Who jumped first in South Ossetia has become a bit of a information war between Georgia and Russia. Today, the Georgian government went a ways toward resolving it by releasing recordings of intercepted radio traffic preceding the Russian invasion. The tapes seem to demonstrate that elements of the Russian invasion force had entered Georgian territory twenty hours before the Georgian army responded.
Not that this matters much in efforts toward a settlement. A parade of Russian lies over its purposes for war and subsequent systematic noncompliance with its ceasefire obligations, have rendered its word unreliable. Putin might even consider the evidence irrelevant at this stage for the purposes of persuading international opinion, considering that he has repeatedly and increasingly characterized parts of Georgian territory as being the territory of Russia, “invaded,” as he would have it, by the Georgians
Putin: “If an aggressor comes into your territory you would punch him in the face and be right to do so. Should we have wiped the bloody snot away and bowed our heads?”
(Daily Telegraph)
So here we are with what is at least the concession on the impossibility of country being able to invade its own territory. Putin just doesn’t seem to understand that South Ossetia wasn’t his territory, and the invader was himself. Lamentably for the future of this crisis, on such irrationalism enduring peace is rarely built.
Its recorded phone calls not intercepted radio traffic. Its also hardly credible evidence as first the evidence could easily be falsified. Georgias and the western media’s claims about Gori have largely been disproved. Reuters have been exposed for staging photographs in the town.
Now Georgia want us to believe that this constitutes as evidence when the reality is Georgian forces attacked the civilian area of a city. Not the apparent Russian forces coming from the Roksky tunnel. Why have these recordings disappear for a month and then suddenly reappear? Why has Georgias position for invading Georgia shifted. Okruashvili has clearly shown that Saakashvili had and planned for his military ambitions in the two break away regions well in advance. Georgian TV showed footage of their assault on Tskhinvali yet no mention of Russian troops in the Roksky tunnel.
Mamuka Kurashvili, commander of Georgian peacekeepers said they “decided to restore constitutional order in the entire region”. This is evidence that Georgian peacekeepers where involved in the operations against south ossetia and evidence of their reasoning at the time. Again no mention of Russian troops.
Lado Gurgenidze Georgian prime minister on August 14th claimed,
“At around 6 am the Georgian forces blew up the Kurta bridge (about three km north of Tskhinvali). A column of the Russian troops that had entered the previous night from the Roki tunnel was there, so a couple of their vehicles were blown up as well… Think about how many hours of preparation, assembly, then marching, it would take for that column, moving at that speed on rugged terrain to be at the Kurta bridge at six in the morning. If that isn’t a premeditated invasion, I don’t know what is.”
However independent observers from the IWPR claimed that no bridges in the region were destroyed.
The Georgians had taken high ground near the village of Sarabuki as early as July the area used to shell Tskhinvali.
If Russian forces had moved in Georgia then why did it take so long for them to arrive in Tskhinvali almost 20 hours. Yet the US and NATO have been unable to show Russian armour movements on satellite photos in the region.
Well, as I demonstrated in my post above, the question only becomes consequential if you acknowledge that South Ossetia is a part of Georgia. So first you have to answer whether it is Georgian, Russian or independent. Which is it, in your view?
Good work, Lee.