rfmcdonald | [LINK] President Saakashvili is an idiot (Reply)

From the Financial Times comes Jan Cienski's article "Saakashvili lays blame for crisis firmly on Russia".

[O]n the night of August 7, when Georgian forces began their rocket and artillery barrage of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, Brigadier General Mamuka Kurashvili, the chief of Georgian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, went on Georgian television to say Georgia's "power-wielding bodies" had "decided to restore constitutional order" in the breakaway region.

Mr Saakashvili denies ever using those words. He said his forces moved to slow a Russian advance into Georgia in order to "confront them for three days and to wake up the world".

General Kurashvili also did not mention Russian armour.

The dispute is about more than words. Many leaders, including those who strongly back Georgia in its fight with Russia, accuse Mr Saakashvili of having responded to the shelling of Georgian villages by South Ossetian separatists by undertaking a risky attempt to seize control of the region. That led to Russia's well-planned counter-attack and the invasion of Georgia.

In Mr Saakashvili's version, he is blameless for the resulting crisis that has destroyed much of the Georgian military, seen the Russians damage bridges, roads and other infrastructure inside Georgia proper, shaken investor confidence, and left Russia in even firmer control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia's other separatist enclave.

"We didn't expect this kind of escalation and invasion," said Mr Saakashvili, who has taken to going to sleep at 6am as he deals with the crisis.

From Reuters comes Dmitry Solovyov's piece "Envoy sees bitter legacy of war in Ossetian village".

Georgian troops arrived Khetagurovo on Aug. 8 in a storm of steel and bullets, killing eight people and badly damaging the village of ethnic South Ossetians.

When they left two days later, harried by the Russian forces that crushed Tbilisi's bid to restore control over its breakaway region, locals say their took four prisoners with them and forfeited any chance of reconciliation.

Passions were still running high when Thomas Hammarberg, a European human rights official, arrived in the village on Sunday to witness the release of two Georgian tank crew as a goodwill gesture by the Ossetian authorities.

"Why are you releasing these bloody Georgians if they don't release my husband who is held hostage there?," village book keeper Rita Bestayeva shouted at Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner.

Russian soldiers held angry villagers at bay as the two Georgian servicemen -- captured when Russian troops retook the village -- were whisked away in a car in the direction of Georgia, a gesture Hammarberg said he would use his influence to push Tbilisi to reciprocate.

"I know that it is very difficult for people in this village to accept that those two prisoners have been released," he told reporters during a break in the visit, which was closely chaperoned by the Russian military.

"I respect their reactions but I am convinced that this is a way to secure that those people missing from this village come back as soon as possible," he said.

What remains of Khetagurovo, set in the hills of South Ossetia amid orchards and vineyards, bears the marks of war and the buildings still standing are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullets.

The conflict has left a lasting legacy in the minds of those like pensioner Yuza Khasiyeva, who saw one neighbour lying in his courtyard killed by a shrapnel headwound and another elderly resident lying dead.

The village is surrounded by a ring of ethnic Georgian villages inside South Ossetia, but asked if the two communities could live together after the latest conflict, she snorted:

"Are you mad? It's better to die than live with them."

"My grandparents told me that in the 1920s they were already killing us, so what we see now is already a third wave of their terror against the Ossetians."