Old Town Blues

"There is no basic understanding of heritage in this country." As the Georgian authorities strive to turn the country into an investor-friendly 'new Singapore', architectural experts despair that historic buildings in the capital are being stealthily destroyed by profit-seeking developers - while ordinary people in the crumbling Old Town district just want somewhere decent to live. More on the ongoing dispute over the future of Tbilisi here, from The Washington Post.

Radovan the 'Healer'

How would you react if you found out that the 'therapist' who'd been giving your wife and children massages was actually the fugitive war-crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic? That's what happened to my Serbian friend, Nikola Medic. Unsurprisingly, he wasn't too happy about it. There's an account of his story here.

'Our Guys' Lose the Plot

The peculiar Putin-loving youth movement 'Nashi', set up by the Kremlin to stop the pernicious 'Orange Revolution' virus spreading from Ukraine to Russia, is now apparently in decline after Putin's presidency ended in Russia, according to this report from the organisation's annual summer camp, as published in The Moscow Times.

Friendly Neighbourhood Gunmen

"You need Spetznaz." A slightly-torn propaganda poster from the streets of Sukhumi, capital of Abkhazia, encourages people to appreciate their special forces troops. Read more strange and unpleasant tales from my recent trip to the Black Sea breakaway region here.

Defrosting the 'Frozen Conflict'

More on the Dmitry Sanakoyev phenomenon (and why the South Ossetian separatists think he's a "scoundrel and a traitor") from a piece I wrote for Russia Profile magazine here.

Crossing the Line

South Ossetia is an impoverished rural backwater in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains with a population of 70,000 or fewer, but its leaders say they want to break away from Georgia and become an independent state. After an outbreak of violence in the region last week, it seemed like a good time to look at the tale of Dmitry Sanakoyev - a South Ossetian native who's been described as a 'traitor' by his enemies in his home town, but is celebrated as a hero by the Georgian government. From my column in The Moscow Times:

At the launch of Dmitry Sanakoyev’s autobiography, his beefy minders were taking no chances, despite the genteel surroundings. Sanakoyev, a leading figure in the separatist regime in South Ossetia who sensationally defected to the Georgian side, was surrounded at all times by a bull-necked cordon of solid Caucasian muscle. The reason for the heavy security became only too clear a few days later, when a roadside bomb reportedly exploded as his convoy passed by, in what he says was an assassination attempt.

Sanakoyev is the head of the Georgian-backed administration in South Ossetia, which was set up a year ago to undermine the Russian-backed separatists’ claims to be the region’s legitimate bosses. But he actually fought against Georgia during the war in the early 1990s which left most of the minuscule territory under separatist control. One of the photographs in his autobiography shows him in camouflage fatigues, toting an automatic rifle. It’s juxtaposed with pictures of burning buildings.

I once asked him if he had killed any Georgians while he was fighting for the separatist cause. His response was suitably diplomatic: “I fired, but thank God, I did not kill.”

Although he once served as the separatist prime minister and describes himself, in his book, as an “Ossetian patriot”, there weren’t many warm words for Sanakoyev when I last visited the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. “Sanakoyev will not live for long,” one elderly man snarled when I mentioned him. “He will provoke that himself, and we will support it.” Then again, one doesn’t tend to hear many dissenting voices in the kind of town where the security forces are the main employer.

South Ossetian officials have labelled him a “traitor” and a “Georgian puppet”. They claim that he only defected because the Georgians paid off his gambling debts, although no concrete evidence has been produced to support the allegation. Both the separatists and their friends at the Russian Foreign Ministry also claim that last week’s roadside bomb attack was staged.

Sanakoyev says he realised that South Ossetia could only find peace and prosperity if it remained part of Georgia. In his autobiography, he argues that the separatists have been selling people unrealistic dreams of gaining independence and someday joining the Russian Federation - “lying to their nation and manipulating people’s fate”, as he puts it.

Since he crossed over to the Georgian side, the authorities have spent millions of dollars on the ‘Sanakoyev project’, in the hope of convincing Ossetians that life would be rosier under government control. They’re still waiting to see if their investment will pay off.

A New Facade

The city of Tbilisi is changing, as grand old buildings and charming traditional yards fall deeper into ruin after years of post-Soviet economic chaos, corruption and neglect, while all around them, modern office blocks, elite hotels and upscale apartment complexes are rising from the rubble. The investors and property developers are bringing in money, but will the idiosyncratic character of the Georgian capital survive the push towards modernisation? Read more about it here.