Репортаж FT про встречу с передовым русским постом
Добрый день!
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Описывается посещение западными журналистами нашего подразделения в Ингоэти, ближайшая точка к Тбилиси. Командир роты заверил их, что предпочел бы дойти до Тбилиси, чтобы "преподать грузинам урок".
Dazed and confused on Russian front line
By Charles Clover in Igoeti
Published: August 17 2008 19:50 | Last updated: August 17 2008 19:50
The young Russian army captain had been trained for anything, and his company, battle-hardened in Chechnya, had fought their way through Georgia all the way to Igoeti, 40km from the capital, Tbilisi.
There, at the farthest point of Russian advance into Georgia, his company of nine armoured personnel carriers sat ready, at the tip of the Russian spear.
But his square-jawed, extra-cool demeanour seemed to fray a bit on Saturday as he saw, advancing around a distant bend on the road, a new foe. Bald patches glinting in the noonday sun, girded for action in a colourful array of flak jackets, kevlar helmets, polo shirts, chinos, sport sandals, cameras with fearsomely large telephoto lenses, furry boom mikes, and even the odd humble notepad, a group of western journalists heading straight for him and his men.
They were on foot, as the Georgian police had not let their SUVs through the forward Georgian lines at Igoeti, 2km away.
Many of the press pack had not even realised they had crossed the front lines, which on Saturday was the river Lekhura, with its shady banks and chirpy frogs, and no sign of trenches, tanks or other things one expects to see at a proper war. Arriving at the bewildered Russian checkpoint, which consisted of four soldiers standing under a tree eating peaches, one of the reporters hailed them with a hearty “gamarjobat”, Georgian for hello.
“Shchto vi?” (huh?) was the answer from a skinny lieutenant. “We are the Russian army,” he said coolly, but quickly dissolved into a smile as reporters began to tease him.
The journalists were out hunting Russian soldiers on Saturday, and Igoeti was the easiest place to find them. The mission was to figure out what the Russians were up to in Georgia, anybody’s guess in the past few days with confusing signals emanating from Moscow.
Despite a ceasefire agreement on Tuesday, the Russian army the next day invaded the city of Gori to destroy an army base there, and having helped themselves to a lot of new Nato equipment, they have since stayed. They pushed out towards Tbilisi as far as Igoeti, made feints towards Kutaisi in the west, destroyed a Georgian army base at Synaki, and plundered the port of Poti, destroying several ships. On Saturday, having signed another version of the ceasefire agreement, Russian forces were accused of blowing up a railway bridge in Kaspi, near Igoeti. The Russian defence ministry denied the report.
The apparent disconnection between the frontline troops and the politicians in Moscow has left everyone confused, and it did not help matters on Sunday when the forward commander in Gori, Major-General Vyachislav Borisov, told Reuters news agency that the Russian withdrawal had begun, only to have a defence ministry spokesman contradict him an hour later.
All of which makes it anyone’s guess what the Russians are trying to do. Some believe they are maliciously destroying infrastructure to provoke a humanitarian crisis that will bring down the government, some believe they have a plan to take Georgia one kilometre at a time “like boiling a frog”, said one analyst.
Temur Yakobashvili, Georgia’s minister for reintegration, had an unorthodox explanation: “They are travelling this way and that like envelopes with no postage stamps. They are bored. They have nothing to do.”
That explanation rang the truest of all on Saturday in Igoeti. “Why should we stop fighting? What ceasefire?” said the captain, munching on a peach.
This was not entirely on message with Mr Medvedev, who had just signed the ceasefire on Saturday. On Sunday, Mr Medvedev’s office said that the ceasefire would take effect on Monday and that Russian troops would withdraw then.
The captain confirmed his troops were withdrawing gently, but he did not know why. “I would go to Tbilisi, to teach the Georgians a lesson,” he said. “We have a saying in Russia: those who bring the sword into Russia shall [die by] it.”
