NATO held a meeting with the chiefs of the general staffs of forty members and partners, including the Chief of the Georgian Armed Forces Joint Staff Devi Chankotadze, at its headquarters in Brussels on May 6-7 and the day before all forty military chiefs attended a session of the NATO-Georgia Commission to discuss Georgia’s Annual National Program.
The NATO-Georgia Commission was announced in mid-September of last year only weeks after the August war ended, after a visit to the Georgian capital by the Alliance's North Atlantic Council, which consists of all NATO permanent representatives.
The Annual National Program (an equivalent exists for Ukraine) was designed by NATO last year as a substitute for the standard Membership Action Plan, the final stage before full membership.
The meeting of the 28 NATO and 12 partnership military chiefs and that of all forty, including Georgia and Ukraine, at the NATO-Georgia Commission occurred on the day before and the first two days of Cooperative Longbow 2009.
Before the Cooperative Longbow exercise started, however, four NATO Partnership for Peace members - Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia - announced their withdrawal in deference to Russian concerns.
NATO Members Estonia and Latvia also withdrew for reasons not entirely evident.
Former member of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff Igor Korotchenko said that Cooperative Longbow 2009 "aims to improve 'interoperability between NATO and partner countries,' a euphemism for streamlining the Georgian Army and NATO coalition-force operations against the Russian Armed Forces." [2]
On the day the first phase of the drills began the interior minister of South Ossetia, Valery Valiev, stated "We are most concerned about the full-scale NATO military exercise in Georgia bearing risks for the security of South Ossetia." [3]
The day before Longbow began, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, "accused Georgia of provocations in the areas that are adjacent to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
"As he spoke during a news conference in New York, he said Georgia was building up its military presence in the areas in question.
"According to Churkin, Georgia has concentrated over 2,000 Army and Interior Ministry servicemen on the border with Abkhazia, and also a large number of GRAD multiple rocket launchers and heavy machineguns. [Both were used extensively in the August war.]
"On the border with South Ossetia the Georgian military has also deployed heavy firepower equipment, armoured fighting vehicles and artillery guns. Some 2,500 Georgian servicemen are deployed on South Ossetia's border." [4]
At the end of April Russia offered to help protect Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's borders with Georgia "against a feared new Georgian attack that Tbilisi may be heartened to launch after a NATO exercise next month." [5]
Deputy of the Russian Duma Boris Gryzlov "floated the idea of a response to the NATO move that would entail Cuba and Venezuela taking part in 'large-scale drills' in the Caribbean Sea on July 2.
"According to the lawmaker, the NATO decision to hold the drills in Georgia during the WWII Victory Day celebrations was a 'total revision of the history of the Great Patriotic War' and a direct insult to [the] country...." [6]
On the day the exercise started a delegation of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was in Georgia to meet with the Deputy Defence Minister Goirgi Muchaidze, and the two sides "dealt with important issues related to sharing the experience gained from the Russia-Georgia August war and reviewed the present status of the Georgian Armed Forces." [7]
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
