Looks like that while Georgian officials before the 2008 war were busy chasing mobs of alleged Russian spies, they might have missed a high-profile turncoat in their midst. A key official tasked with reclaiming separatist South Ossetia revealed recently that he used to combine his day job working for Tbilisi with moonlighting as a spy for Moscow.
Vladimir Sanakoyev, the flamboyant former spokesperson for the administration for Georgian-controlled territory in South Ossetia, used to host a Georgian TV show and lead poster-waving youths in demanding the resignation of Eduard Kokoity, head of breakaway South Ossetia's de facto government. Now living in the Russian city of Sochi, the 50-something Sanakoyev claimed recently that he had worked for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, all along. But, tired of the tough life of a double agent, he decided to quit, and now sends everyone -- including himself -- to hell, to use his own words.
Like any Georgia-Russia spy drama, this one contains a dose of genre-defying quirkiness. Russian websites published a bizarre manifesto, in which the ethnically Ossetian Sanakoyev talks about how he duped Mikheil Saakashvili’s government. Sanakoyev alleges he ingratiated himself with the Georgian government to be granted Georgian citizenship, and then work his way up to become privy to Tbilisi’s plans toward South Ossetia.
He argues that much of the 2008 Russia-Georgia war over the breakaway region was actually about, yes, the 2014 Winter Olympics. In his written statement, Sanakoyev has less-than-flattering-words for Russian generals for invading South Ossetia, but says that if it were not for the Russian “conquest” of the territory, nearby Sochi would not have been able to host the Winter Olympics. He claims he once texted his FSB boss: “Sochi, Hurrah! The Olympics, Hurrah! I, Sanakoyev, am ecstatic!”
Shota Malashkia, a parliamentarian for Georgia’s ruling United National Movement Party, suggested in an interview with Rustavi2 television that Sanakoyev has lost his marbles. In its initial coverage of the news, the pro-government station essentially underlined that message with archival footage of the wiry, grinning Sanakoyev energetically attempting to dance at a youth rally.
Other officials in Tbilisi also scoffed at their former colleague’s revelation, but opposition leaders say that the incident speaks to the flaws in Georgia’s policies toward South Ossetia and to the vulnerability of its national security system.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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