Putin Asserts Link Between U.S. Election and Georgia War
By Philip P. Pan and Jonathan FinerWashington Post Foreign ServiceFriday, August 29, 2008; A06
MOSCOW, Aug. 29 -- Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he had reason to think U.S. personnel were in the combat zone during the recent war in Georgia, adding that if confirmed, their presence suggested "someone in the United States" provoked the conflict to help one of the candidates in the American presidential race.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called the claim "ridiculous," likening it to Putin saying that "extraterrestrials were also there."
In Putin's first extended remarks defending
Russia's military intervention in Georgia, which has drawn international condemnation, he blamed the Bush administration for failing to stop Georgian leaders from launching the Aug. 7 attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia that sparked the war.
Speaking on
CNN, Putin argued that the U.S. policy of training and supplying weapons to the Georgian army had emboldened the country to abandon long-standing negotiations over the future of South Ossetia and to try instead to seize the region by force, an assault that resulted in the deaths of Russian soldiers stationed there as peacekeepers.
Putin suggested that
U.S. military advisers were working with Georgian forces that clashed with the Russian army, a prospect he described as "very dangerous."
"Even during the Cold War, during the harsh confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, even more so between our military personnel," he said in the interview, portions of which were also broadcast on Russian national television. "Ordinary experts, even if they teach military affairs, should not do so in combat zones, but in training areas and training centers," he added.
Putin said he based his assertions on information provided to him by the Russian military, but he offered no evidence and cautioned that his "suspicions" required further confirmation.
Earlier in the day, a senior Russian military official said at a news briefing that Russian troops had recovered an American passport in the rubble of a village near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, where a Georgian special forces unit had been based during the war.
"What was the purpose of that gentleman being among the special forces, and what is he doing today, I so far cannot answer," said Col. Gen.
Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the general staff, holding up an enlarged color photocopy of the passport. He identified its owner as Michael Lee White, a resident of Houston, born in 1967, state-owned Vesti television reported.
Saakashvili, in an interview Friday morning with
The Washington Post, dismissed the passport report as "typical tricks."
"I wish we had Americans and American weapons, but it's not the case," he said. "They are living in a parallel world, with a parallel perception. If you say a lie in Russia, it becomes the truth the next day on TV."
In Washington,
White House spokeswoman
Dana Perino said Putin's allegations were "patently false" and sounded "not rational." She added: "It also sounds like his defense officials who said they believe this to be true are giving him really bad advice."
Saakashvili said that American military training provided to Georgia's army in recent years had focused on peacekeeping and counterinsurgency warfare.
Fewer than 100 U.S. military advisers were said to have been stationed in Georgia before the war began, and they have kept a low profile since Russian tanks and bombers routed Georgian forces in a five-day campaign that left them in control of about a third of Georgian territory.
Putin said that if U.S. citizens were present in the combat zone, they would have been "performing official duties, and they may only do this on orders from their supervisors, not at their own initiative."
"If my conjecture is confirmed, then it raises the suspicion that someone in the United States deliberately created this conflict in order to worsen the situation and create an advantage . . . for one of the candidates for the post of president of the United States," he said. "And if this is a fact, it is nothing other than the use of so-called administrative resources in a domestic political struggle, and in the worst, bloodiest form as well."
When the CNN correspondent, Matthew Chance, expressed skepticism, Putin argued that the Bush administration faced difficulties in the Middle East and
Afghanistan, as well as economic difficulties.
"A small, victorious war is needed," Putin said. "And if you don't succeed, it's possible to shift the blame on us, turn us into the enemy against the backdrop of rah-rah patriotism to rally the country again around certain political forces. I am surprised that you are surprised at what I say. It's obvious."
Putin did not specify which U.S. presidential candidate he believed the Georgian crisis was intended to help, but the official
RIA-Novosti news agency quoted experts as saying it had boosted the campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen.
John McCain.
Asked whether the war had strained his personal relationship with
President Bush, Putin replied: "Of course, it undermined our relationship, the relationship between the nations above all."
Putin said he told Bush in a conversation at the Olympic Games in Beijing that Georgia had attacked South Ossetia and that the Russian government had been unable to contact the Georgian leadership. "George responded to me -- I have already talked about this publicly -- that no one wants war," Putin said. "We had hoped that the U.S. administration would intervene in the conflict and stop the aggressive actions of the Georgian leadership. None of this happened." As a result, he said, Russia was forced to respond militarily. "We are a peace-loving nation . . . but if someone believes they can come to kill us, using our own land as a cemetery, then these people should reflect on the implications of such policies."
At the
United Nations, the United States and European governments condemned Russia in a public meeting of the Security Council, saying its recognition of Georgia's breakaway provinces had undermined efforts to reach an agreement on a U.N. resolution endorsing a cease-fire. The United States and
France called for the establishment of a U.N. fact-finding mission to probe reports of human rights abuses during the conflict. They also pressed Russia to complete its withdrawal from Georgian territory and to provide access for humanitarian aid workers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Finer reported from Tbilisi, Georgia. Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
August 29, 2008
Putin Suggests U.S. Provocation in Georgia Clash
By
CLIFFORD J. LEVYMOSCOW — As
Russia struggled to rally international support for its military action in
Georgia,
Vladimir V. Putin, the country’s paramount leader, lashed out at the United States on Thursday, contending that the White House may have orchestrated the conflict to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election.
Mr. Putin’s comments in a television interview, his most extensive to date on Russia’s decision to send troops into Georgia earlier this month, sought to present the military operation as a response to brazen, cold war-style provocations by the United States. In tones that seemed alternately angry and mischievous, he suggested that the Bush administration may have tried to create a crisis that would influence American voters in the choice of a successor to President Bush.
“The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States,” Mr. Putin said in an interview with CNN.
He added, “They needed a small victorious war.”
Mr. Putin did not specify which candidate he had in mind, but there was no doubt that he was referring to Senator
John McCain, the Republican. Mr. McCain is loathed in the Kremlin because he has a close relationship with Georgia’s president,
Mikheil Saakashvili, and has called for imposing stiff penalties on Russia, including throwing it out of the
Group of 8 industrialized nations.
Mr. Putin offered scant evidence to support his assertion, and the White House called his comments absurd. But they underscored the depth of the rift between Moscow and Washington over the Georgia crisis, which flared three weeks ago when the Georgian military tried to reclaim a breakaway enclave allied with Russia. They also suggested that the Russian leader was deeply concerned about the possibility that Mr. McCain, widely viewed here as having a strong bias against Russia, could become president.
Only last spring, Mr. Putin, the president at the time, held a summit meeting with Mr. Bush in which the two expressed personal affection for each other and sought to smooth over tensions in the bilateral relationship.
Russia has been struggling to persuade the outside world to back its action in Georgia. On Thursday, China and four other countries meeting with Russia for the annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance, declined to back Russia’s military action in a joint communiqué.
Mr. Putin’s interview came after his protégé, President
Dmitri A. Medvedev, spoke to several foreign news outlets this week as part of a concerted move by the Kremlin to counter Georgia’s public relations offensive in the international media. Mr. Medvedev’s tone was less harsh, though he also criticized the West.
On Thursday, Mr. Putin, now prime minister, also said Russian defense officials believed that United States citizens were in the conflict area supporting the Georgian military when it attacked the separatist region of
South Ossetia.
“Even during the cold war, during the time of tough confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we have always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, let alone our servicemen,” Mr. Putin said. “We have serious reasons to believe that directly, in the combat zone, citizens of the United States were present.”
“If the facts are confirmed,” he added, “that United States citizens were present in the combat zone, that means only one thing — that they could be there only on the direct instruction of their leadership. And if this is so, then it means that American citizens are in the combat zone, performing their duties, and they can only do that following a direct order from their leader, and not on their own initiative.”
In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, dismissed Mr. Putin’s remarks. “To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational,” she said.
She added, “It also sounds like his defense officials who said they believe this to be true are giving him really bad advice.”
A senior Russian defense official, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday that Russian forces had found a United States passport in a ruined building near Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. The position, he said, had been occupied by Georgian Interior Ministry forces.
“What was the gentleman’s purpose of being among the special forces and what he is doing today, I so far cannot answer,” General Nogovitsyn said, holding up what he said was a color copy of the passport. He said members of the Georgian unit had been killed, and the building destroyed.
When the war broke out, the United States had about 130 military trainers in Georgia preparing Georgian troops for service in Iraq. The American Embassy in Tbilisi said these trainers were not involved in the fighting; about 100 remain and are assisting with the delivery of aid to Georgia that is arriving on military planes and ships.
General Nogovitsyn said the passport was in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas, but gave no information on whether Russians believed that he was a member of the United States military. The United States Embassy in Georgia told The Associated Press that it had no information on the matter.
Mr. Putin said in the CNN interview that Russia had thought that the United States would prevent Georgia from attacking South Ossetia, but suggested that he now believed that the Bush administration encouraged Mr. Saakashvili to send in his military.
“The American side in fact armed and trained the Georgian Army,” Mr. Putin said. “Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in interethnic conflicts? It’s easier to arm one of the sides and push it into the murder of the other side, and it’s over. It seemed like an easy solution. The thing is, it turns out that it’s not always so.”
The Georgia conflict has become a flash point in the United States presidential campaign, with Senator McCain assailing what he refers to as “revanchist Russia” and asserting that he is far more qualified to handle such a crisis than the Democratic candidate, Senator
Barack Obama.
Mr. McCain has long been friendly with Mr. Saakashvili, who has said he talks to Mr. McCain regularly. Mr. McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Georgian government, and Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, traveled to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, this week on a humanitarian aid mission.
All these ties, combined with Mr. McCain’s criticism of Russia, have earned him a kind of notoriety in Moscow. When Parliament passed a resolution this week urging that Russia recognize the independence of the two breakaway enclaves, some lawmakers not only praised the courage of the South Ossetians, but also threw a few barbs at Mr. McCain.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.
