I decided to visit South Ossetia. I wanted to for a long time, but now the opportunity has fallen - so that I go completely into emptiness, I'm not a journalist to such an extent. And then it coincided that a friend was here on a business trip and the questions of where and how to get settled disappeared by themselves. In general, I decided - and went.
At the Vladikavkaz airport, a taxi driver immediately approached me and, as if we had parted ways with him only yesterday, he asked: "Are we going?" Of course we're going, what questions there might be. It turned out that the taxi driver's name is Georgy, he is 36 years old and that he has been taxing his entire adult life - he says that, by and large, there is nothing special to do in his native Beslan. He said that there are a couple of distilleries and some other dying enterprise. One of those same vodka factories, by the way, came across to us along the way and looked very modern from the outside.
The fact that Vladikavkaz airport is located in the very tragically famous Beslan turned out to be a small discovery for me, a person who first came to the Caucasus.
Just a couple of kilometers from the airport there is a memorial to the victims of Beslan. It is called - "City of Angels", in memory of the fact that the victims of terrorists were small children. George says that at the City of Angels memorial there is a grave of 6 children and a mother - the whole family died, only the father survived.
A trip to a distance of nearly 30 kilometers, to the outskirts of Vladikavkaz, costs 500 rubles. And then, as they explained to me later, I overpaid it. A trip from Vladikavkaz to Tskhinval, which is 150 km along a mountain serpentine through two border posts, will cost one and a half thousand. I'm not going to Tskhinval itself by taxi - I'm driving an Ossetian with a Russian name Igor, who manages not only to overtake the overloaded Kamaz trucks on the turns, from which the inhabitant of the plains is breathtaking, but also to talk about Ossetia and the Ossetians.
It turns out that among the Ossetians, like ours, the most revered Saint is Saint George the Victorious. On the way from Vladikavkaz to Tskhinval, a monument is struck, which is made in such a way that it seems to have been carved into the rock. The sculptor managed to fit George the Victorious into the landscape in such a way that at first you don't even notice the rider breaking out of the rock.
Then it got completely dark, and the road to Tskhinval turned into a continuous smoke break and talk about life. All the fun will begin after I sleep off the march. Therefore, to be continued.
I’ll make a reservation right away: I’m not a good reporter, because I don’t know how to take pictures. So don't expect high arts. For myself, I noted that I want to understand the following issues:
- How is post-war South Ossetia being rebuilt?
- Is it possible to unite a divided people?
- Why is the cult of Joseph Stalin in Ossetia?
- Why do Ossetians need an empire?
These are the topics that interest me. If you are interested in something especially - write - I will research.
Much has been written about the Georgian-Ossetian war and about "enforcing peace". Therefore, I am more interested in the consequences and how the war remained in the memory of the Ossetian people. And, of course, the way the post-war Tskhinvali looks like.
I was lucky with a guide. Bakhva Tadeev, captain of "Alania" in 1995, when the Ossetians became champions of Russia in football, and today the Deputy Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, takes me to the places of hostilities. Tskhinvali is in a terrible state. It seems that the war took place yesterday.
There is practically no asphalt in the city. It turns out that even after the war, the city looked much better - the city authorities rummaged through everything, ostensibly to replace communications, but it seems that no one is going to finish the work. It is difficult to say what the matter is, but the situation in the Republic with financial discipline is, to put it mildly, catastrophic. 6.8 billion rubles have been allocated from the state budget of Russia for the restoration of the republic. As of today, 1.2 billion have been financed, but the government cannot account for them. To remedy the situation, the Prime Minister was sent from Chelyabinsk Brovtsev. But even that didn't help. The Committee for the Restoration of the Republic is practically not controlled by the government, and all funding goes through it. As a result, further tranches have been frozen, Tskhinvali looks like it was bombed only yesterday - after the rain, you can’t pass otherwise than in rubber boots, and the authorities drive new foreign cars. The situation painfully resembles the story of the authorities of Transnistria: just the other day, the son of the President of Transnistria, Oleg Smirnov, was summoned to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in connection with the theft of 180 million rubles of Russian humanitarian aid. Against the background of poverty of ordinary Ossetians, this situation is doubly sad.
The Georgian army entered Tskhinval along the street of the Fallen Heroes. This is one of the central streets that ends with the train station square. The only normally restored house is the house on Vokzalnaya Square, which has become the main line of defense.
Here for three days the tanks were held back by the remnants of the peacekeepers and the Ossetian militia. The defense of this line was commanded by the current head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the republic, a graduate of the Ryazan Airborne Forces School, Anatoly Bibilov, and the Russian Colonel Barankevich, who personally knocked out a Georgian tank.
The tower of one of the Georgian tanks seems to have remained forever in Tskhinval. The explosion was so powerful that the tower of the tank went into the sky like a candle and, knocking down the visor of the entrance, stuck its muzzle into the concrete of the porch of a residential building. They didn’t clean the tower, but they don’t care about cleanliness either - heaps of garbage and empty bottles are lying around right in the tower.
If it was military action in the city, then terrible events took place on the outskirts of Tskhinvali, hardly compatible with the idea of war. As soon as the Georgian military forces entered the city, civilians began to flee the city en masse. Families were loaded into the cars and just drove to where there were no tanks. So in the direction of the village of Khetagurovo, literally 3 kilometers from Tskhinvali, a column of refugees in passenger cars ran into Georgian tanks. I do not want to describe in detail what happened there - I am not a fan of naturalism. The bottom line is that the cars of the refugees were simply crushed by tanks. Now at this place there is a memorial of car remains and a memory tree is installed in the middle.
Here, next to Khetagurovo, there is a mass grave of the Ossetian riot police, who were the first to meet the tanks. Basically, these are guys born in 1985-1988.
In addition to traces of battles, ruins of Georgian villages can be seen on the outskirts of Tskhinvali. The fact is that in the period from 1992 to 2008, there were several Georgian villages on the main highway leading from Tskhinval towards North Ossetia. The track has always been a zone of conflict - either they blocked the road, or conflicts between residents began. When the 2008 war broke out, Georgian villages became a kind of fifth column. It turned out that Georgian troops entered Tskhinvali from the south, and Georgian villages began at the northern exit of the city. In short, after 2008 there are no Georgian villages around Tskhinvali. The houses were destroyed, in some places they were simply razed to the foundation. It would seem more logical to occupy Georgian villages by placing refugees there. But as it was explained to me, there will be no desire to return only to the ruins - if left at home, it can become a delayed bomb of further conflict. It turns out that these villages cannot be demolished and something new cannot be built in their place either. Today these dead villages stand along the highway, reminding of the war. Which ended 3 years ago, but looking at Tskhinval it seems that everything was only yesterday.
