplomats’ reference to the right of self-determination
may signal a rhetoric shift, it is unlikely that Moscow would
recognize the independence of either separatist provinces anytime
soon, according to Aleksei Malashenko, senior expert with the
Carnegie Moscow Center, and Nikolai Silaev, a senior expert with the
Center for Caucasus Studies at the Moscow State University of Foreign
Relations.
In separate telephone interviews with ISN Security Watch on Thursday,
both said Russia was interested in keeping the conflicts on the
territory of former Soviet Union frozen, with Malashenko noting that
Moscow would hardly alter its position anytime before 2008
presidential elections.
Arthur Martirosyan, a senior program manager with the Cambridge,
MA-based Conflict Management Group, agreed.
“I do not see this as a major shift in the Russian policy, as Russia
has been consistently using these conflicts as a persuasion tool
trying to get Georgia and Moldova and less so Azerbaijan take a less
pro-Western and a more pro-Russian foreign policy stance,” he said.
Russia is likely to stick to no recognition for as long as there is
none for Kosovo, according to Martirosyan. However, since Kosovo’s
conditional independence is inevitable, the real question is about
the timing of Russia’s symmetric responses in conflicts in Georgia
and Moldova, he said in a Friday telephone interview.
However, according to Konstantin Zatulin, State Duma deputy and head
of the hard-line Institute of Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) in Moscow, the statements by Foreign Ministry officials do
imply that Russia will recognize the separatist republics if their
populations vote to secede.
“It is very a correct and timely statement, especially after the
referendum in Montenegro. We need to respect opinion of people who
want self-determination,” he said.
Zatulin was echoed by Vadim Gustov, chairman of the Federation
Council’s CIS committee. Gustov told Kommersant on Thursday that
Russia had every right to accept the separatist provinces if they
voted to join the Russian Federation.
In addition to these federal legislators, Gennady Bukaev, assistant
to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, claimed at a joint session of
government of South Ossetia and Russia’s North Ossetia in April that
the federal government had made a principle decision to incorporate
the former.
The two republics will then be united into one subject of the Russian
Federation, “the name of which is already known to the world –
Alania”, two Russian dailies quoted Bukaev as saying. The Russian
Foreign Ministry later sought to downplay this statement in what
demonstrates that Russia has no plans to absorb either territory,
according to independent experts.
Simon Saradzhyan is a veteran security and defense writer based in
Moscow, Russia. He is a co-founder of the Eurasian Security Studies
Center in Moscow.
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