Currently, the only visible winner of the Ukrainian war is the NATO pact, which, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has a permanent justification for its existence, which it has been desperately seeking since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
When in 2004 Mikheil Saakashvili became the president of Georgia, was considered a pro-Western politician, a "fighter against corruption and poverty". He promised his voters at the time that he would use all means to bring Tbilisi back under his control Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which seceded from Georgia through an armed struggle after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in which most of the inhabitants received Russian citizenship after the secession.
Saakashvili in 2008 ordered an army attack on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they say at the urging of unnamed Western allies. Then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the Georgian army's intervention "genocide" and accused Washington of supporting Tbilisi. Russia intervened militarily in Georgia, defeated its army after five days of war, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia remained independent and pro-Russian. The West protested tepidly, for the sake of order, the dust settled quickly, and Georgia returned to battling its own demons.
Saakashvili was deposed in 2013, after the change of government, a warrant was issued for him on charges of corruption, and he found refuge in the USA. His colorful political career continued in 2015, when the then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko granted him Ukrainian citizenship, declared him his adviser, and then the governor of Odessa. Poroshenko quickly pounced on him because they "diverged politically," and he founded an opposition movement and organized rallies in Kiev demanding Poroshenko's ouster. A picture of him on the roof of the building where he lived, to which he fled threatening to kill himself when the police tried to arrest him, went around the world.
Deceptive truce
On first sight, situation in Ukraine reminds of what happened in Georgia. Ukraine, like Georgia, was "encouraged" at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 to prepare for membership in the Alliance. In 2014, the "orange" Maidan revolution broke out in Ukraine, in which the pro-Russian government was replaced (Saakashvili "Rose Revolution" at the end of 2007 he replaced the old Soviet paper Eduard Shevarnadze, his former mentor). In 2014, the new Ukrainian government promised Ukrainians quick entry into the European Union and NATO, so that Russia would annexed Crimea, where its Black Sea fleet is based, and Donetsk and Luhansk regions declared independence from Ukraine with the blessing of Russia. After fierce conflicts and numerous victims, a truce was signed in 2015, although in the following eight years the conflict was almost constantly on the verge of war, with regular cross-border shooting and shelling from both sides.
Then the situation escalated this year. The fighting of the rebel areas with the Ukrainian army intensified, with mutual accusations; Russia, unlike Abkhazia and South Ossetia, eventually officially recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
A different kind of war
And that's where the similarity with Georgia ends. Unlike the lightning five-day war of 2008, in which the Russian army entered the territory of Georgia, helped the fighters of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and retreated, Vladimir Putin ordered a general attack on the whole of Ukraine on February 24. Months before that, he claimed that such an attack would not happen and that Russia only wanted to protect the people of Luhansk and Donetsk "from genocide".
Although it is nominally a part of Europe, no matter how strategically important Georgia is, it is still a small country on the border of Eurasia with less than five million inhabitants. Ukraine is an integral part of Europe with almost 45 million inhabitants.
The purpose of NATO's existence
Russia's irrational attack on the whole of Ukraine pushed this country into a war, about which at this moment the only thing that is known for sure is that that country and its inhabitants are suffering terrible suffering and destruction, that the attack on Ukraine and Russia will have serious consequences (without any reason visible benefits), and that the consequences of that war will certainly be felt by the whole of Europe, as well as the rest of the world.
Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/ Pool Photo via AP)Target of the Russian attack: Volodymyr Zelensky / Photo: Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/ Pool Photo via AP
Currently, the only visible winner of that war is the NATO pact, which, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has a permanent justification for its existence, which it has been desperately seeking since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And as for the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the current president of Ukraine Volodomir Zelenskyi: the political clown Saakashvili was directly responsible for what happened in Georgia in 2008 with his decisions; Zelensky is a former comedian, he has innumerable political sins and gaffes, but the tragedy in which Ukraine is suffocating now would have happened even if he had been a wizard.
Momir Turudić
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