Held at 13:00 CET, Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Good morning. The President of Georgia will make a brief statement, then answer questions.
PRESIDENT:
I’d like to briefly describe the situation. Russian tanks have advanced
since morning, and moved into the town Gori. They have destroyed
buildings, blown up and rampaged through houses. There has been looting
by Russian troops, shooting at some people, theft of furniture,
computers, everything valuable.
They are now on the main road
leading from West to East, blocking the capital’s bloodline, 50km from
Tbilisi. They have cut Georgia in half, West and East. The capital is
now in some sort of economic blockade.
Regarding the
situation in Abkhazia, South Ossetia: two things. First, the Russians
have rampaged through Georgian-populated areas of South Ossetia,
representing roughly half of what was South Ossetia. They have
ethnically cleansed the population. They have separated men from women
and set up internment camps for men in the area of Kouta. There are
reports of summary executions. There is also looting in several
villages.
In Upper Abkhazia, they have expelled practically
the entire ethnic Georgian population. The town of Tskhinvali, at the
moment when we left, was heavily bombarded. It was totally levelled.
They turned it into a sort of second Grozny. We demanded immediate
access for the international community, so that they could verify who
was responsible. All indications are that the Russians deliberately
levelled the city – they destroyed the place. We also have economic
sabotage, a humanitarian crisis, and predatory incursions.
One
might ask why. I think they’re not just trying to kill a country, but
the ideal of free democracy and successful prosperity. They want to
show the west who is boss. They’ve tried to cut off energy lines, using
their Iskander missiles against pipelines. CNN qualifies them as
missiles of mass destruction. This is the latest technology Russia has
at its disposal. They used two of them against the pipeline. They
dropped dozens of bombs on the pipelines, they’ve bombed the seaports,
they managed to bomb our oil terminal in the Black Sea. They also want
to punish our democracy, and that’s where we find ourselves now.
Gregory Pfeiffer, National Public Radio:
Given everything you’re saying now, and that Moscow says, or at least
foreign minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday said he doesn’t even want to
talk to you, how do you envision peace talks to go forward, and when?
How optimistic are you that there will be talks at all?
PRESIDENT:
What we have on the ground is certainly very difficult. President
Sarkozy was here yesterday. He brought the framework conditions for a
ceasefire, and there were certainly unconditional provisions for
ceasing hostilities, not resorting to force, free humanitarian
corridors, separation of forces. That’s not happening yet, even if
Russia yesterday announced that they were ceasing fire, they are
continuing, and they’ve been escalating. It’s hard to say.
It’s
not about Georgia any more. You know, if Russia gets away with this, I
can predict now that the Baltic countries will be next, Ukraine may be
attacked. We’ve seen them – as ruthless, as lawless, as brutal, as
arrogant as they can get. They go unchecked. The world community should
speak with one voice. We need a big humanitarian relief operation, like
the Berlinairlift, because the capital is blocked from all sides. It’s
one and a half million people, it’s a modern European city, and it
needs a lifeline. The main thing is that if the West fails, it will
have tremendous consequences for the years to come.
Gregory Pfeiffer, National Public Radio: How do you envision talks going forward? Are you prepared to talk to Moscow?
PRESIDENT:
We’ve been prepared to talk to Moscow the whole way through. When they
started to shoot at us, when they started to move tanks in on the 7th
of August, we were frantically calling them. I called Prime Minister
Putin, and his secretary told me to call back. We were calling them the
whole way through, asking them to do something, and they wouldn’t
respond. Did Stalin respond to the Finns in 1939? Did the Soviet Union
respond to the Hungarians in 1956 or the Czechs in 1968?
For
more than a year, they’ve been building infrastructure across our
borders. In normal democracies, with a free press, people would ask why
the army is building installations at the neighbouring country’s
border. In Russia, they’ve been running propaganda that we’re American
proxies that want to undermine Russia – it’s the worst wartime
propaganda.
I’ve been talking to the West, asking “Why don’t
you do something?” They’ve been saying “You’re exaggerating; Russia’s
not going to do anything.” Now look what they’re doing. This has
already exceeded my worst expectations.
Fred Kemp: hello, President Saakashvili, good to hear your voice.
PRESIDENT: Good to hear your voice as well. You’re aware of what’s happening, right?
Fred Kemp:
Of course, we talked to your Ambassador yesterday and we want to keep
in touch with what’s going on at the Atlantic Council and Bloomberg
News. I wonder if you could tell me what it is you need most from the
US and Europeans now, and have you made specific requests, and what has
been the specific response to the requests?
PRESIDENT:
What we need now, absolutely urgently, are airlifts – of food,
medicines, because we’re a modern country, but we weren’t prepared for
a long war. That’s a key – a lifeline – something comparable to the
Berlin airlift. We also need secure communications, a monitored
ceasefire that can be monitored by international monitors, and we need
peacekeepers on the ground that would come from impartial countries
immediately. If this doesn’t happen, things will escalate again.
Georgia
is a country of five million people. If there are twelve hundred
Russian tanks running around the country, rampaging, looting, killing,
this would be such a disaster. We already have people who have fled
their homes, tens of thousands of them at this stage. It might go to
hundreds of thousands. We are talking to the UNHCR, and they estimate
that there are already 100,000 displaced persons from the last few
days. One hundred thousand! And it might climb to 180,000. This is a
humanitarian catastrophe of huge dimensions, unfolding in the eyes of
the world. And it’s in Europe.
Fred Kemp: What has been the response of the US, of the European Union to these specific requests so far?
PRESIDENT:
Frankly, it has not been adequate. It has not been adequate. They’re
talking about a negotiated ceasefire, how this side should do this,
this side should do that – it’s appeasement. Appeasement in 1938
brought tens of millions of deaths to Europe. Georgia is first, like
Czechoslovakia was first in 1938, then Poland followed, then the rest
of Europe followed, then there was the greatest humanitarian
catastrophe the world has ever seen.
People should wake up.
It’s not about Georgia. The bombs they were dropping on us had “This is
for NATO” written on the side. We need real actions, not just
consolation, or solidarity. Solidarity matters. But when people get
hungry, when they’re roofless, that’s not going to do the trick. Russia
did this because they thought that nobody would intervene. So far,
that’s been confirmed.
Ian Traynor, The Guardian: I
wonder, in terms of the Sarkozy negotiations, could you give us any
details? Would you be prepared, for example, to sign a non-use-of-force
agreement? Could you envisage Georgian peacekeepers playing any
continued role in South Ossetia, for example?
PRESIDENT:
We’ve been prepared all along to sign a non-use-of-force agreement. But
we’ve always asked for international verification on the ground.
Otherwise, it makes no sense. What we’ve been expressing with Sarkozy
is – who’s going to verify? Who’s going to check? I don’t care if it’s
Georgians, or French, or Ukrainian, as far as they’re impartial and
they protect the population. What we’re seeing now on the ground is the
long-standing effort to purify this area. No population, no problem –
Stalin’s slogan. No Georgia, no problem! They’ve done it in Silesia,
they’ve done it in Karelia, now they’re doing it in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. They’ve thrown out the last elements of the Georgian
population, now they’re destroying the rest of Georgia so it’s so
crippled it can never get up off its knees again.
Russian
peacekeepers are like the fox guarding the chickens. We had sixteen
years of peacekeeping by the Russians – and their peacekeepers were the
ones that were shooting first! Of course we’ve been discussing
internationalisation, we’ve been discussing non-use of force, we’ve
been discussing the international guarantees for autonomy and security
and all sorts of things. But the first thing that should have been done
is an immediate ceasefire, and it’s exactly what’s not happening.
Ian Traynor, The Guardian:
The European Union foreign ministers are currently meeting in Brussels,
discussing the situation in Georgia. If there’s an agreement on an
international presence in Georgia, will Russian forces also be taking
part in Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
PRESIDENT: In
Abkhazia, it’s out of the question at this stage, because of what the
peacekeepers did. In Abkhazia we have 6-700 Russian tanks, ethnically
purifying Abkhazia, depriving it of 85% of its pre-conflict population.
Now, for an interim period, there can be some Russian peacekeepers, but
we all know that these are not peacekeepers, they’re Russian soldiers.
So a limited Russian peacekeeping force, for a limited time in a
limited zone – maybe. And just in South Ossetia.
But who will
be willing to replace them? Georgia has always wanted international
peacekeepers and mediation. We heartily welcomed the German peace plan.
We welcomed every EU initiative on these issues. We’ve always welcomed
bringing other people into the negotiations, because on our own against
Russia, well, I knew it was just asking for trouble, and that’s what’s
happened.
Stefan Cornelius, South German News: going
back a few days, I’d like to ask you what made you decide to put the
forces into South Ossetia on Thursday night after declaring a halt of
weapons at that point.
PRESIDENT: I am sickened by the
speculation that Georgia started anything first. We clearly responded
to the Russians. Ossetian separatists are supported by the Russian
forces, and they were shooting at us for days and days. They were
killing people. We declared a ceasefire, hoping to stop the violence.
On the day I was supposed to go to the Olympics, 15 minutes before I
was supposed to leave, I got off the plane, because I felt something
was going wrong. I called Javier Solana, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer,
friendly presidents, asking them to contact Russia, because they
wouldn’t respond to us. We wanted to know what was going on. It was
very unusual – we had provocations in the past, but this was very
unusual.
The point here is that around eleven o’clock, Russian
tanks started to move into Georgian territory, 150 at first. And that
was a clear-cut invasion. That was the moment when we started to open
fire with artillery, because otherwise they would have crossed the
bridge and moved into Tskhinvali. The problem is that on the way, there
were villages that didn’t have any military personnel in them, because
we weren’t preparing for this. We only had lightly-armed police. So,
once they crossed the village, they could move quickly through the
villages, then on to Tskhinvali.
They have been building up
troops all year. Can you imagine that somebody would bring 1200 tanks
into another country within a few hours? It takes months and months.
Even the United States couldn’t do it in that short an amount of time.
So it’s another Russian fiction. When they shot down our UAV, they said
it was war provocation. When they were bombing our territory, they said
there were Georgian planes bombing their territory. You know, Finland
also attacked the Soviet Union, according to Stalin. Poland also
attacked Germany. Small countries always attack, and then get occupied.
It’s high time for people to understand what’s going on.
I’ve
heard talk of this being a hot-headed nationalist response. Excuse me –
what do you mean, response? We were being invaded, occupied, killed –
and to suggest that responding to that would be hot-headed nationalism,
frankly, would be immoral. I’m astonished that, in the 21st century,
that would be possible. My only gamble here was to try to build a free
society and a free country. And the Russians are now saying that this
is going to fail. My response is that no matter what we do, we’re not
going to give up. We had the biggest rally ever in Tbilisi yesterday.
This was a time that there were rumours, bombings, there were 200,000
people in the streets despite the fact that people were saying they
might bomb the demonstration. Everything’s possible. People showed up
en masse. If you have 200,000 people in the streets, that should show
you something. Democracy cannot be defeated only by tanks.
But
democracies can be betrayed. And it is true that many people in the
world are still underestimating the threat, and looking for all kinds
of justifications for why they shouldn’t act. For me, frankly, not
giving us a MAP was a signal to Russia. They got the signal. No matter
what the justification was, publicly, the Russians got the message.
They took it as a signal to attack. I’ve been waiting for the attack
for months, warning Western leaders about this. They kept saying that
“this is not going to happen, that [I] was exaggerating.” I told them
they would bomb us. “Oh, no, no, Russians would never bomb anybody.”
The scale of the invasion is bigger than the first days of Afghanistan
or Prague or Budapest, that’s for sure.
Stefan Cornelius, South German News: What did you hope to achieve militarily?
PRESIDENT:
We were trying to stop them at the border – we were late. Once they got
to Tskhinvali, they could march on the capital. We tried to stop them
in the mountains before Tskhinvali, but we were too late and there were
too many of them. I know very well that Russian forces are so
overwhelming that – well, we knew they were on the border, but when 150
tanks started to come in, we either would have stopped them before the
bridge, in the Roki tunnel, or they would have got to Tskhinvali and
got to anywhere.
But for the last year, they’ve been building
this infrastructure near the Roki tunnel. Remember the railway troops
in Abkhazia? They built tank bases without putting tanks in them. The
West said that they couldn’t confirm all this. Looks like the Georgian
intelligence services were the best. But to sum up, you resist or you
surrender. We had an obligation to resist, I think. It seems very
rational. What was our choice?
Patricia Corrigan, CBS News: do you feel like you were baited into this by the Russians, and given recent history could you not have anticipated this?
PRESIDENT:
It’s not about being baited, it’s about being attacked. Tell me any
other democracy that wouldn’t respond. You either surrender or you
respond. We are not going to surrender. It’s a question of morality,
duty, obligation towards your constitution and your people. That’s it.
And the magnitude of the Russian response was foreseeable. The Western
response was not really predictable.
But I didn’t really expect
a military response – I expected the world to speak with one voice.
We’ve been warning them that there was a large-scale Russian invasion
coming. What more could we do? We knew very well that increasing the
military budget was a bit quixotic. But we also watch Russian
television, and we saw it was coming. The kind of propaganda they were
running – it looked like they were going to attack. One week before the
invasion, the Russian military were handing out leaflets saying “We
should liberate Georgia from Saakashvili, they’re suffering.” We have
these papers.
Yesterday, my wife visited downed Russian pilots
in a hospital in Tbilisi – and just so you know, they’re being looked
after just fine. They were spouting the same propaganda about Georgia.
They’ve been indoctrinated to criticise us when they’ve been killing
all these people over the past few days. This conflict never should
have happened.
Nina Donahue, Fox News: we were briefed
yesterday by high-level State Dept officials. They were downplaying
this, saying it was just a flare-up. What I’m asking is, has the US
completely underestimated Russia’s ambitions?
PRESIDENT:
I think they did. Senator McCain was quite right, saying “We are all
Georgians now.” Barack Obama also made a statement. But your State
Department underestimated them. They were saying that Russia was just
playing games. I asked about what would happen if they crossed the
line. They said that it’d be a big mistake. Well, it’s a weak
consolation that Russia’s made a mistake. And the West has made the
mistake of underestimating them.
But this is also because
Georgia is so successful. We were the darling of the World Bank, number
16 or 17 in terms of business environment, leaders in terms of foreign
direct investment in the region. We have the lowest corruption in the
area, one of the lowest in Europe. We had 12% growth last year, and
this year we were anticipating 11%. And of course the Russians were
going nuts, because even with their oil and gas we were doing better
economically. They tried to undermine us with an economic embargo, they
blew up power lines. Some people were calling us paranoid.
Nina Donahue, Fox News: What would you like to see the US doing now?
PRESIDENT:
I think America should clearly organise resistance among Western
countries. They have lots of leverage to stop Russian aggression.
America’s prestige and reputation in the region is at stake. There’s
lots of costs that the US should impose on Russia, and this should
happen. Otherwise, this is going to continue. The reputation that
America has gained since the Cold War is going to hell right now. This
is tragic. I lived in the US, I like America. Some people have said
we’re building a little America here – we’re a free European country
based on the rule of law, democracy and an open society. They’re
American and European values – and historically and geographically,
we’re a European country.
So that’s what’s happening here, and
I would like to thank you, all of you, for joining me on this call.
Please, tell the world the truth. Russia is out there spreading
propaganda. They have so many resources at their disposal. It’s typical
war-time propaganda. They levelled Tskhinvali, and they said the
Georgians did it. They showed wounded Georgians and said they were
wounded South Ossetians wounded by Georgians. They talk about me like a
hot-headed dictator. They are all over the place. There are also
politicians in some countries that, for pragmatic reasons, are willing
to swallow all of this. So please, global democracy is at stake. Please
tell the world the truth. The Russians are killing this issue, and
they’re going to kill our country.
Nina Donahue, Fox News: Can I ask one more question?
PRESIDENT: Of course.
Nina Donahue, Fox News: Can you describe the situation on the ground around Tblisi?
PRESIDENT:
Yes. The Russians have blocked off the main roads and surrounded the
capital. People are trying to flee – we’re talking about hundreds of
thousands of displaced persons and a humanitarian disaster. The city is
normal. Cars are driving around. Electricity and water supplies are
functioning, shops are open. The police are regulating law and order.
But
in other parts of the country, the police are not trained to withstand
Russian tanks. They are there to establish law and order. Russian
troops are bombing the police, and trying to ensure destabilisation and
economic collapse. They are good at destroying other countries, and
they are implementing this here. Thank you, goodbye.
