Revisiting the lessons of the Russo-Georgian War

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VAZHA TAVBERIDZE: Let’s start with the legacy and importance of the Tagliavini Report and get the perspective of the person who probably had the most say on it.

HEIDI TAGLIAVINI: Our report was based on the information available in 2008 and early 2009, when it was compiled some 15 years ago. It brought transparency to a dark chapter in the history of the conflict between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Our report also established a number of important standards in international law, in humanitarian law and in human rights. Finally, it calmed down a very heated situation, both in Georgia and internationally.

Crucially, the report was accepted by both sides: the Russian Federation and Georgia. It has been considered a reference document up to now as it states that specific international standards need to be respected. This is relevant far beyond the Russian-Georgian context.

It has been 16 years since the war, has your perspective changed on what happened?

From today’s perspective, the war in Georgia in August 2008 looks somehow like a dress rehearsal for what would later happen in Ukraine. And, in hindsight the report has aged very well. It continues to be valid, especially in the legal field, but also in giving an adequate description of the history and context of the conflict. It defined standards that should be commonly, and internationally, accepted. I can give a few examples. The report developed the whole issue of the legal status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; it elaborated on the right to self-determination or to secession; it also addressed, for the very first time, another extremely important question of the so-called “passportization” issue (a practice whereby Russian authorities would grant Russian citizenship to people living in occupied lands – editor’s note). Another very important chapter that continues to have large implications was the use of force. We elaborated very much in detail who would have had the right to use force at what stage and for what reasons. It looks like almost nobody did. All these elements, especially the legal part, remain valid up to now and also in other international conflicts.

Fifteen years is still a quite a long time. Is there anything you would want to change in it, given the chance today? Any corrections or revelations that you might have had since?

No changes, no corrections, no speculations. The text is still valid, as well as up to date. What we can say today is that, unfortunately, the conclusions that should have been drawn from our report haven’t really been taken into account. In 2009 some countries, especially those of Eastern Europe, were already warning the European Union, asking who would be next [to face Russian aggression]. And this warning was not heeded. But you know what it is like in politics: once a war is over, once a ceasefire or peace has settled in, relations resume. This is normal political practice.

When the report came out, a fierce information battle ensued to use the report as leverage. Who do you think were the winners and losers of the report? Or, rather, who benefitted the most?

At the time the report was published, I thought there were no winners in the war. Today, I would be a bit more cautious as we have the impression that, in the long run, Russia was the winner, and all others the losers. While working on the report, we also had to deal with this huge, uncontrollable cloud of speculations and, therefore, we came to the conclusion that the complete report should be published immediately after its release and presented to those who commissioned the report, which was the European Union Council of Ministers in Brussels. Still, you can’t prevent people from writing what they want, regardless of the facts on the table, but you can try to minimize the harm.

The report was initiated by the EU. It was a concern of Europe and European citizens. Speculations on the report were seen mainly in Georgia and Russia, not in Europe, which means that, internationally and historically, the speculations and abusive interpretations will not persist. What will persist, in my opinion, is the result of our investigation into the facts as well as the legal findings. When somebody today examines the August 2008 war in Georgia, that person will be unable to avoid our report, being the universally-acknowledged reference document. History is a very malleable element, but our report is an expert opinion mandated by an international institution. And, most important, the credibility of this report has been accepted by the Russian Federation and by Georgia.

Yet the Georgian perspective to this day remains that Russia benefitted from it more because of the way it was worded, that Georgia was blamed for starting the war. Was it a just accusation?

This is the Rubicon question, the Tskhinvali shelling. We worked a lot on the exact wording. In the report we call it “the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict”, but it was also the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, of provocations and incidents. This is really the formulation we wanted to give it. I myself worked for five years in the conflict zone between the Georgians and the Abkhaz, and I saw so much tension, more on the South Ossetian side towards 2008, but this tension was a constant feature. And, when I still was working in the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, up to 2006, every summer we established that in South Ossetia there were skirmishes to a greater or lesser extent. The question is, when do you trigger a war? It was that trigger moment which is the headache for the Georgian side, a trigger for a sort of invasion by Russian troops, who, in fact, from a strictly legal point of view, had the right to protect their peacekeepers in South Ossetia. But that was the only force that had the right to be used in the region, so as to free the peacekeepers. They should have withdrawn immediately afterwards, instead of invading Georgia. Unfortunately, from a legal standing, the Tskhinvali shelling was the trigger moment that led to the full-scale invasion. We can speculate a lot about what would have happened had Tskhinvali not been shelled on that night from the 7th to the 8th of August. But this was the trigger moment and that is why we couldn’t have described it another way.

On the Russian peacekeepers – was it truly peacekeeping that they were doing?

Let me refer you to a part of our investigation report, which is called “observations”. We intentionally did not make conclusions in our report, we made observations. One of the most important observations for us was when we stated that no party to a conflict, or party that is strongly supportive of any of the sides, should assume the position of “peacekeeper” as peacekeeping is founded on the notion of impartiality. We couldn’t have said it in any better way, and that is the maximum we, as an independent fact-finding mission, could say. We can’t say “it’s forbidden” because even if you say it is forbidden, you won’t stop it. That was not the purpose of our report. It was not going to result into a policy change in Russia.

Are they still peacekeepers if they aren’t impartial anymore, if they have become party to the conflict themselves?

You can argue like that in legal terms. The report also admits that there were Russian non-peacekeeper forces present in Georgia, but that they did not have a massive influence, and therefore it could not be qualified as a Russian invasion.

So in that vein, if one single solitary Russian tank or soldier crossed the Swiss border, for example, would your country consider it an act of aggression or invasion?

You can’t compare apples with oranges. We said everything in our report. We did not get any document from the Georgian side that would have proved that one tank was already in South Ossetia that was not attributable to the peacekeepers. That is one of the questions we asked the Georgian authorities at the time. We asked for documents to prove the Russian military presence, but what we got did not confirm with 100 per cent certainty that this happened. We were not in a position to get absolute clarity on this question.

I wanted to ask whether the established western dogma at the time – the belief that some common ground was needed with Russia in order to avoid having Russia as an adversary – inadvertently influenced the report?

No, absolutely not. When you look at the EU mandate, which you can find in the first volume of our three-volume report, it says that the independent international fact-finding mission on the conflict in Georgia could work in full independence. And this is exactly what happened. We worked in total independence. One of the purposes at the time was to get more clarity on what really happened. There was a cloud of propaganda surrounding the war and, certainly in the European Union, there was no clear idea of what had been really going on. I was explicitly told: the purpose of the investigation is that we want to understand how to resume relations with Russia and Georgia. The purpose was to step back, look at what happened, look at what we could find, and then after the report, decide on how to continue relations. The post-war period was really an obstacle. You can’t go on with daily business pretending nothing happened. And that was the main aim of the report.

Speculating now, had the report fully blamed Russia, do you think anything would have changed in the way the West approached Russia?

That is very difficult to say. I can certainly say the EU, in principle, wished to have normal relations with both Russia and Georgia. It is clear that it would have been a bit more difficult to go back to “normal” with a report that said no side is innocent in this conflict, that all bear the responsibility. The aim was to bring as much clarity on the crucial questions as we could. We were asked only to assemble the facts, facts that could be assessed as true or factual, and then not draw political conclusions, but merely describe. We were not preparing proceedings for a legal or political tribunal but were on a fact-finding mission in order to better understand the conflict and the underlying situation.

Thus, the report concluded that there is some blame to be attributed to each party involved?

No, I would say that’s just one part of a much broader investigation. All sides made mistakes in the legal field, as I mentioned already. The fact that distributing Russian passports on a massive scale is considered contrary to international law; the fact that supporting separatism, as we called it, is not supportive of a peaceful coexistence; and, most importantly, that no party had the right to use force, except Russia in one very specific case, i.e. solely to free their peacekeepers. There are many other facts that could be mentioned. If you read the whole legal part it says enough about where a conflict can go and that it can be triggered by a side event. But the responsibilities are shared. We also stated that the Russian claims of Georgians committing genocide are not substantiated – we couldn’t find any indications of genocide. But we did find signs of ethnic cleansing committed by the South Ossetians and that the Russian armed forces did not prevent it. There is a whole range of findings which came out of this report, and they are all important.

In an interview several years ago, former President Mikheil Saakashvili told me that signing off on the report’s findings was contingent to receiving humanitarian assistance from the EU, totalling over four billion euros. Could you shed more light on this?

I have absolutely no information of such a declaration on the basis of the report to the EU Council of Ministers. I presented the report to the EU Council in September 2009, and there was an ensuing discussion, but I have no idea what former President Saakashvili is alluding to.

Do you expect a similar investigation to be launched into the Ukraine war, whenever it ends?

It is very difficult to say. It depends on the outcome of the war. I believe every conflict, minor or major, should be thoroughly investigated to avoid any legends, wrong narratives and speculations. The problem is that you must have the parties agree, though you can still investigate if the parties do not cooperate. You will still have a very rich material basis on which you or future historians can work and try to establish what happened, but it will not have the same impact. I believe this is really important, especially in the times we are currently going through, where we often have difficulties understanding where the truth lies.

Heidi Tagliavini is a former Swiss diplomat. She was charged with leading the European Union’s fact-finding investigation into the causes of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. She also represented the OSCE in the 2015 negotiations concerning the Minsk II agreement related to Russia’s war in Donbas.

Vazha Tavberidze is a Georgian journalist and staff writer with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. His writing has been published in various Georgian and international media outlets, including The Times, the Spectator, the Daily Beast and New Eastern Europe.

2008 war, Georgia, Russia