The most serious result of the five-day Russian-Georgian war was the emergence of a new entity in the South Caucasus, which is South Ossetia, Caucasus Institute Director Alexander Iskandaryan said during a roundtable discussion focusing on South Ossetia and Abkhazia earlier this week.

The leading political analyst explained that during the years of struggle for independence in the early 1990s, unlike Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia saw no ethnic cleansings and the population there included both Georgians and Ossetians.

“Every person who was going from Tskhinvali to Vladikavkaz (the capitals of South Ossetia formally in Georgia and North Ossetia in Russia) had to pass through Georgian villages and a vehicle could drive through only when everything was calm,” Iskandaryan said, adding that while legally South Ossetia could be equaled to the rest of the unrecognized republics, unlike them it did not constitute an integral entity as Ossetian authority did not spread to the whole of its territory. The situation changed completely after the five-day war, Iskandaryan says, since there are no Georgians left in South Osssetia now and there will be no Georgians there in the near future either.

“Until recently a Georgian could take a minibus in Tbilisi and reach South Ossetia within just half an hour in order to sell his tomatoes at the Tskhinvali market. Imagine if an Azeri brought pomegranates from Gyanja to sell it in Stepanakert. It is unimaginable. And now it is likewise unimaginable that a Georgian will go to Tskhinvali,” Iskandaryan says and concludes: “A new political entity only a few hours’ drive away from Armenia has emerged there.”

Still, Iskandaryan says there is a lingering question whether there is such an entity as South Ossetia or it is the continuation of Russia: “Russia had, has and will continue to have its presence in South Ossetia. It is a fact, and the Georgian enclaves that once existed there will no longer exist. [Ossetian] refugees, on whom large expenses are being made, will return and South Ossetia will become a mono-ethnic republic.”

Another conclusion drawn by Iskandaryan is that despite Russia’s overall military success in Georgia, the operations there also revealed just how inefficient the Russian military machine is.
“Russia’s victory was not a surprise, but the way it was achieved is surprising,” Iskandaryan said, bringing as an example the fact that no landing operation in Tskhinvali was attempted and that the deployment of troops from Russia into South Ossetian territory through the Roki tunnel took 18 hours, which, according to the analyst, is very late by military standards.

Iskandaryan also said that supremacy in the air cost Russia four aircraft, including a Tu-22 bomber which is designed to locate and destroy long-range targets, including aircraft carriers, in the open ocean.

The analyst attributes these failures to the old-fashioned structure in the Russian army and its inefficient chain of command that squanders much time when crucial orders must be made. Thus, for example, a commander of Russian land troops who wants to engage aviation in his ongoing operations is supposed to make a written report to the chief of general staff, who will be forwarding it to the minister of defense and the latter to the president, who is the commander-in-chief.

“And this report should be forwarded in person, which takes much time,” Iskandaryan explains.

Despite this, Iskandaryan continued, the Georgian army that had been trained by American instructors for several years suffered a collapse as soon as they heard that the Russian troops were on the move and that collapse spread to other bodies of Georgian government.

Iskandaryan says that a weakened Georgia is another serious change in the region: “The collapse of the government system cannot last forever. The Russians will leave sooner or later, the roads and bridges will be rebuilt, the United States will give money, Ukraine will provide equipment, but the image of Georgia as an effective state and an example of development and democracy is ruined.”