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Georgian leader attacks Russia, jails opponent

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Last week, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili was at the United Nations assailing Russian aggression in his country. Saakashvili said that two men killed by Georgian forces in the breakaway province of Abkhazia last week had been identified as Russian army officers: One has to wonder – what was a lieutenant-colonel of ...

By Joshua Keating, a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

October 2, 2007, 4:10 PM

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili was at the United Nations assailing Russian aggression in his country. Saakashvili said that two men killed by Georgian forces in the breakaway province of Abkhazia last week had been identified as Russian army officers:

One has to wonder – what was a lieutenant-colonel of the Russian military doing in the Georgian forests, organising and leading a group of armed insurgents on a mission of terror? I want to ask our Russian friends – is there not enough territory in Russia? Are there not enough forests in Russia for Russian officers not to die in Georgian territory, in Georgian forests?”

Meanwhile, his government was engaging in some fairly Putinesque behavior back home. Saakashvili’s saber-rattling speech came just days after his former Interior and Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili accused him of ordering political assassinations and exhibiting “fascist tendencies.” Saakashvili dismissed these charges as “unpardonable lies.” Then, after announcing that he was forming an opposition party, Okruashvili was arrested Thursday on corruption charges. On Friday, 5,000 protesters gathered in support of Okruashvili in downtown Tbilsi, the largest demonstrations in the city since the 2003 Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power.

While Saakashvili certainly has the right to object to Russian military exercises of any kind on his country’s territory, it’s clear that the two countries’ David and Goliath storyline benefits Saakashvili by distracting attention from the problems besetting his own government. A prescient article by Jon Sawyer made this case for FP last October.

With the situation in Georgia, Ukraine mired in yet another controversial election, and Kyrgyzstan moving toward superpresidentialism, the democratic revolutions of this past decade are fast becoming just colorful memories.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating