Russia Media Watch Comparative Media Analysis
To underscore this point, we offer two articles – one by the U.S. mainstream New York Times and another from the Russian newspaper Kommersant – covering the alleged mutiny against Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili at a Georgian military base on May 5.
The reader will notice that the coverage is almost identical with several caveats. The New York Times article from the outset focuses on Saakashvili’s position that Russia or elements within Russia stood behind the mutiny. Kommersant reports but also reflects suspicion of Saakashvili’s interpretation of the events regarding ‘Russian involvement in a conspiracy to overthrow him’ and install a puppet regime loyal to Moscow. Both articles use Russian Foreign Ministry officials’ rejection of Saakashvili’s version of events. While the Times uses “one Georgian” questioning Saakashvili’s version of events, Kommersant cites the Georgian opposition’s rejection of Saakasvili’s version but also a Georgian expert suggesting Russia’s involvement may have been real. The reader can decide which approach, if either, is the more objective one but will be compelled to acknowledge that the comparison between the NYT and Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, casts a greater shadow of doubt on U.S.’ media claims that Russians have no access to objective reporting.
It should be noted that Kommersant is available at newsstands mostly in Moscow and rarely in other cities but is available to readers across the country on the Internet. It should also be noted that some regional newspapers and other media outlets carry Kommersant stories and that Kommersant is but one of many such print and electronic media outlets available in Russia. In sum, Russia is a fairly rich information environment for those who want to be informed on politics.
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NEW YORK TIMES
May
6, 2009
On Eve of NATO Exercise, Georgia Says It Foiled Mutiny
By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRY
TBILISI, Georgia Georgia announced Tuesday that it had put down a brief military mutiny that aimed to disrupt NATO military exercises, ratcheting up tensions a day before the exercises are scheduled to begin over Russian objections.
According to the Georgian account, 25 miles from Tbilisi, the capital, government forces during the day surrounded a tank battalion whose leaders were planning the uprising. A few hours later, most of the unit’s 500 soldiers surrendered, and several of their commanders were detained.
President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was hoping to derail the NATO exercises, which he called a “symbolic event.”
“We are asking our northern neighbor to refrain from any provocations,” he said of Russia, in a televised interview.
Russia immediately denied any role in the unrest.
“This is not the first time we have been accused of interference without
evidence,” a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. “We would
like to reiterate that Russia, as a matter of principle, doesn’t interfere in
Georgia’s domestic affairs.”
The exchange raised the already high temperature of regional relations in advance of the exercises, run by NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, which includes nonmembers of the alliance. NATO has described the plan as routine and small-scale around 1,000 soldiers will take part in field exercises but Russia complains that, less than a year after its war with Georgia, any NATO training there is provocative.
Armenia, Serbia and Kazakhstan have said they will pull out of the exercises in solidarity with Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia notified NATO on Tuesday that it was pulling out of a long-anticipated NATO-Russia Council meeting scheduled for May 19 in Brussels, in protest of the exercises and of NATO’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats on suspicion of spying.
Carmen Romero, a NATO spokeswoman, said Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer regretted Russia’s decision and hoped to reschedule the meeting soon. She said the exercises would go on as scheduled.
Dmitri O. Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO, warned that the exercises might “significantly affect the stability of the entire South Caucasus.”
“How can one insist on these exercises with such stubbornness and persistence?” he said, in comments broadcast in Russia. “If these exercises were held at NATO’s insistence in some psychiatric hospital, it would be a much more adequate decision than holding them on the territory of the Georgian state.”
Details of the Georgian mutiny emerged throughout the day.
Shota Utiashvili, a top official in Georgia’s Interior Ministry, said authorities learned at 6:30 a.m. that a tank battalion stationed at Mukhrovani five miles from the site of the planned military exercises had publicly announced a mutiny. He said the unit’s 500 soldiers had sealed off the base and would not allow Defense Ministry officials to enter.
“What happened is that battalion commanders told the soldiers that the Russians were attacking them and they had to take combat positions,” Mr. Utiashvili said. Around noon, he said, the soldiers learned from news reports that their commanders had misled them and surrendered. Authorities were relieved to discover that the mutiny was small and isolated, he said.
In the morning, officials confidently asserted a Russian hand in the plan, but by afternoon they were more cautious. Mr. Utiashvili said it was “not exactly clear” whether the accused plotters had Russian support.
“To have a legally sound case we need more information,” he said. “This morning we had some evidence, and from that evidence one would follow that Russia was involved.”
Incriminating surveillance footage was broadcast all day on Georgian television. In one video, which had been edited, Gia Ghvaladze, a former major in the Georgian special forces, is shown describing plans to overthrow Mr. Saakashvili’s government on behalf of Russia. Major Ghvaladze says the plan is to approach Tbilisi with a column of 250 troop carriers and backup from 5,000 Russian troops, and he talks about killing six of Mr. Saakashvili’s closest advisers.
He was arrested Monday night on charges of organizing a mutiny. By Tuesday evening, the police had arrested 13 suspects, according to the Interior Ministry.
The unfolding events left much of Tbilisi spellbound or paralyzed. Traffic thinned out on the city’s streets, and when a professor named Natia Kuprashvili, 29, tried to teach her class at Tbilisi State University, her students’ cellphones began to ring so wildly that she gave up and went in search of a television.
But in the end, she said, “it is very hard to understand what really happened here.”
A Georgian named Roman Apakidze, 30, concluded that a mutiny had taken place, but that the government was distorting it for political purposes.
“I just don’t like the way the government is handling this information it is real information terror against ordinary people, what they do,” he said. “It is better not to turn on the television at all.”
Olesya Vartanyan reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Ellen Barry from
Moscow.
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KOMMERSANT, May 6, 2009
A PRO-RUSSIAN MILITARY BASE
Mikheil Saakashvili suspects his army of conspiring with Moscow Allegations fly in the wake of Georgia's military rebellion
ALEXANDER GABUYEV, OLGA ALLENOVA, GEORGY DVALI
[The Georgian government announced yesterday that a rebellion organized by a group of former generals has been averted. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili alleged that Russia was behind the plot. Moscow has categorically denied any involvement in the conspiracy.]
The Georgian government announced yesterday that a rebellion organized by a group of former generals has been averted. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili alleged that Russia was behind the plot. According to Saakashvili, the failed coup aimed to kill Georgia's leaders and disrupt the NATO military exercises in Georgia. Moscow has categorically denied any involvement in the conspiracy. The Georgian opposition maintains that the government itself staged the coup attempt in order to justify an impending crackdown. Despite the tense situation in Georgia, NATO has decided not to cancel its exercises, which start today.
The first to announce that a conspiracy had been uncovered was Georgian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili: "A conspiracy aimed at a mutiny in
several Defense Ministry units has been exposed. The organizers were former
high-ranking officers. The plan was coordinated with Russia. Its minimal
objective was to disrupt the NATO exercises - its maximal objective was to
organize a full-scale military revolt in our country."
Utiashvili told us: "We have been working on intelligence about the
rebellion for several weeks. According to our information, its purpose was to
create a platform for the complete occupation of Georgia by Russia. We have
evidence of links between the conspirators and Russian intelligence, as well as
Russian Armed Forces units in South Ossetia. They were providing money and
specific plans."
In support of this information, the Georgian Interior Ministry provided television channels with a video recording of a conversation among the conspirators. Their faces are blanked out. The only speaker whose face is not obscured has been identified by the Interior Ministry as Georgy Gvaladze, who commanded the Defense Ministry's elite Delta special forces in the 1990s. In the recording, he tells his companions that the mutiny should be centered on a military unit in Mukhrovani (30 kilometers east of Tbilisi), from which the rebels would move out toward Mt. Gombora, closer to Tbilisi. Then they would be joined by "200-250 vehicles with soldiers and weapons" - and then they would "seize the capital," says Gvaladze, facing the camera.
According to Gvaladze, the operation would be supported by 5,000 Russian troops
who would move out from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The coup would be led by
seven former generals - including former Georgian defense ministers Georgy
Karkarashvili and David Tevadze, as well as former National Guard commander
Koba Kobaladze. After the rebels have seized power, some of Saakashvili's most
prominent opponents - including Aslan Abashidze, former leader of Adjaria -
would return to Georgia. Then elections would be held, and Georgia would join
the Russia-Belarus Union State; and everyone involved in the coup, including Gvaladze,
would receive senior appointments and $50,000 each from the Russian special
services.
According to Utiashvili,
the Georgian special services arrested Georgy Gvaladze in the early hours of
May 5. Utiashvili said that a mutiny broke out at the Mukhrovani base straight
after the chief conspirator was arrested.
Georgian Defense Ministry
officials told us that Ground Forces Commander Shmagi Telia was negotiating
with the mutineers from early morning on May 5; he was later joined by Defense Minister
Sikharulidze. The base was surrounded by police and army troops. Tanks and attack helicopters moved out toward the base around 1 p.m.
Almost all of Georgia's senior officials, headed by President Saakashvili,
gathered in Mukhrovani by around 2 p.m.
The mutiny leader was Mamuka Gorgishvili, a tank battalion commander. He issued a statement setting out the reasons behind the rebellion: "The military can't just stand by and watch the process of our country being destroyed - the current confrontation (between the government and the opposition). But our tank unit won't take any aggressive action."
Utiashvili said that
despite the danger, President Saakashvili insisted on meeting with personnel at
the base. Straight after that meeting, the battalion decided to surrender. Gorgishvili
was arrested right there. After reprimanding the mutineer soldiers for
"listening to spies and scoundrels," President Saakashvili ordered
all organizers of the conspiracy to be arrested.
In the afternoon,
Saakashvili delivered a televised address to the public. He directly accused
Moscow of conspiring to overthrow him. Saakashvili said: "The mutineers
are acting in close coordination with an external force - and I am hereby
warning the Russian Federation to cease its acts of provocation against Georgia
- concentrating troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Almost all of Russia's
Black Sea Fleet has been sent into Georgian waters. This is a very dangerous
game." He described the conspirators' actions as "a threat to our
nation's security, our democratic system, and our future."
Moscow resolutely denied
any involvement in the events in Georgia. The Russian Foreign Ministry said:
"As a matter of principle, Russia does not interfere in Georgia's internal
affairs. Uncontrolled domestic political processes in Georgian society are
instantly interpreted by the Tbilisi leadership as the plots of an external
enemy - namely Russia."
A Foreign Ministry
source told us: "It's utter nonsense. We have not been organizing military
coups in Georgia. It would be pointless - there are no pro-Russian politicians
in Georgia, we have no illusions about that."
The Russian Foreign
Ministry also hastened to point out that NATO's plans to hold exercises in
Georgia are "absolutely inappropriate." But the Georgian Defense
Ministry told us that the exercises will go ahead anyway. NATO Headquarters in
Brussels confirmed this: "Everything remains in force."
On the evening of May 5,
Tbilisi attempted to convince the international community to accept its version
of events. Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told the story to an
audience of ambassadors accredited in Tbilisi. Among the alleged evidence of a "Russian
connection" is that chief conspirator Georgy Gvaladze served in the ranks
of the Georgian State Security Ministry when that ministry was headed by Igor
Giorgadze, who is now on Interpol's wanted list and hiding in Russia. Tbilisi
also claims that generals Kobaladze and Karkarashvili are linked to Russia.
Iosif Tsintsadze, rector
of the Georgian Academy of Diplomacy, told us: "Russia's special services
may have attempted to use the generals, if they were acquaintances from the
Soviet era – they may have been promised something."
Georgia's opposition maintains that the conspiracy has been staged by the Tbilisi government. "This is a cheap one-man show," says Eka Beselia, co-leader of the United Georgia party. According to the opposition, the government staged the mutiny in order to smear opposition forces and justify using force to disperse demonstrations. "There were no pictures from the base - no one knows how real these events were," says Erosi Kitsmarishvili. The opposition points out that the Mukhrovani base has been used for the government's purposes before: National Guard troops rebelled there in 2001, and surrendered after then-President Eduard Shevardnadze turned up in person to speak with them, escorted by several bodyguards.
Translated by InterContact and posted in Johnson’s Russia List, #84, May 6, 2009, www.cdi.org/russia/johnson.
Compiled by Dr. Gordon M. Hahn
– Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior
Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute
of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center
for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is
author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007)
and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian and Eurasian
politics.
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