Thursday, August 9, 2007, #151 (1418)

It looks like things are going to get worse before they get better between Georgia and Russia. Tbilisi is levying the extremely serious accusation that Russia aggressively launched a missile deep in Georgian territory. Moscow is retorting with the extremely shameless suggestion that Georgia bombed itself. Again.

Bitter allegations, missile of a different sort, are hurtling across borders. The outcry can hardly help conflict settlement progress, and that may be rather the point.

Georgian officials, backed up with radar records, say two attack planes took off from a North Ossetian base, entered Georgian airspace near Kazbegi and launched a one-ton missile in the vicinity of Tsitelubani village, 65 kilometers from the capital. It didn't explode, maybe by malfunction, probably by design.

Late yesterday, Reuters quoted an unnamed Georgian source claiming the missile was accidentally jettisoned by a Russian pilot spooked by South Ossetian anti-aircraft fire. The missile's impact has thrown up a cloud of speculation as to what actually happened, but Georgian officials have already decided which story to run with.

It was an act of aggression, said Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili.

And on the surface, a pointless one. What does Russia-and this was almost certainly Russia-have to gain from lobbing a malfunctioning missile into a vacant field? There's no shortage of theories.

The political fallout from the incident would be easy to foresee. A rupture in dialogue, postponed Joint Control Commission meetings, and no room for either side to make a move towards better relations. Moscow, uneasy with Georgian progress in South Ossetia, could see a chance to cast a deeper freeze over that process.

Georgia's air defenses, it seems, are not, and many say this is a simple show of Russian might. Two attack planes flew in, made a five-meter hole in Georgian soil, and flew out. Opposition politicians upbraided the government for exposing its military weakness to the world. What are those millions upon millions in defense spending going to, if not equipment to shoot down marauding foreign planes?

When Russian planes bombed Chechen militants in Pankisi Gorge, without Georgian approval, Shevardnadze's defense minister was asked why the military didn't shoot the intruders down.

"How can we shoot them down with catapults?" was the response.

Saakashvili is proud of Georgia's modernizing army-a force being fed about 20 percent of the country's budget. The time of Georgian catapults is past, he has said. But Georgian vulnerability clearly is not.

It's plausible, too, that this was an unfortunate pilot error, as some reports are suggesting. But even if so, a Russian military jet still violated Georgian airspace and the diplomatic row would be hardly calmed.

As important as what happened is what the sides are making of it.

Tbilisi, so far, is coming out on top in the public opinion scrum. Russia, a reliable media baddie, was cast as the sure culprit in news reports around the world. Fairly so. It's the March 11 Kodori Gorge bombing all over again-and how many times can the Kremlin, with a straight face, accuse Georgia of firing on itself? The joint investigation in Kodori squarely ruled out a false flag operation, as they're likely to do here.

But politicians aren't waiting for the reports.

Neither country is showing any interest in letting this pass lightly, prodding their citizens into gnashing of the teeth as they play up an enemy at the gates scenario.

Georgian radar plotted the jets' route. Hopefully, Tbilisi has also plotted their own.

© The Messenger. All rights reserved. Please read our disclaimer before using any of the published materials.