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Georgia fired first shot, say UK monitors


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November 9, 2008

Georgia fired first shot, say UK monitors

Jon Swain

Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August.

Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds.

Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence.

During the war both Grist and Young were senior figures in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The organisation had deployed teams of unarmed monitors to try to reduce tension over South Ossetia, which had split from Georgia in a separatist struggle in the early 1990s with Russia’s support.

On the night war broke out, Grist was the senior OSCE official in Georgia. He was in charge of unarmed monitors who became trapped by the fighting. Based on their observations, Grist briefed European Union diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with his assessment of the conflict.

Grist, who resigned from the OSCE shortly afterwards, has told The New York Times it was Georgia that launched the first military strikes against Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

“It was clear to me that the [Georgian] attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation,” he said. “The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town.”

Last month Young gave a similar briefing to visiting military attachés, in which he reportedly supported the monitors’ assessment that there had been little or no shelling of Georgian villages on the night Saakashvili’s troops mounted an onslaught on Tskhinvali in which scores of civilians and Russian peacekeepers died.

“If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn’t,” Young reportedly said. “They heard only occasional small-arms fire.”

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister who helped broker the ceasefire that ended the war and has been a fierce critic of the Russian invasion of Georgia, is tomorrow due to announce a commission of inquiry into the conflict at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Full story, source: The Times

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The Georgians were extremely, extremely stupid. In some ways, they brought this on themselves. I think they expected NATO to rush in and help them, or at least posture more on their behalf. They were wrong.

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Georgia's fault. case closed. I wonder do the western leaders feel stupid. Remember how they all jumped on the band wagon slating Russia, the US & EU sent aid and the US sent half their Navy and everything, Oops. Georgia's application for NATO membership should be binned.

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Every already knew Georgia pushed Russia. Well, everything with some sense. All the excuses America, England and all the other countries leaders were just terrible conclusion jumpings.

Still. I'm glad Russia kicked Georgian **** :D .

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Georgia reminds me of those obnoxious snotty teens who hang around with older kids, the ones who will insult someone and then run and hide behind their friends to try and save them.

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Georgia's fault. case closed. I wonder do the western leaders feel stupid. Remember how they all jumped on the band wagon slating Russia, the US & EU sent aid and the US sent half their Navy and everything, Oops. Georgia's application for NATO membership should be binned.

I wonder sometimes... a mediocre idiot is still capable of playing with fire and our idiots come to put it out with gasoline... great...

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No surprise here. It's not as if we haven't known that Saakashvili was an ardent nationalist seeking to re-claim the various lost parcels of land that Georgia had effectively surrendered. Even before the South Ossetia operation, he had re-taken some earlier areas in and around Georgia as well.

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