INTERVIEW: Russia not to blame for Caucasus war threat

Published: Thursday 8 May 2008

Speaking to EurActiv on the day the new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took office, Vladimir Chizhov, the Russian ambassador to the EU, put the full blame on Georgia for the military build-up in the South Caucasus and portrayed his country as a whistleblower for the region.
The Russian Ambassador downplayed the Russian military build-up in Abkhazia, describing it as a legitimate response to "a continued and increasing illegitimate military presence of Georgia in the upper Kodori gorge, the only part of Abkhazia under Georgian control".
There is a threat of war in South Caucasus, Chizhov said, but he firmly placed the blame on Georgia for trying to solve by force its conflicts with the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Chizhov dismissed statements by the deputy Prime Minister of Georgia Temur Iakobashvili, who said in Brussels on 6 May that Georgia was very close to war with Russia. Instead, he presented his country as a whistleblower, drawing the EU's attention to the problem, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did, in his words, on the occasion of his meeting with the EU Troika on 29 April.
Chizhov also denied that Russia had triggered tensions in Abkhazia as a response to Kosovo's independence. He rather blamed the Kosovo precedent for spin-offs as far as Bolivia.
Commenting on the inauguration, on the same day, of President Dmitry Medvedev, Chizhov said he believed that "later, this day will be called historic". He dismissed speculation about a possible future power struggle between the new president and Putin, who is set to be sworn in as the new prime minister today.
"You will not live to see this happen," Chizhov said, stressing the excellent relations and the shared values between Putin and Medvedev.
The ambassador also downplayed the fact that the negotiations over a new legal base between the EU and Russia are blocked because of objections by Lithuania on a number of issues, including legacies from the common past between the two countries.
"It seems that some of the newcomers brought their ghosts of the past into the European Union. And they have succeeded in testing European solidarity. I have nothing against European solidarity. What I don't like is when my country is being used as a testing ground for that principle," Chizhov said.

To read the interview in full, please click here.

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