Russia-Georgia Crisis Worsens Despite Release of Alleged Spies
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

TBILISI, Georgia — Russia imposed a land and air blockade on Georgia yesterday despite the release by Tbilisi of four Russian officers whose arrest on spying charges has triggered the worst confrontation between the countries in years. Ignoring appeals to calm the worsening crisis in the south Caucasus, the Kremlin decided to sever all travel and communication links with its southern neighbor.
The move dampened hopes that Georgia’s decision to hand over the men could defuse the grave altercation between the two ex-Soviet states. President Bush telephoned President Putin of Russia to express his dismay over the situation but was warned not to interfere, according to officials in Moscow. The fighting talk in Moscow was in stark contrast to the more emollient tone struck by Georgia’s pro-Western President Saakashvili in the 24 hours preceding the climb-down that resulted in the four Russian soldiers winning their release.
Five days after their detention, the handcuffed officers — three colonels and a major — were brought to the prosecutor-general’s office in central Tbilisi, arriving in separate police cars. Each was marched by police officers to the building’s forecourt where they were formally expelled from the country.
They were then handed over to representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and driven to Tbilisi’s airport from where a Russian military aircraft flew them to Moscow. Despite initial concern in the West over what was seen as a potentially provocative act in detaining the men, European officials warned Moscow that they now expected a reconciliatory response to defuse the crisis. The OSCE’s chairman, Karel De Gucht, said: “I explicitly call on Russia to respond in a similar way with gestures to decrease the tension rapidly.”
Continued Russian implacability risks provoking international condemnation and could further sour already worsening relations between Moscow and the West. Even before the blockade, the Kremlin’s response was viewed by many as excessive. It withdrew its ambassador from Tbilisi, evacuated its diplomatic staff, imposed a visa ban, and placed its troops in Georgia on high alert, raising fears of a military confrontation.
Russia’s relations with Georgia have been sporadically poor since the collapse of the Soviet Union but deteriorated since Mr. Saakashvili rose to power during the Rose Revolution of 2004 that unseated the reluctantly pro-Moscow president, Eduard Shevardnadze.
Since then, Mr. Saakashvili has clamped down on corruption, bolstered ties with the West, and has announced his intention to seek NATO membership for Georgia. He has also enraged Kremlin hardliners by attempting to resolve the status of two pro-Moscow separatist enclaves that broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s.
Sometimes seen as a hot-blooded maverick, Mr. Saakashvili has attempted to reverse roles with Mr. Putin, who likes to portray himself as a cool and rational voice. “We all need to calm down,” the Georgian president said yesterday.
The strategy seems to be working. “By and large, Georgia seems to have won by demonstrating goodwill while Russia is stomping its feet,” director of Mercator, a Moscow think-tank, Dmitry Oreshkin, said. Mr. Saakashvili, though, has still managed to get his point across — insisting that the Russian officers were guilty of spying and portraying his country as the victim of years of Kremlin bullying.
“I think the message to our great neighbor Russia is: Enough is enough. We can’t be treated as a second rate back yard to some kind of re-emerging empire.”