Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 190 - 2008 Russo-Georgian War Part 1: Civil War and Amphibious Mafia Landings

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

It turns out a 2 week long war has 100 years of history Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me is Liam. Hello, Liam. Hi, Joe. How you doing, Liam? I feel like it's been a long time since we've recorded, even though it's only been a week. I'm terrific, bud. The good news is you text me every

goddamn day. That's right. So I'm never not hearing from you. That's one of the benefits of having me as a friend is I hate calling people, so I always text random bullshit instead. Yeah, it's great. I love the thing you texted me of the whatever the 3d animated naked man ball.

Yeah, just me and my boys making my way to the club before we get started on today's episode. I heard you just open a can. I, what are you drinking? Red Bull. I am drinking a Waterloo-flavored seltzer.

Is it good? It's peach-flavored. It's pretty delicious, honestly. I don't know. I'm not a big peach guy, but I like them more than I used to. I will say that. I have the weirdest opinion on the peach flavor, and that is I enjoy drinking it significantly more than I enjoy eating it. Yeah, same. I don't know if I have any other podcast

hosts that listen to us, but a fun tip, don't drink carbonated seltzer while you're recording a podcast because it constantly makes you have to burp, and I am an idiot. We're very unprofessional or whatever.

Yeah, it's this institution held together by a professional spirit. Now, Liam, I'm going to talk about something today that happened in our lived experiences, and we probably watched it unfold on the news, which is unique

for this show, and also depressingly prescient to current events, which I do not try to do on purpose. I wrote this months ago. I love when things are prescient. That's good, right? I fucking hate when this happens,

uh, because I wrote this two part series four months ago. Uh, and now we are recording. I don't know when this is going to come out, but now we're recording and current events have caught up where it might be happening again. And I really, really hate doing that.

I'll do that. That's good. It's good. It means we're relevant, bro. I didn't mean it. If a history show is relevant, we have a fucking problem. Yeah, bro. That's the worst part.

So what do you know about the Republic of Georgia? Not a whole lot. Stalin was born there. He was not born in the Republic of Georgia, but close enough. All right, you know that I know nothing, Joe. I am a dummy, and here you are to educate me. And the Georgians of Y, not the Armenians.

Shut up, Joe. I'm going to have to get a new co-host now. If you remember, I know you're a little younger than me, but you're not too much younger than me. Back in 2008, Georgia was invaded by Russia. And it was a unique experience for me, simply because, and I assume for a lot of Georgians as well. Because it was my first time as an adult, like vividly in my memory, I was watching a war happen on TV. Right.

Because like, obviously, I'm old enough to kind of remember like the invasion of Iraq, but I was in like middle school. I don't really have memories of that. I mean, the concussions probably help with that. Yeah. Sorry about it. I remember sitting in my barracks in Fort Knox, Kentucky, watching CNN, I think on my breakfast break or something, and watching a war happen. And it was just wild to me. It's a weird link to this conflict.

I've always been very interested about it. Obviously, because I'm Armenian. Armenia is right next door to Georgia. But also because there's a lot of people who aren't from the United States who listen to this show, but I will explain what it looked like watching this war unfold on American TV. Russia invaded Georgia. That's it. There was no explanation as to why. I may be absolutely wrong here, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I am. Didn't

the Russians just invent a people who were being oppressed, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I am. Didn't the Russians just invent a people who were being oppressed, and they were like, now we're gonna go fix it? No. Absolutely not. That is a popular and unfortunate take. Okay. Well, you're here to educate me, Joe. I am a dumb ape. I'm gonna have to

make you into an NFT now. The Liam Apes. Oh, yes. Drop your rare Liams in the comments. Nothing to anti-Semitic, please. You know they're going to be anti-Semitic, baby. That's the only way this goes. Now, okay. I do have to point out

something that if there's any Georgian listeners, they will already know this. Their language is incredibly hard. So are their names. And I say this as someone who already know this. Their language is incredibly hard. So are their names. And I say this as someone who also has an incredibly hard language with funny names. I did my best to look up pronunciation guides for Georgian cities and names. And goddamn, I didn't come up with a lot.

So I apologize ahead of time. I really don't feel like reigniting the Georgian-Armenian schism because of this podcast. I love you guys. Please don't take like uh reigniting the georgian armenian schism because of this podcast i love you guys please don't take this out on me direct all complaints to nate bethea jules fucker so this first episode of this two-part series is mostly going to be backstory here because there's a lot of it uh You can't go back a few years before 2008 and find the reason why this occurred as much as some people really, really

want to. Right. Because some people's histories are older than the concept of nations and states. And that's the kind of people we're talking about today. Okay. However, I do have to breeze through some of this and this is by no means exhaustive. This is not your lesson on like

the Kartvalian kingdoms or anything like that. If this interests you, there's other resources you can look at. This is more of a primer if you will. Because somehow, hundreds of years of history is important to a two week long war from 2008.

Oh, of course I mean yes obviously context need to know yes go on now there's another fold to this that yeah there's probably in the six minutes we've been talking someone probably pointed out that we glossed over the fact that NATO

was involved and they kind of were but they weren't and we will get there. Is Georgia a day November? No. Oh, God, you did want to be,

and they still kind of do. Those poor, poor, sweet bastards. Yeah. Like, I feel like I need to point out at the beginning here and Liam, I'm disagreeing.

Yell at me and say I'm wrong, whatever. If you want to like, not be part of the russian sphere of influence um and you are certain countries nato is really your only option and that isn't saying nato is good uh at no point here are we going to say nato is good actually uh but for a lot of nations that is a better option. NATO strikes me as the least, I was going to use the phrase, least bad option for certain nation states. Yeah, absolutely.

And for reasons why we'll talk about. And this could go for a lot of different other nations going through much of the same problems currently. Now, a few of these things can be true while also being not so black and white. While, yes, it is true that Russia used to break away nations or to give NATO the middle finger. It does not mean that the nations or the people within those two breakaway nations, specifically South Oshetia and Abkhazia, did not want or possibly need Russian help in order to break away from a state they considered to be an oppressive power, that being Georgia. Georgia and a lot of Georgians would strongly disagree with what I just said, and that's fine. How big are we in Georgia? Much smaller after these two episodes, I would imagine.

All right. that makes sense i'm gonna come out and say i'm very much on georgia's side in this conflict uh probably maybe don't invade people like yeah fair enough but there's also again more to that not everything is as simple as everybody wants to be this is certainly one of those cases this brings us the small territories of south oshetia and abkhaz, two countries with two very distinct people living within them. For instance, the Georgian identity or the Kartvalian people, I might be pronouncing incorrectly, sorry. They are different from the majority and they're much different than the modern day Georgian identity. So to make things easier, we're going to talk about both the Oshetian and Abkhaz, as what they're called as people, separately.

Even though they are sometimes smashed together and often smashed together because of this and other wars, they're also very different. And their struggle against the Georgian state is sometimes allied, but mostly separate as they have vastly different goals and different places where they came from. Okay. Now, the Ashedian people are descended from the Alon people and they actually still call themselves Alons. Like they wouldn't call themselves Ashtanian or Ashtanian. They call themselves Alons. And they're,

I guess if I had to point to something on the map, they're closely related to Iranians, which is common for the region, right? Their language is also very unique speaking. You guessed it. Oh, Shetty and which is a branch the region. Right. Their language is also very unique. Speaking, you guessed it, Oshetian, which is a branch of Eastern Iranian, though they aren't considered indigenous

to the lands of North or South Oshetia, but they're probably moved there while running from the Mongol hordes and have been there ever since. So they've been there a long fucking time. And ever since this happened, the Georgians, at this time going by various different names, but mostly the kingdom of Kartli,

have been trying to kick them out. Though caught in the middle of the Kartvalians and the Karbadians, the Oshetians had nowhere to go and eventually just kept migrating south, finding themselves in lands ruled over by Georgian feudal lords. And as you can imagine, they were pretty much immediately taken in and used for cheap labor. Yep.

It's the story as old as time. Tale as old as time. This meant more people quickly immigrated right in after them because being exploited on a farm is slightly better than being murdered up north, I guess. You know, sometimes you don't have a lot of good options available to you. being exploited on a farm is slightly better than being murdered up north, I guess. Sometimes you don't have a lot of good options available to you. This migration kept picking up, and by the mid-1700s, thousands of Oshetians had moved into what is considered Georgian land. As for the Abkhaz, things are a little bit different. What today are called Abkhaz began life as Malaysian Greeks, though

I would imagine they would disagree with me on that. That's fine. They immigrated to the shores of the Black Sea around the 6th century BC, though not a ton is known of them other than they became helicool pirates and kidnapped people for ransom while living in sweet beach villages.

Oh, that's a fucking life, dude. That's a fucking life. Yeah, that's something that we can all support and defend. Yeah, please donate to the Patreon. Though if you believe the Georgian chronicles, the Abkhaz were Egrosians, or descendants from Egros, son of Torgma, grandson of Japthet, son of Noah of Ark fame.

Oh, okay. Hey, why the hell not? Where's the Ark supposedly for some lunatics mount arafat uh mount ararat yeah it's yeah historically armenian but part of modern day turkey right okay yeah that was my question so uh when do we launch the invasion joe don't get me started i'll get fucking deplatformed all right all right uh if you're if uh dm me if you're cool and are ready to launch a land invasion to get joe a boat there is currently a byroctar drone hovering above my home that seems like a personal problem there's no drone that's oh my god now the same area got wrapped up in the

mithridates war which go subscribe to the Patreon to hear more about this and our history of Armenia Premium Series, going to much more in depth. Now, throughout this time, generally, they were always subordinate to a greater power, as was normal for smaller groups of people at the time, and unfortunately today. Though, eventually in

780, the term King of Abkhazians entered like written documents for the first time as well as did the kingdom of Abkhazia meaning, unlike the Oshetians, the Abkhaz did at one point have their own state, kind of. The concept of

state is kind of a loose term at this point of history. Okay. I assume this is sort of more or less feudal kingdoms all fighting over turf. We don't have organization states yet. In this case, it's more of a feudal state within the crumbling Byzantine Empire. Okay. Where are we?

779? 780s. Okay. Okay. Now, this state lasted for around 300 years, give or take. That's not bad, man. Us too. No, that's a longer period than most modern countries.

Give or take before it was absorbed into the kingdom of Georgia through marriage. Though this was eventually brought to an end by a Mongol invasion, which swept through Georgia, broke up the entire area into principalities, one of which was the Abkhaz, again, letting them generally rule themselves. one of which was the Abkhaz, again, letting them generally rule themselves. This small feudal state was then kind of sort of taken over by the Ottoman Empire in the 1570s. This eventually created a large population of Muslims, though the majority of the population did remain Orthodox Christian of one variety or the other throughout this time. Though, just to be clear here, like Oss abkhaz are not georgians though i'm sure georgians of a certain political spectrum would strongly disagree with me on that is it the bad kind it is the bad kind yes of course the bad kind i don't even know why i

ask these fucking questions half the time i'm just like i've got to be disappointed yeah there's a politician we're going to talk about that like after the fall of the soviet union and also a little bit before the fall of the soviet union like his motto was uh like abkhaz or georgians uh and like there is no such thing as abkhaz and things like that that seems pretty disrespectful it's very much a nationalist argument to make and not the the liberatory kind of nationalism like we pointed out they have their own customs uh and courtesies and traditions going back before written history as they are clearly defined people yes uh abcaz is related to a very obscure language known as abaza where

like it's such a small language it's thought that only like a hundred thousand people speak it oh that's wild oh is the official language of the area to this day oh that's crazy okay and uh that was not from a lack of trying a lot of these minority languages there is a solid attempt during old republic and soviet days to destroy them russucify themselves. Yes. Serious russification, which generally didn't do great because the weird thing about small nationalities and ethnicities is they cling on to a lot of their customs

and refuse to let go. And they do everything they can to continue to spread them like kind of like underground. Yeah. Which is kind of how the language survived. Though, looking at the region and kind of what i just talked about you know what's coming next the russians oh yeah that's also coming but we're not as the various georgian

kingdoms feuded with one another and fought with neighboring muslim nations georgia looked to russia for help being a fellow christian nation and all georgian king heraclius the second sorry signed an alliance that made them a protectorate of the russian empire in 1783 but in a funny turn of events that would happen more than once in the timeline of the russian empire the russians decided they really didn't feel like upholding any terms of this treaty and decided it would just be easier to annex them. And they did in 1801. I mean, I guess you're not wrong.

It is easier. But like, you guys are dicks. Yeah, they do this a lot. And they officially became the Georgia Governor at this point. Now, during their time under Russian imperial rule, the Georgian status over the Abkhaz and Oshetian populations was largely solidified.

The Abkhaz in particular were targeted during the Circassian genocide as Russia did its best to murder and expel the Muslim population of its Caucasus territories between 1864 and 1879. As much as 40% of the Abkhaz population was

removed in one way or another via murder, forceful deportation to the Ottoman Empire. In the space left by genocide, Georgians, Russians, and unfortunately, a few Armenians moved in, making the Abkhaz a minority in their own land. Way to go, Joe. Yeah, me personally. Whose fault this is. I own a fucking house in the Abkhazian Republic to this day. You own a house now. Fuck you.

You don't know about my tax shelters. Joe actually records this under a tent on the beach in Maui. I have a yurt. We have looked through all the Taurus. Now, the ones that stayed behind were forced to kneel to Russification As they attempted to systematically kill The culture that remained Then the Russian Revolution happened

By 1905 Is this going to be a woo Or a boo I'll let you hold on to that for later By 1905 the various Communist, socialist, Marxist and whateveristist movements had largely split into two camps. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin. I love doing it.

And the Mensheviks, led by Yuli Martov. Now, no, this is not going to be a lengthy explanation of the Russian Revolution. I will never do that. Go listen to the Revolutions podcast. I will do that. It sucks. Anarchism, good. Communism, bad. Now, I will do that. It sucks. Anarchism. Good.

Communism. Bad. Next. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. In the South Caucasus, the Bolsheviks were viewed kind of differently depending on what part of the South Caucasus you end up being in. For instance, one camp was led by a Georgian and former seminarian from the town of Gori,

Yusef Yugosvili, who you probably know better as Joseph Stalin. Yeah, all right. Now, he set up base in a town called Baku, then part of the Baku government, because the concept of Azerbaijan wouldn't exist for a couple more years. Yes, I had to shoehorn that in there. Nate's like going, click, delete, delete. We thought nation states were a bad idea. There, young Stalin, his rap name,

yo, it's young J do a genocide. I was agitating amongst the local oil workers because Baku was then as now a massive oil pit. Now, while the local Menshevik leader was a guy named Manoa Jordania, who was organizing amongst like local craftsmen and farmers. Now, Jordania, who was organizing amongst local craftsmen and farmers. Now, Jordania, also a Georgian,

was advocating for more of a Georgian state with socialism rather than this internationalist revolution that Stalin and his bros were trying to sell everybody at this point. As everyone probably knows about this corner of history, this would lead to some famed disagreements among parties. Now, World War One then happened and hit pause on the whole revolution thing for a few years. So several million people could die and be fed into wood chippers or freeze to death in the mountains. But by 1917, that would again change.

The czar was gone. Kerensky would be kicked to the side and Lenin would kind of sort of be in charge of Russia while it fell into a civil war. But that would leave the Caucasus wide open for the so-called Army of Islam. Now, this was an allied force of Turks and a few other smaller groups who were on a mission to reclaim the lands previously lost to Russian expansion during the time of the Russian Empire. At least that's what they said, because they really only seem to care about the Baku oil field. So this is more about money. Let's just see how that works.

Yeah. This was such a threat to Russia, now torn apart by civil war, that they supplied oil to the German Empire in order for them to swoop in and try to stop this largely Ottoman-backed-led advance. Right. How's this advance going? Because the Ottoman Empire is not doing so hot at this point in history. Well, it's mostly tatters. Okay.

To be fair, it kills a fuckload of people. Oh, goddammit. The Army of Islam commits, I think, a dozen pogroms across Christ guys. Georgia, Armenia and what is today Azerbaijan. Like it's fucking rough. People just love doing a genocide man. Oh yeah. And they're still celebrated as heroes

today. So that's cool. Great country Turkey. Yeah, that one's Azerbaijan. Oh, Baku. Yeah. Yeah, they had a parade through the streets of Baku to celebrate the Army of Islam's anniversary of a massacre of people in the Armenian majority city

of Shushi. Classy. That's classy. That's great stuff. That's a nation that has no need to exist. You leave that in, Nate. Leave it right the fuck in. You heard it here first, folks. Azerbaijan has no fucking business existing. I finally turned you into exactly what I wanted you to You heard it here first, folks. Azerbaijan has no fucking business existing. Fuck.

I finally turned you into exactly what I wanted you to be. I already agreed with you. I'm just saying it loud. Now Nate has to do double the work. Or Sarah, for that matter. Shout out to our friend Sarah for also editing the podcast. Now, at this point, through the various different sides of war, the Ottomans were able to, for just about two

months, create an entity known as the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Really rolls off the tongue. Yeah, it's catchy. Which unified the people of so-called Transcaucasia, this being mostly Turks, Armenians, Georgians,

into a single government what about cisco caesians shut the fuck up where's my representation you get none okay this is a single government but it was a federation so each ethnicity had its own head of state and you can imagine how well this went for For instance, look at how well Lebanon works. Now, of course, this fell apart within, like I said, two months, when Georgia declared independence, and they also had imperial German support for independence. Oh, wow. Okay.

Now, remember, these are the not-quite-so-Nazi nationalist Germans, so it could be worse. Oh, great. Yeah, fantastic. On a list of German empires to have support you, this is the least bad. Okay, that wasn't the sentence I was expecting, but I'm ready. Now, this was the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and you know it's free because it has it in there twice. Yeah, that's how you know. It's for emphasis.

Now, they were recognized by almost every country on earth and they were led by georgian mensheviks though in reality it was pretty much a german protectorate until the end of the war when you know the german empire ceased to exist for any longer ain't it yeah yeah now after this point they would be replaced by the british which always make things better right i'm sure our boys did a fine job now No, the British at this point were mostly just there to make sure the Soviets didn't roll in and invade, which they had a tendency of doing in the region, because

early Soviet history was mostly pockmarked by them attempting to reclaim all of the Russian Empire for not imperial reasons, I'm sure. Liberation, guys. Liberation. See, it says so right here on the tank. Yeah.

Thankfully, the U.S. did the same thing in 2003 to Iraq. That was liberation, right? Right, guys? We were greeted in the streets as liberators, Joe. You were there. You remember. Well, you were in Afghanistan. We're good enough.

Yeah, we liberated them too, right? Right? That was great. What's really cool about being Kasabian is at some point in your history, you will invade Afghanistan for some reason. Just like my family that stayed in the Soviet Union also invaded Afghanistan. I came back in a couple of decades later and did the same thing. At least you didn't come home with a zinc-lined coffin. No, not yet. I'm still good.

Right before the Turkish drone strike takes you out. Yeah, for some reason reason if i ever have a son god forbid uh he will for reasons that have not been explained to be doomed to patrol afghanistan for some fucking reason and get shot at by randos it was a name and lamb so yeah the british were mostly in georgia to safeguard them from Soviet invasion, but also because that oil money dough. Now, this changed in 1920 because they cut a deal with the Soviets saying they would recognize the Republic of Georgia, Democratic Republic of Georgia, if the British left. Now, this is important to Georgia because the Soviets refused to do business with them as long as they were not

a recognized country and obviously this is very very bad for a very small nation if your biggest neighbor refuses to do business with you right so the georgians agreed uh and the british left and the deal further underlined that no other foreign troops could go there part of the deal was them unbanning certain political parties, mostly the Bolshevik Party, which had been banned because it was funded by the Soviet Union. Yeah. So they had to unban it. That's obnoxious.

Now this happened to Soviets inch closer and closer, influencing Bolshevik organizers as well, supplying Osheti and Abkhaz separatists with guns. Now, these separatists were mostly apolitical at first. They were mad because in this creation of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, there's no seat at the table for them.

They were largely landless peasants because they've been pretty much serfs this entire time. And even after the freedom of the serfs serfs the extra steps they owned no land they never had enough money on them they never could accumulate four georgians who exploited them so with this creation of the republic they were pretty fucking pissed so the soviets gave them guns and then like kind of kind of sort of made them socialists but it didn't really matter like they didn't care they wanted to go shoot georgians for some land rights so the service like that's good enough for us i think you swear we're communists though all right can we have the guns out please did not take a whole lot for this to become a

bolshevik revolution uh which fair game the government of the republic did fuck up on that front when this happened the separatists were kind of like, OK, we want a seat at the table, like directly into government. Fuck elections like this is going to be us. The central government, of course, refused, which led to a revolt they could not control. Wow. Yeah, this was kind of a peasant revolt that occurred on a yearly basis because it would pop up, be put back down, pop up, get put back down. You guys have heard of perennials. But as you can imagine, every time they put it down, it was horribly brutal,

which only made the next one even worse. The weird thing about that is when you kill people, their family tends to get mad. They get mad about it. Yeah. All right. Congratulations, Joe. You know more than the United States government did in Afghanistan. I've solved coin, y'all.

You got it. Now, while this was happening, the Mensheviks probably immediately regretted signing that little treaty about not letting foreign troops help them as they watched the Azeri and Armenian republics right next door get invaded and absorbed back into the Soviet Union as they reclaimed the lands that they wanted that were once the Russian Empire. So now Georgia's quite literally all alone, dealing with constant peasant revolts and surrounded by the Soviet Union. That's tough. It's like tugging on their collar like, oh, man, we fucked up. By February of 1921, the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Georgia had decided to run for their lives as the Red Army marched in, retaking Georgia and smashing it into the new Transcaucasian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic. Soviets love naming shit.

They just love naming shit. Rolls off the tongue. Yeah. Now, this includes Abkhazia and Oshetia, though this is where things get like weirdly legalese because like they do enjoy naming things like the Soviet naming conventions are quite literally some of my favorite because they're just

huge and dumb and glorious gobbledygook yeah like I think we talked about this during our like our Chechen war series like ah yes it's the 42nd independent separate guards mechanized infantry tank brigade like our Chechen war series. Like, ah, yes, it's the 42nd Independent Separate Guards Mechanized Infantry Tank Brigade. Like, goddammit!

By the time we're done announcing ourselves, they've already shot and captured us. Now, under this new regime, Oshetia was given the ontonomous oblast status, while Abkhazia was given a so-called treaty republic status. Now, treaty republic status was pretty much a full Soviet socialist republic of Abkhazia. Almost. It was like 99% its own SSR.

Yeah. And it would be its first like it in its history. And it would be its first like it in its history. But by 1936, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were allowed to create their own, air quotes here, socialist bodies in the USSR, creating their own SSRs. With Oshetians keeping their status within their new kind of but not really independent Georgia, the new borders of the state became the topic of endless arguing, and as the Soviets redrew things, to be included within this Oshetian oblast. Like, just

absentmindedly drawing lines on a map like a British person in India. I was just redoing it over and over again, which I'm sure was... Like, at various points, they included Georgian majority villages, had never been part of Oshetia, parts of Oshetia that never been parts of Georgia.

But neither Georgians or Oshetians had a legal body to be like, yo, what the fuck? I was going to ask, is there any sort of Georgian or Oshetian representation to push back on this? Well, I'll give you the legal legal term which of course there was representation okay so now got it thank you nope there sure wasn't um as for the abcoss uh stalin and his good friend lavrenti beria both georgians fuck them over ruthlessly they stripped away their elevated status and stuck them back under georgian control for seemingly no reason other than the fact they were worried if they let

that quote treaty republic status exist more people would want it because it danced on a line that was almost SSR status where there was a lot of small parts of the Soviet Union that if

the Abkhaz were given an SSR status, there'd be people agitated enough, right? They would legitimately have to give a lot of people SSR status, which like they should have. I mean, if we're going to argue within these frameworks, then yes,

why the fuck not? But they stripped it away. There was also just a seeming racist hatred that Stalin and Beria had towards the Abkhaz people. Like to the point that it's one of those things that really only Stalin and Beria could do. And people were like, yeah, that tracks. Right. For instance, the Abkhaz would make countless arguments from the entire time they existed within the Soviet Union. They wanted their treaty status back.

But it seemed every time they did that, more rights were stripped away from them. Beria, in particular, really hated the Abkhaz. For instance, it was Beria rumored to have convinced Stalin to downgrade their status because he believed that they were less than Georgians,

which sounds like something barry would believe yeah it sounds like he rules uh like he he was one of those things that he didn't believe they were elevated enough to handle their own affairs like some some like legit shit that you'd seen like like when we talked about south africa right like that's that's the excuse like a rhodesian would say furthermore during the great purge uh which we've talked about during our Winter War series, the Baria seemed to make it a personal mission to murder as many high-ranking Abkhaz elites as he could. What a cool and swell guy, dude.

This included Nestor Lakoba, who was... Is there any rationale for this, or just like the guy's just an asshole? I mean, it's Lavrentiy Beria. The man was like a serial murderer, serial rapist, evil, snidely whiplash motherfucker. He murdered Nestor Lakoba, who was the head of the local Bolshevik movement for no reason other than he was Abkhaz. And like the rumor was he strangled him to death of his bare hands oh boy so that's like a level of hatred that can truly only be defined by a liberty barrier normal well-adjusted human being shit yeah yeah like there's a reason why he got shot as soon as stalin died

now this brings us to the modern day and the era of independence, mostly. By 1989, Georgians and various others were arguing for independence. And for the most part, these were bloodless and peaceful protests across the Soviet Union. Now, the reason for this was, as Glasnost and Prostroika came to be, it was decided they would no longer use the red army to uh enforce the unity of soviet socialist republics right they're like yeah we'll do this politically we won't kill you that really only seemed to uh count for some people um because this is not the case in georgia can't say i'm i'm shocked. Yeah. Because on April 9th, 1989, a company of Soviet

airborne troops walked into an independence rally and beat 19 people to death with shovels. What? They were carrying shovels as riot gear, and they were sharpened. Can I reiterate? What a bunch of dicks. And honestly, I have a hard time

finding why. was there's no violence in the rally like it was most of these independence rallies were peaceful because it was people and you know to please see yurivan baku whatever right baku did do a pogrom uh fuck because of course they did uh but it was largely a optimistic rally there wasn't like kicking cops in the head type shit oh yeah because like generally speaking the local police were the same ethnicity most of the time but the soldiers weren't so like cops were like yeah sure fine whatever granted again your experience may vary, but the soldiers were not. They were mostly ethnically Russian, right?

It depended. Okay. I wasn't sure. So generally airborne forces. So I think we talked about this a little bit back during the Soviet-Afghan war. You did. That's why I'm asking. But ethnically Russian conscripts and officers got the best

billets right the best units as well so airborne guards units spetsnaz groups those were mostly ethnically russian um but there was some minorities in there as well because i know someone's gonna be mad about if you went to um a soviet airborne unit you would probably find minorities from various republics but the majority of them would be russian and their because I know someone's going to be mad about it. If you went to a Soviet airborne unit, you would probably find minorities from various republics, but the majority of them would be Russian. And their officers would certainly be Russian. Okay.

So, yeah. They probably were not Georgian. Right. But by October of 1990, the independence movie led by a guy named Zavayad Gamsukurdia, sorry, bro. That was pretty much controlled by him.

Now he is the guy we talked about earlier that campaigned on slogans such as the Abkhaz nation does not exist. Oh, this asshole. Yeah. And Georgia for Georgians. Now this is still technically in the Soviet union, but hanging on by a thread at this point.

Sure. Okay. Slowly, he came to power with the promise that all of the special statuses of the Soviet times would be stripped away upon independence. Now, this messaging was pretty worrying for a lot of people. They were trying to rule because as much as 30% of population of georgia was not in fact georgian so they're abkhazian or abkhazian oshetian russian armenian yeah like there's a lot of people have moved in over the years are the abkhazians like the largest minority or you know how the demographic breaks down i assume so i think oshetians were more than abtaz i could be wrong i both both

populations are pretty small but georgia's population as a whole is pretty small sure okay uh zavayad was eventually made the chairman of the supreme council with 90 percent of the vote which i'm sure was very fair now Now, the best arguments I could see for the fairness of this vote is that the 10% of the vote he did not win were the minorities

who refused to vote for him. Right. Which 90% is still very fucking high for a fair election. Now, in Oshetia, the government found themselves in a small problem. Now, the Oshetians

were absolutely not Georgian, as we've pointed out, and had no intention of submitting themselves to the rule of Georgians, or more specifically, losing their autonomous status they had enjoyed for nearly 100 years on and off. Not to mention during that time, despite them being dominated by Georgians for most part, the Oshetians were much closer to Russians who they saw as friends. So in 1990, the Oshetians were much closer to Russians who they saw as friends. So in 1990, the Oshetians declared their own independence.

Now, the reason for this was they did not actually intend on cutting out on their own, but on staying within the USSR, which still existed. Because... That's all going to exist for another year, yeah. At the time,

Zavaiad was very much like, no, we're leaving the USSR regardless of whatever the USSR could still be. So the Oshetians will fuck you. We're going to stay in the USSR, whatever that version of the USSR is. A few months later, the government of Tbilisi,

which is the capital of Georgia, stripped the Oshetians of their autonomous status. And Zavaiad sent the dreaded Mecca D'Roni, which roughly translates as the Night Horseman, to go deal with them. Now, the Night Horseman is a very strange, weird hybrid of mafia meets nationalist death squad. All right.

Yeah, there's a lot of weird shit out there like they they in the in the inter years immediately following independence they acted very much as like a state-sponsored mafia okay it's a jobs program don't worry about it yeah they're very much a nationalist death squad as well uh and they sent out to massacre dissident Oshetians. Now, this eventually blew up in a full-scale civil war between the two sides in 1991 when the Georgian cops attempted to disarm various militia groups in the Oshetian capital of

Svingvali? Sorry, guys. Our bad. Now, this immediately went to shit. Georgia assumed they would be able to steamroll their tiny neighbor in no time who was armed with mostly hunting rifles and shotguns. Well, the Georgian state had most of the rifles and force of arms and things like that. But there is a small problem when they declared independence from the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union crumbled. They didn't have an army anymore.

Oh, whoops. But they did have a lot of guns. Okay. You need those. Yeah. I mean, they did try to slap together like a Georgian army, but there was no real cohesive command structure,

which is important. So just some dudes. It was some dudes who didn't have uniforms, but they did have guns. And when they went into Sfingvali to quote-unquote disarm these various militia groups,

they discovered something that surprised them, and that is Russians had flooded Oshetia with weapons and volunteers. Now, some of these volunteers we've talked about before, because they would end up being the backbone of the Chechen resistance a few years later.

Dudes like Doko Amurov and Shamil Brestaev. There's a name. They had been trained by the KGB and released into Oshetia to commit horrible war crimes, which would border on genocide against local Georgians, Armenians, and Azeris.

And this would certainly not blow up in Russia's face within the next two years. Now, the Georgian government was so unprepared for this, the first thing they sent in is something they called the National Guard, which... Ugh. It's a group of dudes with a title. You cannot call this an army.

Now, it was an armed body formed right before the fighting was started because the national army had largely collapsed. Like I said, due to the collapse of the Soviet union. Right. And there's another problem with that. You had generations of people who are used to conscription.

Okay. So the easy answer to this is simply conscript a new army. Well, all of their draft infrastructure collapsed as well because, again, it was connected to the Soviet military, not their own. Oh, yeah, yeah. So without that Soviet support, they're like, we have draft offices.

Nobody's going to them, though. But you guys said you would. Yeah, so the draft system completely failed. So they're attempting to create something new, being the National Guard. The source that I used for this is a book called The Guns of August 2008. And they described it as they were just left with a whole bunch of paperwork and nobody knew how to file it. Right. left with a whole bunch of paperwork and nobody knew how to file it. Yeah. So they called for volunteers leading to a weird collection of militias, outright

street gangs to include the so-called gang called the White George. That's not a name. A literal prison gang that was released upon promise they would fight for their state. That's one way of doing it.

Like, imagine, like, I don't know, like, during the troop surge, like, all Nortenios, please line up. It used to be that you could either join the service or go to jail. Yeah, but they did this in reverse. Like, you're already in jail.

You're already in jail, yeah. I mean, the they did this in reverse like you're already in jail yeah i mean the soviets did this during world war ii where they um promised a whole bunch of prisoners like if you enlist you'll get freedom which was a complete lie uh and after the war they were dumped back into prison i can't believe the soviets would do that dirty like that dude and then uh well the funny part was there's like strict Soviet and now Russian and now also various other states prison culture, which forbids working with the state in any way to include even during Soviet times. Like, you don't talk to prison guards. You don't work for the state. Nothing.

So a lot of people refuse to enlist even during World War II to fight the Nazis. Like, nah, fuck the state. You put me in prison, which I can respect that energy. Fair enough. Yep. two to fight the nazis like nah fuck the state you put me in prison which i can respect that energy but when they came back they came back right and when they were put back into prison they were put right back into that same culture now with everybody knowing you went and started uh working for the state which launched a prison war called the bitch wars right now where the hardcore prison guys that didn't enlist fought the guys who did enlist very weird stuff but yeah that's the kind of prison culture and that's where the white

georges came from what a country man i love that shit now this collection of assholes now dubbed the national guard just began systematically burning down villages. Some people say it's up to like 100 different villages. They attempted to force the Oshetian civilian populations to flee because there's a part of Russia called North Oshetia. And they thought if they create enough terror,

they would simply run into Russia and be like, ah, solve that problem. Right. So that's what they wanted to do. So yeah, terror warfare is always good now unfortunately the oshetians decided to do yeah and the oshetians said well if they're gonna do that we're gonna fucking do that too and they were joined by shamil basayev killing every georgian they can get their hands on. Georgia considers this a genocide and legitimately,

I don't know. I don't know enough about it to say if it is or isn't. Sounds real bad. I will say. Shamil Basayev is here. Things are not great. Yeah. At any point you find yourself on the same set of Shamil Basayev.

You've gone wrong somewhere. This is the war I talked about briefly during the first Chechen War series where he developed a new form of torture where he sliced somebody's throat and pulled their tongue through it. Yeah, I believe my parents listened to that episode. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he didn't invent that. It's also known as like a Colombian necktie.

Real trope there, Shamil. But he popularized it within the region yeah yeah derivative some guy being tortured to death like just screaming derivative at you i liked it better when fucking they did it in bogota well yeah say what you will about shamil basa you have like mixing around a wine glass, but he's very derivative. But Zivayad, it turns out, was very, very bad at running the country. So while all this is going on, within about one year, his time was up. In December of 1991, the head of the National Guard and the Knight Horsemen had a little coup and established a junta.

Because why not? Why not, man? Now, this only lasted a few more months because they realized that, holy shit, running a country is hard. We're not good at this. Yeah, that sucks. So they invited former KGB agent and former Soviet foreign minister,

Edward Shevardnadze, to take power. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you might be like, I've heard that name before. And it's because you had. He's pretty much single-handedly responsible for getting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan. And holy shit would he end up

running Georgia for a while. Now, at this point, Zavai and his supporters fled to Chechnya because why not? And also Abkhazia. Sure. Because even the Abkhaz were like, sure, fine.

You're not in charge of anything anymore. And he set up a government in exile, I believe in Grozny. Oh no. I know about Grozny. Now, at this point, Grozny is still mostly, like, not blown apart. Not a bubble yet. Yeah. The city hall says, welcome to hell on it.

I truly like what you've done with the place. It smells like dead Russians. Now, this new president, Shevardnadzeze had enough problems on his hands uh with the the oshetians and had no intention starting shit with the obcause and the obcause didn't want to start any shit with de plisi hoping to like i don't know sit this whole one out also they did see vividly what was going on over in oshetia and they're like we don't want any of that smoke over here none of that please this changed however when the new government, Tbilisi, announced the Soviet era constitution of Georgia was abolished and would be replaced by the first republic, that being the Democratic Republic's constitution of 1918. Now, the Abkhaz took one look at that and said, well, there's no place in that constitution for our autonomy.

You're right. There isn't. And Tbilisi just was like, yes, you are correct. So the Abkhaz government announced they would replace their own constitution with that of the 1925 constitution, being the last one that recognized Abkhaz statehood

and hoisted their own flag over their government house. So, of course, Tbilisi refused to recognize this. Well, they love doing it. Yeah. So people may be connected to the Abqaz government, maybe some freelancers, nobody's entirely sure who,

kidnapped the Minister of the Interior, stashing him in the Abqaz city of Ghali. As one does. Yeah, I assume in a long enough time, I'm like hey get him back unhurt if you recognize our statehood or whatever but of course this made the government very very mad

and they told the Abkhaz government that they would send the police into Abkhazia only to free the minister not to start a war however these police were awfully heavily armed and had like tanks and shit now the problem was the Abkhaz commander, a guy named Abzinda, sorry, knew that they were lying because the commander of the police, Tengiz Kitovani, was also the commander of the National Guard.

Oh. and after seeing what the national guard had done to oshedia that being ethnic cleansing they said if any soldiers came anywhere fucking near abkhazia it would mean a war so then of course a war happened oh good i was i was nervous we wouldn't get one man for a second here i thought someone would have a clear head. Oh, you don't have that on the shelf. So then, of course, the war started. The Abkhaz weren't ready, and the National Guard ran over them, murdering and looting their way through the regional capital of Sukhumi and then returning to Tbilisi, delivering the flag from the government house as a prize. But the Abkhaz were not going to roll over or take this shit lying down.

Their government simply moved to a different town, Guadauta. Sorry, guys. Guadauta? My Abkhaz is rusty. It's okay. Mine's worse. I speak first best Abkhaz on this podcast, which was a tactical choice as well as a practical one for instance because the town had a russian airbase in it any attack on the town would be considered an attack

on russia and george didn't want any of that shit going on none of that smoke if you will but that did not protect other outlying towns the night horseman mafia landed by sea, doing what I imagine is the only mafia-born amphibious landing. Holy shit. And then burned, murdered, and looted coastal towns, while the so-called Confederation of Mountain People's Armies, which was made up of Chechen, Dagestani, and English volunteers. Terrific name. Came down from the mountains to aid the Abkhaz, of course, on the direction training and armament of Russia. These forces not only drove Georgian forces out,

but also Georgians themselves. And they were personally led by, wait for it, Shamil Basayev again. This guy just keeps popping up. They would slaughter any Georgians they got their hands on. If anyone remembers anything that I said before about him, he did that all over again. This is pretty much where he learned how to be a fucking psychopath. Gotta start somewhere, man.

Everyone starts small, Joe. His lunatic trade school, I guess. One brick at a time, Joe. Yeah. Just to be clear here, the Chechens and other volunteers were not alone in this mission to expel and murder the Georgians. Abkhaz units also joined

in, but were decidedly not as good at it. I assume because they were not as experienced yet. Yeah. But they didn't stop at Georgians either. Pretty much any non-Abkhaz became targets, including Russians, Greeks, Armenians, and even some Christian Abkhaz themselves in a moment of blowback. Rude.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes while thousands were killed. Georgian homes, schools, and churches were blown up in an attempt to erase them from the area's history. Now, elsewhere, the war devolved into a long-range artillery and sniper duel, while Russian jets would occasionally drop vacuum air fuel explosives over Georgians. Now, here's a fun fact about this. If you ask the Russians, they never bombed anybody. The Russians denied they had

anything to do with the various airstrikes, but the Abkhaz had no fucking air force to even lie about. Just got there. I don't know what you're talking about. Shut up. Express conference is over over those aren't our planes that was the obcoz air force meanwhile the obcoz like we don't actually have an air force we wish we did then we would do that we have some guides now when the georgians reached out to the international community and said they were being attacked by russia nobody cared because this is solidly that point in history.

Where nobody gave a shit as the USSR collapsed. So the affairs of a former Soviet state. Didn't register anymore. Something that unfortunately continues to this day. Neat. Hooray. Now even when a Russian plane. With a Russian pilot.

And carrying all of his Russian military identity papers. Were shot down. The Russian defense minister, podcast favorite Pavel Grachev said that the guy was totally not Russian. He's like, that guy's not Russian. We have no idea what you're talking about.

He also included the Georgians who lacked a functional air force of their own of simply painting a mig up to look like a Russian plane and then bombing themselves with it before shooting it down. Some real 5D chess going on here. Now, with all of this support, it was only a matter of time before Sukumi fell back into the hands of the Abkhaz. Hilariously, the president of Georgia, Shevardnadze, was commanding the defense of the city personally. was commanding the defense of the city personally.

Despite the fact he had never been any kind of military commander, though he did the rank of major general in the former Georgian SSR's Ministry of Public Order and Internal Affairs at various points, he only held political posts, not military ones, which probably explains why the defense immediately crumbled. That will do it. And not to mention, remember, even politically, he was bad at this. He bumbled his way into the whole ass Soviet war in Afghanistan. So maybe he's not the guy you want in command of anything.

Not with that attitude. Come on, dude. You got to start somewhere. Start small. Start with a zinc-lined coffin. You got to lose Afghanistan before you lose Georgia. It's a significantly smaller country. You got to crawl before you can walk.

stand before you lose Georgia. It's a significantly smaller country. You gotta crawl before you can walk. Now, he had to run for his life as the city fell behind him with rumors that his old buddy Yeltsin had to make sure he escaped alive due to his support during that whole coup thing that Yeltsin had.

Now, during all of this weakness and war and all that, Zavaiat and his loyalists attempted to seize control all over again, leading to Shevardnadze to plead with the Russians for support to keep him in power, which they did, meaning they supported, at various points,

three sides of the same civil war. Which, just incredible stuff. That's just that good late Soviet Union diplomacy. This is like when you click on Wikipedia and read the belligerence of the Iran-Iraq War. Like, okay, how did this happen? Yeah, at one point, Russia was supporting and arming and defending three sides of a kind of four-sided civil war somehow.

I don't know. Now, the war eventually ended temporarily at least with a ceasefire in 1993 but the war had left the entire country in fucking ruins just as winter swept into the region the police see it much of georgia was left with only sporadic electricity and gas roving bands of night horsemen mobsters robbed and stole at will and hundreds of thousands of refugees had flooded in and been given mostly nothing for survival. At this point, this is pretty much a kleptocracy, like to the most specific definition you could find. Things are bad here.

The night horsemen are kind of, but not really part of the government. White horsemen are kind of, but not really part of the government. Ministers of government are very obviously connected to them and just looting the country for everything it's worth. Yeah, this is definitely the era where oligarchs are born. Now, Georgia never really administered the zones they had lost in the war. They had still just lost two whole ass wars, which is kind of rough on the old national pride more like George more like George am I right

now the nation left at the end of the war was pretty much a failed state not entirely like it was a failed state if you didn't live in Tbilisi and if you lived in Tbilisi it was almost a failed state it was pretty't live in Tbilisi. And if you lived in Tbilisi, it was almost a failed state. Failed state, yeah.

It was pretty much teetering on the collapse of complete and total disillusion. Russian, Oshetian, and Abkhaz peacekeeping units patrolled the areas, and various amounts of rebuilding would occur. Well, they're all friends. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really helps when you have a pipeline of money coming in, which Georgia definitely did not. Russia would form the Commonwealth of Independent States as a form of reintroducing their sphere of influence without the hammer and sickle aesthetics, which, as you can imagine, Georgia did not want to join due to the war they had just been a part of. But that didn't matter.

The Russian military was still the largest military presence in Georgia, whether they joined it or not. The CTSO or whatever you want to call it was coming to them. The Russian trans Caucasian military district headquarters was in Tbilisi and Russian border guards secure their border with Turkey because their protest was mostly pointless. They had no choice and eventually acquiesced to join the Commonwealth of independent States. And I got that all fucked up. The Commonwealth

of Independent States is the CIS. The CTSO would come later. A lot of acronyms in this region. I apologize. Yeah, fair enough. The Russian military was also the main supplier of weapons for literally every side of the now frozen conflict, which is something they do all across

this region and continue to do. It's their version of soft power. Right. Make yourselves indispensable. Right. Also the Russian Orthodox church, but that's a debate for a different day. Is this something they did in Armenia,

Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Artsakh, Ukraine, you name it. Also Transnistria. It happens all over the place uh there's a frozen war they supply both sides with the with the weapons they think they need to fight that war

in case it pops off and they also sell the countermeasures of those weapons so if anything pops off they have to come back to daddy russia to solve it also far cry 2 if you've never played it oh shit that was huh yeah the. Yeah, I forgot about that. Quite honestly, their goal is never sell one set enough weapons to make a starting of the war a definitive end to that war. By the time the war ended, Russia

pretty much controlled the Georgian government. And I don't mean this metaphorically either. This wasn't a leverage type situation. Treaties promised four bases within the Republic, as well as pretty much getting to pick who was the ministers of defense, interior, and security, where all had to be handpicked by the Russian Federation. Right. Everyone that they picked for these roles was connected to Russia or, quite simply, Russian.

Sure. For example, the Georgian Minister of Defense was an ethnic Georgian who was an active major general within the Russian military. Okay. That seems to be all on the up and up. Yep. Yep. Also, he happened to be the deputy commander of the Russian military district that covered Georgia.

Oh. Yeah. How nice of him. Short commute. Yeah, that's really a work commute hack on his part. Now, becoming what was effectively a Russian protectorate was supposed to come with benefits, however. They signed these treaties for a reason. The Russians eventually mapping out a way that these various breakaway states could eventually come back together again.

Now, they made sure that there was no defined way that was going to happen when those were signed, because of course they didn't. And of course, as we know today, sitting here in 2021, that still has not happened. Another benefit that was supposed to was the rebuilding of the Georgian security apparatus and training of a new officer corps for the military, because they either A, didn't have one, or B, they were all dead. Instead, they gave them old equipment, much of which didn't work anymore, and barely

allowed any Georgian military officers into the Russian military academies, which was a key part of the treaty. At one point, they simply stopped giving rebuilding aid that they said they would. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. And I understand that Russia is going through a lot of shit at this point.

They are also really trying to pull themselves. Honor your treaties is important, dickheads. Yeah, but that also isn't the reason why they cut off rebuilding it. Thinking that they were, that they'd been like bad boys or displeased daddy in some way, Shevardnadze, who remember had deep connections to Russia himself, bowed even lower and lower to appease russia leading to the georgian themselves calling him a russian plant like the georgian people thought their president was a russian agent which he kind of was real faith of the institutions

yeah i mean if he personally wasn't, his whole government was. Every version of state security was. So, you know, do that what you will. This included Shevardnadze telling Russia that they supported them, that being Georgia, during their war in Chechnya, openly saying Russia had the right to carpet

Bob Grozny and allowed the use of Georgian airspace to be used for this effort. Despite the fact this was incredibly unpopular in Georgia, as you can imagine, absolutely none of this shit worked. Russia never even stopped giving weapons to various

breakaway states and also the fucking mafia. They were straight up giving weapons to the night horsemen who were kind of like an extra political force that could be used to enforce political rule from Russia. Right. At some points, they were pro-Georgian. At some points, they were pro-Russia.

They were the mafia. You just had to pay them. But by the mid-1990s, Chevronadze was starting to realize this wasn't working so well. He figured since Russia wouldn't stop screwing them over, he could reach out to the West. Famous for never screwing anyone over. That's us, baby. At least like NATO wouldn't make you

pick a defense minister that we like or whatever, you know? NATO mostly doesn't exist outside of like when the US randomly invades someone and asks for 10 soldiers so we can say you supported it, which Georgia also does. We'll get there. That's real bad.

This was either in earnest, like, Chevronadze was either earnestly turning pro-West due to just the pressure of being constantly fucked by Russia, or it was to show Russia that unless you started to fulfill your part of the deal we were gonna find somewhere else right yeah he's like definitely like looking for a used car

like that the lot down the street said they'll give me 10k off uh but because his military security services and pretty much entire government were controlled by russians he was gonna have a really really hard time hard time going about doing anything like that. So instead, he propped up and supported a political wing of Western-educated politicians within the ruling Citizens Union of Georgia party and surrounded

himself with pro-West advisors. Now, most of these were like Georgian diaspora who had come back after independence and stuff like that, or they were educated in Western Europe, stuff like that. Sure. Now, his goal was not to like lose power. Shevardnadze loves him some power.

His goal is to kind of create a competing Western faction in this pro-Russian government in order to like slowly push out Russian influence and maybe, I don't know, pick his entire cabinet. slowly push out Russian influence and maybe, I don't know, pick his entire cabinet. So, of course, someone tried to kill him within a few months of doing this in August of 1995. I wonder how that was. Pretty much everybody accepts that this is a Russian plot.

Probably his own defense minister was in on it, but nobody knows for sure. Further underlying the fact that the guy who tried to kill him left the country immediately afterwards and then uh took a privately owned russian jet straight to moscow oh okay yeah that's what we call a hint yeah unsolvable crime yeah we might not be a true crime podcast but every once in a while we solve a mystery yeah but the failure actually lended him more support because they're like oh man if somebody's trying to kill him he must be doing something right or he must be pissing off

the right kind of people because it makes sense none of this behind the doors intrigue was unknown to georgians like they fully are aware of what russia is doing this isn't like subterfuge type shit they know that like why is our defense minister a Russian military general? Make it make sense. He used this popular support to shift power away from parliament and onto himself, which is never a good sign. And he used the idea that most people believe that parliament simply didn't work as an excuse to do so, because there was a whole lot of gridlock on purpose by design. Another move that Shevardnadze did was got Russia involved in this oil pipeline that went through Baku, Tbilisi, and then Sihan, which the goal was to get away from Russian gas monopolies, which I'm sure Western Europe knows all about right now.

Now, this pipeline project has long been considered ridiculous and mostly a political ploy to damage Russia. But since it passed through Turkey, a NATO nation, that meant it piqued the interest of the United States, unfortunately for everybody involved. Also, Georgia saw Russia as weakening. Do you remember

this is the mid-90s? Soviet Union just collapsed. The Soviet Union collapsed, but everybody just watched in real time as they got their shit kicked in by Chechnya. Chechnya, right, right, right. So suddenly, the idea of being rolled by the Russian military didn't seem all that scary.

Then Georgia got weirdly close with the new Chechen state. Okay, alright. Which, I mean, like I said, fine, whatever. They were planning roads and things that would just never quite work out.

Holding hands and singing songs, yes. They were playing this huge fresh water pipeline, like roads going all the way there. It collapsed because, I mean, Georgia's having their own problems, but Chechnya as a functioning state

really never existed. They immediately collapsed upon themselves, as you can imagine with the amount of destruction and exploitation and murder that happened there. But as this happened more, Shevardnadze's life was threatened pretty much continuously. In February 1998, he escaped another assassination

attempt. Which minister was it this time? No one's quite sure. And in October of that same year, a mutiny within the National Guard led by Russian agents nearly killed him again. Pretty much every time Georgia made some overture to the West. Right. They were punished for it.

He would almost die. But also there would be a flare up of fighting between one of the breakaway states, normally Oshetia, which Russia truly had its hooks in. Right. And then Russia would swoop in, act like the dad, calm everything down, and then make more empty promises to resolve the whole thing. Like every time they talked about the pipeline, every time they talked about like doing business with Chechnya, because remember during this point,

Russia still considered Chechnya Russia, even if they did get kicked out of it. They'd be like, oh, weird, quote unquote, Oshetian militants just launched like 15 artillery shells at you. We'll talk them down. By the year 2000, that whole thing had changed. Georgia had become one of the leading beneficiaries of U.S. aid, while the U.S. had dumped money in military traders,

including myself, into rebuilding the Georgian military. Yes, I helped train the Georgian military for like two weeks. It wasn't that big of a deal. But I feel like I should point that out. I mean, everybody has read about the kind of soldier I was in the book. It wasn't like some secret squirrel shit. I literally taught them how to use M16s. That's it.

Because that's what a secret squirrel would say. Right? teens that's it because that's what a secret squirrel would say yeah right yeah a secret squirrel with such a storied military uh career that he wrote a book that no major outlet would touch well i read it and i liked it yeah thank you uh but yeah i trained georgian junior non-commissioned officers for like two weeks once did you train some dudes on tanks too or did I make that up no the Georgians were never going to move to the M1 because it's way too expensive they don't have the logistics capacity

to carry down one A1 have you ever trained anyone on tanks am I making this up no I did kind of when I was not an instructor but part of the A-Bolic cadre at Fort Knox, what it was at Fort Knox, we moved it.

We would get international students all the time from NATO countries, but also Taiwan. And we would, they'd learned like tank stuff from us, but it was also very weird because none of the countries that were sending people used M one tanks. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Like Turkey, the UK, Germany, Taiwan. None of those guys used M1s. It was bonding, but also leadership training. I was just there to teach them how to load and stuff in a tank that they would not use after that school. a tank that they would not use after that school. But by 2001, US military aid represented a full two-thirds of

the Georgian military defense. It was a lot. This coincided with the start of the second Chechen War, and Russia used that as an opportunity to start flinging some pretty hilarious accusations towards Georgia. Remember, this is prime war on terror shit, right?

This is that era. For instance, they claim that Georgia was a hub for Islamic terrorism, something that probably came as a shock for a famously Christian country. I was going to say, is it Georgia? Yeah. To be fair,

there is like some extremists that came from Georgia. Like, I believe something. Yeah. Well, yeah, him. But also there was I forget the guy's first name, but Al Shistani, who is kind of known for being completely unruled by Georgia, which that was able to be used as a pretty safe fallback position for

Islamic militants and then, you know, how that spreads. But the idea that they're a hotbed of terrorism in 2001, absolutely not true. At one point, they claimed that Osama Bin Laden himself was hiding out there as well as thousands of members of the Taliban, which is strange. afghans which was osama bin laden's detachment in afghanistan which wouldn't obviously become al-qaeda at some point um did fight in the nargana karabakh war on the side of azerbaijan

so they were in the region but osama bin laden never went there there's never there's never any evidence that he traveled there and there was certainly no members of the fucking taliban there and nobody believed russia when they said this right but that didn't stop russian jets from randomly bombing georgian border villages at random oh that's cool that's real nice this is before 9-11 and then you know so now 9-11 happens and suddenly america is all up in this global war on terror and Russia has kind of fucked up. They overplayed their hand. They spent years claiming Georgia was being infiltrated by terrorists to the point that by 9-11, America was paying attention to Georgia. So by 2001, the U.S. entered into a bilateral military cooperation program with Georgia with the idea that this would be used by the georgian state to combat these terrorists that were apparently plaguing the georgian highlands

and russia was suddenly like oh fuck that's fucking probably dude congratulations sir you've played yourself put a quarter in your ass yeah i mean there's also a very very very good bet america fully knew that this is bullshit right they're like well you invited us in bro because at this point the second chechen war is still going on and uh putin has 100 played it as a war on terrorism so america is like yeah do what you do firebbomb those schools. It's against terrorists. So we knew what was happening. Now, not only did Russia accidentally play into the hands of the US and in turn NATO, they would almost certainly lay the seeds for the events that would come to war in 2008.

And that is where we'll pick up next time so that kind of exhaustive history of how the fuck all this led to a two-week long war next week yeah next week hopefully liam you learned uh something about this topic you didn't know you suck uh yeah liam noted georgian uh philosopher that's me yeah i learned a lot thank you He's one of the guys that still calls it Kartval. I think like legally that's what's known in Georgian. But yeah,

hopefully everybody learned something new about this conflict and next week we'll talk about more stuff you didn't know possibly unless for some reason some Georgian scholar already knows all this stuff. In which case I am sorry for mispronouncing every attempt I made at your language.

It'll happen for about another hour. Um, Liam, plug your shows for which we are truly genuinely sorry, by the way. Yeah, I'm sorry. Whenever I mispronounce anything,

it's not like I do it on purpose. It just happens. We just, we just do it. We're sorry. Uh, listen to, well, there's your problem uh it's a leftist engineering disasters comedy podcast with slides and listen to 10 000 losses our first episode uh actually had joe on it our first bonus i should say yeah yeah go download that or whatever and thank you for supporting lions led by donkeys if you't, please subscribe to the Patreon.

It makes everything we do possible. You get bonus stuff. Let's see. What else? Buy my books. Liberty of Death series. You can probably get them for free if you have Kindle Unlimited. If not...

Buy his books. Buy it anyway. You can buy it anyway. Good for you for not supporting Amazon, I guess. Yeah. Sorry. And until next time, don't vacuum bomb villages. Yeah, that's bad.