Did Israel Help Spark the Russia-Georgia War in 2008?
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   The  Atlantic  Wire By John Hudson | The Atlantic Wire
   Thu, Mar1, 2012

   Fresh  documents  released  by WikiLeaks raise new questions about the
   five-day  war  between  Russia and Georgia in 2008. In particular, the
   role  of Israel and its involvement in providing military intelligence
   to Russia in the run-up to the war.



   According  to a leaked e-mail from an analyst at the intelligence
   firm  Stratfor,  Russia  and Israel engaged in a deal in 2008 in which
   Jerusalem  provided  the  Kremlin  with secret codes for Georgian UAVs
   (unmanned  aerial  vehicles)  in  exchange  for information on Iranian
   missile  systems.  In  the e-mail, a Stratfor analyst says "Israel and
   Russia made a swap - Israel gave Russia the `data link' code for those
   specific  UAVs;  in  return,  Russia  gave Israel the codes for Iran's
   Tor-M1s."  In  2008,  that  'data link' code was allegedly used by the
   Russians to take down a Georgian drone flying in Georgian air space, a
   defining moment in the months before the war.

   As  many  have  noted,  any  information gleaned from Stratfor e-mails
   should  be  taken  with  a  grain  of  salt  but  the swap scenario is
   certainly  plausible.  The  Russians  would've been an ideal source of
   information   for   Israel,  as Yaakov  Lappin  at The  Jerusalem
   Post reports,  because  they  sold  Iran  29  launch vehicles carrying
   batteries  of  surface-to-air  missiles  in 2005, which make up Iran's
   Tor-M1  defense  system.  The  source  who provided the information to
   Stratfor  is  ranked "A," which according to its glossary, is the
   highest   rank,  meaning  "Someone  with  intimate  knowledge  of  the
   particular insight." The particular item of intelligence is ranked '1'
   meaning "We can take this info to the bank."

   The  origins of the war between Georgia and Russia remain subject
   to  dispute.  Russia  maintains  it invaded the Georgian enclave South
   Ossetia  in  response  to  Georgia's  moves  to reclaim the separatist
   region.  Georgia  maintains  it  was  responding  to  assaults  on its
   peacekeepers in the region. In any event, one of the most widely-cited
   events escalating the conflict was Russia's downing of Georgia's drone
   in  April 2008. Shortly after it happened, Georgia released this video
   of the attack:

   Following   the   incident,  Georgian  President  Mikhail  Saakashvili
   blamed Russia for the attack and sent along the video to the BBC.
   Russians  denied  the  allegations, calling them "nonsense" while
   rebels in Georgia's other separatist enclave Abkhazia claimed they had
   taken  down  the  drone. However, as C.J. Chivers writing for The
   New  York  Times reported, Georgians identified the craft in the video
   as  an  MIG-29  that  could've  only  belonged to Russia. "Neither the
   Georgian  Air  Force  nor  the tiny contingent of Abkhaz planes in the
   separatist  territory  have MIG-29s," he wrote. While Russians claimed
   the  plane in the video was an Abkhaz L-39, Chivers wrote "The fighter
   plane seen in the Georgian video did not resemble an L-39, which has a
   distinctive silhouette, including a single tail."

   In  any  event,  while we, unlike Stratfor, can't take intelligence of
   the  swap "to the bank," it's interesting to envision a scenario where
   the  shadowy  world  of billateral arms agreements ends up pitting two
   U.S. allies, Israel and Georgia, against each other. As of today, none
   of the governments implicated in the leak have commented.