NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia yesterday under a storm of criticism from Russia and following a rebellion in the Georgian military.
Russia has condemned the month-long war games as “muscle-flexing” on its southern border, where it sent tanks and troops in August last year in a five-day war to crush a Georgian assault on breakaway South Ossetia.
Georgia said on Tuesday it had put down a mutiny at a tank base east of the capital Tbilisi and accused Russia of trying to disrupt the exercises and foment a wider rebellion against Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
PHOTO: AFP
Russia said the accusations were “insane” and accused Saakashvili of trying to shift the blame for weeks of opposition protests demanding he resign over his record on democracy and last year’s disastrous military defeat.
The exercises, which will not be in full swing until next week, involve more than 1,000 soldiers from more than a dozen nations.
They are being held at a former Russian air force base east of Tbilisi and a few kilometers from the Mukhrovani base, where the government said tank commanders had rebelled on Tuesday and were arrested several hours later.
NATO insists the exercises in “crisis response” and field training pose no threat to Russia. They are seen as a gesture of solidarity with Georgia, whose NATO membership ambitions have effectively been put on hold since the August war.
“The NATO secretary-general [Jaap de Hoop Scheffer] thinks that nobody should misuse the exercise,” spokeswoman Carmen Romero said on Tuesday. “This is not a NATO exercise, it is an exercise of NATO with its partners.
“This exercise has nothing to do with Georgia, it has nothing to do with Russia,” Romero said. “Georgia is just hosting the exercise and nobody should interpret the exercise in a different way and use it for other purposes.
Armenia, Russia’s strategic ally in the South Caucasus, on Tuesday joined Kazakhstan, Serbia and Moldova in pulling out.
Russia fiercely opposes membership for Georgia and Ukraine as an encroachment on its ex-Soviet backyard and traditional sphere of influence.
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