Tbilisi-backed South Ossetia official ambushed, four injured
By Mikheil Svanidze
Friday, July 4
Dmitry Sanakoyev was traveling along the Georgian-controlled bypass road in separatist South Ossetia on his way to a conference in Batumi, when at roughly 10:00 a.m. what officials suspect was a remotely-controlled landmine blew up as his convoy passed.
After the initial explosion, unidentified gunmen opened fire from the direction of two separatist-controlled villages, Kokhati and Sarabuki.
Sanakoyev was not injured, but four people among his guards and local police were hurt, according to a spokeswoman for his administration.
“It is a well-known tactic to follow-up with gunfire after a mine explosion,” said spokeswoman Ia Barateli. “Four people from Sanakoyev’s guards and local policemen were injured. They were taken to Gori hospital. All of them are in normal condition now.”
Sanakoyev’s Nissan reportedly dodged the brunt of the blast, which did far more damage to another car in the convoy, but was still wrecked.
Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Khizanishvili said a criminal investigation was opened under the charge of “organizing a terrorist act against a state official.”
“This is an act of terror,” Sanakoyev told reporters yesterday. “For now, I can’t accuse anyone specifically. I do know that criminal groups in the conflict zone are also part of the [separatist administration]. We knew ahead of time that this kind of terrorist act has been planned.”
The attack is the latest in a series of violent incidents in the conflict zones: three separate bombings reportedly injured more than a dozen civilians in separatist Abkhazia this week.
And in an earlier incident yesterday, a separatist police chief was killed by an explosion in his yard in the South Ossetian village of Dmenisi.
Analysts fear the attacks may bring the conflicts to a boiling point.
“Such a vulnerable situation which exists now, it’s made me to think maybe we are in front of a new, very dangerous situation, [a] very dangerous place,” said Georgian military expert Koba Liklikadze, who reports for Radio Liberty.
Liklikadze said the audacity of a targeted assault on a high-level official marks a “very dangerous” step up in hostilities. Yesterday is the first time Sanakoyev has come under attack since taking his post, according to his administration’s spokeswoman.
Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst who covers Georgia for Eurasia Group in New York, also said the violence has taken on a new character: “Recent events appear to indicate that the situation has moved away from the typical level of tension and commonly worrying events.”
South Ossetian separatist leader Eduard Kokoity said both of yesterday’s “terrorist acts [were] links of one chain” intended to destabilize the situation in South Ossetia, according to the separatist press and information committee.
Kokoity said the “terrorist acts” were intended to undermine the visit of Transdniester leader Igor Smirnov to South Ossetia later this month.
Transdniester is a breakaway region of Moldova with ties to Georgia’s own separatist enclaves, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mamuka Kurashvili, the head of the Georgian peacekeeping forces, suggested forces within the separatist administration orchestrated the attack.
“All of these explosions are connected to [Eduard] Kokoity’s regime. The South Ossetian administration cannot control gang formations in the region,” Kurashvili told reporters at the scene of the attack.
Georgian lawmakers labeled the incident “terrorism.”
“This was a terrorist act against one of our government’s subunits,” said MP Shota Malashkhia, chair of a parliamentary committee which deals with conflict zone issues.
South Ossetia is a patchwork of impoverished separatist- and state- controlled villages. For the past year, Tbilisi has sought to win over the region’s residents with an economic development campaign spearheaded by Sanakoyev’s administration.
Dmitry Sanakoyev, once an official in the separatist administration, won ‘alternative president elections’ in South Ossetia in November 2006. ‘Official’ elections, conducted on the same day, were won by incumbent separatist leader Eduard Kokoity.
Later, with backing from the Saakashvili administration, the Georgian parliament created a ‘provisional administration’ for South Ossetia and appointed Sanakoyev its chief in May 2007.