Report puts Georgia on the defensive

KIEV, Ukraine and MOSCOW, Russia — Georgian officials found themselves uncharacteristically on the defensive Wednesday, after a long-awaited inquiry into the causes of last year’s five-day war between Georgia and Russia concluded that Tbilisi was unjustified in launching the attack that sparked the hostilities.

The report — commissioned by the European Union and overseen by veteran Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini — apportioned equal blame for the conflict, which broke out when Georgian forces started shelling Tskhinvali, the capital of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, on the night of Aug. 7, 2008.

Running more than 1,000 pages and including the work of over 30 legal, military and diplomatic experts, the report paints a complex and multi-layered explanation for the causes of the war.

It said that Russia was also heavily responsible, pursuing overly aggressive policies toward its southern neighbor before the war, and then reacting disproportionately once fighting broke out.

South Ossetia, with a population in the tens of thousands and an ethnic population distinct from the Georgians, broke away from Tbilisi after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The war last year left dead possibly more than 200 Georgian and 300 Ossetian civilians. Russia reported over 60 of its soldiers killed, while Georgia registered close to 200.

Both sides predictably spun the report to their advantage, claiming it supported their version of events. But a few key sentences clash with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s claim — made actually after hostilities started — that he was repelling a Russian invasion. In that way the report undercut Georgia’s position as a victim and possibly damaged its international reputation.

“Open hostilities began with a large-scale Georgian military operation against the town of Tskhinvali and the surrounding area,” the report said. “There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia was justifiable under international law.”

“It was not,” the report concluded.

Further on it stated: “It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of … a major attack,” adding that Georgian claims that large numbers of Russian troops were massing in South Ossetia “could not be substantiated.”

Georgian national security advisor Eka Tkeshelashvili, speaking to journalists by conference call immediately after the inquiry’s release, said that while she agreed with the “facts” presented, she took issue with the commission’s “interpretations and analysis,” which she said it was not tasked to arrive at.

“I do have a very serious question about international law,” Tkeshelashvili said, adding that the commission did not deny that regular Russian troops, not peacekeepers, were in South Ossetia in some capacity — a violation of international norms. “What else can be called an invasion? Does Putin have to go on television and say it?”

Moscow has long held that it was drawn into the war on the night of Aug. 7 to protect its peacekeepers and citizens from what it has called “Georgian adventurism.” Placed on the defensive after the war’s outbreak — when it was internationally reviled as the aggressor — the Kremlin fell back on a tested strategy of blaming Western media and government bias for laying the blame with Moscow.

Russia’s foreign ministry therefore reveled in its new, and possibly unaccustomed, role. Russian officials praised the report for exposing Georgia’s “guilt” in starting the war and said that it presented irrefutable proof of Georgia’s ultimate culpability.

“It confirms what we’ve known all along: who started the war and who bears responsibility,” Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told reporters in Brussels.

The report is just as stinging in regards to the Kremlin’s actions, however. Russia “went far beyond the reasonable limits of defense” and its actions were “not even remotely commensurate with the threat to Russian peacekeepers,” it said. Russia also allowed widespread ethnic cleansing in Georgian villages, it said.

The report also details Russia’s policy of “passportization” — freely handing out passports to residents of South Ossetia in the months leading up to the war, a move that had concerned many observers in the region as rumors of war grew in the summer of 2008. It also provided grounds for full-scale Russian military intervention, since Moscow was coming to the defense of “Russian citizens.” “The shelling of Tskhinvali by the Georgian armed forces during the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 marked the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict in Georgia, yet it was only the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents,” the report notes.

Russian officials have so far failed to address that conclusion, which argues that Moscow had worked to create an atmosphere — through war games, military shipments to South Ossetia and the likely presence of mercenaries in the republic — that meant the “stage seemed all set for a military conflict.”

Tensions between the two countries remain high and diplomatic relations have not resumed. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ruled out dealing with Saakashvili. “I personally will not deal with President Saakashvili because he committed a crime against his own people, and the people of South Ossetia," he said last week during a visit to Pittsburgh for the G20. Russia continues to insist Georgia committed genocide against the people of South Ossetia, a claim the report disputes.

Currently, Russia is seeking to build international recognition of South Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as independent nations, so far winning support from Nicaragua and Venezuela alone. The report called recognition “contrary to international law.”