‘You know,’ Ivanov said in an interview, ‘we didn’t always have very easy relations with Shevardnadze, but Putin was nonetheless quite clear – he was the legal, legitimately elected president, and we must help him.’1
Ivanov flew into Tbilisi after midnight and had a meeting scheduled with Shevardnadze in the morning. But before then he wanted to test the mood, so he took two bodyguards and set off to where the protesters were camped out in the city centre. He picked his way among the tents and campfires trying to gauge how explosive the atmosphere was. ‘I don’t really understand Georgian,’ he told us, ‘but you could get a sense of the place.’
Suddenly somebody recognised him, and a buzz spread through the square: ‘Ivanov is here, Ivanov is here!’ The word quickly reached the ears of Zurab Zhvania, a popular politician and former speaker of parliament, who, together with Saakashvili and Burjanadze, was one of the leaders of the Rose Revolution. By now the crowd was becoming restless, and Zhvania urged Ivanov to get up on to the podium and address them. Ivanov recalled: ‘I asked him how to say in Georgian, “Long live friendship between Russia and Georgia.” I repeated that a few times into the microphone, and it seemed to go down well! I got the feeling that the people felt Russia could help somehow in resolving this conflict.’
Nino Burjanadze, the speaker of parliament and since the previous afternoon self-proclaimed acting president, was in her office. ‘Zhvania and Saakashvili and I had been working till about four in the morning,’ she recalled later, ‘and now I was dozing in my armchair, when my secretary came in and said: “Ivanov is addressing the crowd.” I thought I was dreaming! But I went downstairs, and sure enough there he was, even saying something to them in Georgian!’2
Ivanov now ended up in the role of mediator, shuttling between the opposition and President Shevardnadze. In the small hours of the morning he held talks with Saakashvili, Zhvania and Burjanadze to find out exactly what their demands were. Retelling these events, Ivanov insisted that at no stage did anyone insist on Shevardnadze’s resignation; rather it was a question of re-running the parliamentary election that the opposition knew had been stolen from them. Ivanov spent the rest of the night consulting Georgian friends and diplomats, and came to the conclusion that ‘the pendulum was swinging in the direction of the opposition’.
That was the message he took to President Shevardnadze in the morning. ‘I had known him since 1985, and felt I could say to him quite openly that I had met all these people, in the opposition and in his own entourage, and sensed that he had lost almost all support.’ Ivanov felt that he failed to convince Shevardnadze that he was so isolated, but he did persuade him to meet the opposition leaders.
Ivanov finally brought Zhvania and Saakashvili to Shevardnadze’s residence for talks in the afternoon of the 23rd. At this point he felt he had done all that was required of him. ‘I sat down at the table. Shevardnadze and his assistant were on one side; Zhvania and Saakashvili were on the other. I said: “I think I have done what I came to do. President Putin asked me to help you find a political solution. That’s up to you now – to hold talks and avoid bloodshed. So I will leave you now.”’
Thereupon Ivanov left the residence and flew to the city of Batumi in western Georgia, where he was due to meet the local leader, Aslan Abashidze. The outcome he expected from the talks he had arranged in Tbilisi was an agreement to re-run the elections, with Shevardnadze staying on as president, at least for the moment. But when he got off the plane in Batumi, Abashidze greeted him with the words: ‘What on earth have you done? Shevardnadze has resigned!’
Looking back, Ivanov now laughs wryly at how he inadvertently brought about the end of Shevardnadze’s rule, without ever understanding how it happened. Of the triumvirate who led the Rose Revolution, he speaks most warmly of Zurab Zhvania, describing him as ‘wise, calm, balanced, and intent on having good relations with Russia’ – more or less the opposite of what he says about Mikheil Saakashvili, the man whose charisma made him the pre-eminent leader of the opposition. ‘Misha’, as he was universally known, was a big, ebullient bear of a man – Westernised in mentality (he had studied in Strasbourg and New York, and had a Dutch wife), but at the same time oozing Georgian charm and spontaneity. Aged only 36, he swept to victory in the early presidential election held on 4 January 2004. Taking 96 per cent of the vote, Saakashvili embodied the hopes not only of the thousands of demonstrators who had backed the Rose Revolution but of the vast majority of Georgians, who saw the ballot as an opportunity finally to turf out the corrupt Soviet-era regime and orientate their country towards the West and democracy.
I interviewed Saakashvili a year or so later, when his pro-Western policies were already raising hackles in Moscow, and reminded him of his predecessor’s famous phrase about the ‘sun rising in the north’. Was he not afraid of provoking the Russian bear, I asked? ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘I also know where the sun rises. We want the best relations with the West and with our great neighbour to the north.’3
In fact, Saakashvili’s first moves as president were uncannily like Putin’s at the start of his rule. He immediately pushed through constitutional amendments that increased his presidential powers, while drastically reducing the role of parliament. He replaced regional governors and began to impose state control over television stations.4 In a crackdown on corruption he had former ministers and businessmen arrested, and (unlike in Russia) carried out a radical overhaul of the police which dramatically reduced bribe-taking. He and his prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, transformed the economy by, among other things, slashing taxes and attracting major foreign investments.
Like Russia, Georgia also faced the threat of separatism. After the country gained independence from the USSR in 1991, the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia both broke away and after brief civil wars enjoyed de facto independence – with Russian support. A third ‘autonomous republic’, Ajaria, did not declare independence but was ruled like a personal fiefdom by its autocratic president, Aslan Abashidze. Regaining control over Georgia’s lost provinces was as much of an obsession for Saakashvili as retaking Chechnya was for Putin. On the eve of his inauguration as president on 24 January 2004 Saakashvili solemnly swore on the grave of Georgia’s twelfth-century King David the Builder that, ‘Georgia will be united and strong, will restore its wholeness and become a united, strong state.’
It was that resolve, that determination to reintegrate Georgia’s minority nationalities, that four years later would bring his country to war with Russia.
Saakashvili also flaunted his love affair with the West like a reckless divorcee, thumbing her nose at the bullying ex-husband. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was guest of honour at Saakashvili’s inauguration ceremony. He recalls: ‘We all stood up when the national anthem was played. And when it was over I was about to sit down again when another anthem started up – it was “Ode to Joy” and the European Union flag was being raised. I thought: oh boy, I bet Igor [Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister] isn’t enjoying this part of the performance.’5