TBILISI, JULY 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — In almost her first act as President of the Council of the European Union, Kersti Kaljulaid, Estonia’s president, accused the West of failing to stand up to Russia during its war with Georgia in 2008.

In an interview with Euronews, Ms Kaljulaid said that the failure of the US and Europe to defend Georgia had sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could use force to project Russia’s influence over its near abroad. She directly linked Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and its support for rebels in east Ukraine with apparent Western indifference towards Georgia six years earlier.

“In Georgia, I believe that the Western world made an error because they didn’t see that they are teaching the wrong lesson,” she said. “In Georgia, Russia learned that if you act, the reaction is relatively mild. And so the avalanche arrived in Crimea.”

The comments will jar with Western leaders who blamed an overzealous Mikheil Saakashvili, then Georgia’s president, for triggering a war with Russia that focused on the rebel region of South Ossetia. Several hundred people died in the short war and thousands were forced to flee their homes when Russian forces pushed back the Georgian army. It was able to set up positions deep inside Georgia and destroy Georgian military equipment and bases before pulling back into Russia.

The upshot of the war was that Russia recognised both Georgia’s rebel states, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent. Only a handful of other countries, and importantly none from the FSU, have followed this lead.

Like scraping off an old scab, Ms Kaljulaid’s comments are painful and important. They reveal the nervousness of ex-Soviet countries, now aligned with the West, towards Russia. These countries consider the Kremlin to be their greatest threat.

“Every country has the right to decide with whom they do business, with whom they associate themselves,” she said. “This does not suit him [Putin]. He is out to change it.”

Estonia holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months.

The war with Russia marked the beginning of the end for Mr Saakashvili. He had been something of a poster-boy in the West but in the run up to the war had been accused of overstepping his mandate.

By 2012 Mr Saakashvili’s United National Movement party had lost its majority in parliament to the Georgian Dream and by 2013 also the presidency. He is now living in exile, accused by the Georgian authorities of various financial crimes.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)