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Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question
TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military
observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this
summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it
was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.
Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military
attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with
indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian
peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.
The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle
the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened
relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions
about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its
shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South
Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the
shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian
villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.
President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack
as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the
monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and
rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20
seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the
bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors
have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian
villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to
question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.
Senior Georgian officials contest these accounts, and have urged
Western governments to discount them. “That information, I don’t know
what it is and how it is confirmed,” said Giga Bokeria, Georgia’s
deputy foreign minister. “There is such an amount of evidence of
continuous attacks on Georgian-controlled villages and so much
evidence of Russian military buildup, it doesn’t change in any case
the general picture of events.”
He added: “Who was counting those explosions? It sounds a bit
peculiar.”
The Kremlin has embraced the monitors’ observations, which, according
to a written statement from Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign
minister, reflect “the actual course of events prior to Georgia’s
aggression.” He added that the accounts “refute” allegations by
Tbilisi of bombardments that he called mythical.
The monitors were members of an international team working under the
mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or
O.S.C.E. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group
has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in
the 1990s.
The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a
Belorussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the
subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the
Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries
were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both.
Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian,
and were not disputed by the O.S.C.E.’s mission in Tbilisi, which was
provided with a written summary of the observations.
Mr. Saakashvili, who has compared Russia’s incursion into Georgia to
the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of
Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and
skepticism about his judgment from Western governments.
The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired.
Georgia’s army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its
brigades, seized and looted their bases, captured their equipment and
roamed the country’s roads at will. Villages that Georgia vowed to
save were ransacked and cleared of their populations by irregular
Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack forces, and several were burned to the
ground.
Massing of Weapons
According to the monitors, an O.S.C.E. patrol at 3 p.m. on Aug. 7 saw
large numbers of Georgian artillery and grad rocket launchers massing
on roads north of Gori, just south of the enclave.
At 6:10 p.m., the monitors were told by Russian peacekeepers of
suspected Georgian artillery fire on Khetagurovo, an Ossetian village;
this report was not independently confirmed, and Georgia declared a
unilateral cease-fire shortly thereafter, about 7 p.m.
During a news broadcast that began at 11 p.m., Georgia announced that
Georgian villages were being shelled, and declared an operation “to
restore constitutional order” in South Ossetia. The bombardment of
Tskhinvali started soon after the broadcast.
According to the monitors, however, no shelling of Georgian villages
could be heard in the hours before the Georgian bombardment. At least
two of the four villages that Georgia has since said were under fire
were near the observers’ office in Tskhinvali, and the monitors there
likely would have heard artillery fire nearby.
Moreover, the observers made a record of the rounds exploding after
Georgia’s bombardment began at 11:35 p.m. At 11:45 p.m., rounds were
exploding at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between impacts, they
noted.
At 12:15 a.m. on Aug. 8, Gen. Maj. Marat M. Kulakhmetov, commander of
Russian peacekeepers in the enclave, reported to the monitors that his
unit had casualties, indicating that Russian soldiers had come under
fire.
By 12:35 a.m. the observers had recorded at least 100 heavy rounds
exploding across Tskhinvali, including 48 close to the observers’
office, which is in a civilian area and was damaged.
Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense
Ministry, said that by morning on Aug. 8 two Russian soldiers had been
killed and five wounded. Two senior Western military officers
stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they
work with Georgia’s military, said that whatever Russia’s behavior in
or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia’s artillery or rockets
struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable.
This clear risk, they said, made Georgia’s attack dangerous and
unwise.
Senior Georgia officials, a group with scant military experience and
personal loyalties to Mr. Saakashvili, have said that much of the
damage to Tskhinvali was caused in combat between its soldiers and
separatists, or by Russian airstrikes and bombardments in its
counterattack the next day. As for its broader shelling of the city,
Georgia has told Western diplomats that Ossetians hid weapons in
civilian buildings, making them legitimate targets.
“The Georgians have been quite clear that they were shelling targets —
the mayor’s office, police headquarters — that had been used for
military purposes,” said Matthew J. Bryza, a deputy assistant
secretary of state and one of Mr. Saakashvili’s vocal supporters in
Washington.
Those claims have not been independently verified, and Georgia’s
account was disputed by Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who
was the senior O.S.C.E. representative in Georgia when the war broke
out. Mr. Grist said that he was in constant contact that night with
all sides, with the office in Tskhinvali and with Wing Commander
Stephen Young, the retired British military officer who leads the
monitoring team.
“It was clear to me that the attack was completely indiscriminate and
disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation,”
Mr. Grist said. “The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate
attack on the town, as a town.”
Mr. Grist has served as a military officer or diplomat in Northern
Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Yugoslavia. In August, after the Georgian
foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, who has no military experience,
assured diplomats in Tbilisi that the attack was measured and
discriminate, Mr. Grist gave a briefing to diplomats from the European
Union that drew from the monitors’ observations and included his
assessments. He then soon resigned under unclear circumstances.
A second briefing was led by Commander Young in October for military
attachés visiting Georgia. At the meeting, according to a person in
attendance, Commander Young stood by the monitors’ assessment that
Georgian villages had not been extensively shelled on the evening or
night of Aug. 7. “If there had been heavy shelling in areas that
Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and
they didn’t,” Commander Young said, according to the person who
attended. “They heard only occasional small-arms fire.”
The O.S.C.E turned down a request by The Times to interview Commander
Young and the monitors, saying they worked in sensitive jobs and would
not be publicly engaged in this disagreement.
Disentangling the Russian and Georgian accounts has been complicated.
The violence along the enclave’s boundaries that had occurred in
recent summers was more widespread this year, and in the days before
Aug. 7 there had been shelling of Georgian villages. Tensions had been
soaring.
Each side has fresh lists of grievances about the other, which they
insist are decisive. But both sides also have a record of misstatement
and exaggeration, which includes circulating casualty estimates that
have not withstood independent examination. With the international
standing of both Russia and Georgia damaged, the public relations
battle has been intensive.
Russian military units have been implicated in destruction of civilian
property and accused by Georgia of participating with Ossetian
militias in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Russia and South Ossetia
have accused Georgia of attacking Ossetian civilians.
But a critical and as yet unanswered question has been what changed
for Georgia between 7 p.m. on Aug 7, when Mr. Saakashvili declared a
cease-fire, and 11:30 p.m., when he says he ordered the attack. The
Russian and Ossetian governments have said the cease-fire was a ruse
used to position rockets and artillery for the assault.
That view is widely held by Ossetians. Civilians repeatedly reported
resting at home after the cease-fire broadcast by Mr. Saakashvili.
Emeliya B. Dzhoyeva, 68, was home with her husband, Felix, 70, when
the bombardment began. He lost his left arm below the elbow and
suffered burns to his right arm and torso. “Saakashvili told us that
nothing would happen,” she said. “So we all just went to bed.”
Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive
evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation
for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale
military attack was necessary, as Mr. Saakashvili insists.
Georgia has released telephone intercepts indicating that a Russian
armored column apparently entered the enclave from Russia early on the
Aug. 7, which would be a violation of the peacekeeping rules. Georgia
said the column marked the beginning of an invasion. But the
intercepts did not show the column’s size, composition or mission, and
there has not been evidence that it was engaged with Georgian forces
until many hours after the Georgian bombardment; Russia insists it was
simply a routine logistics train or troop rotation.
Unclear Accounts of Shelling
Interviews by The Times have found a mixed picture on the question of
whether Georgian villages were shelled after Mr. Saakashvili declared
the cease-fire. Residents of the village of Zemo Nigozi, one of the
villages that Georgia has said was under heavy fire, said they were
shelled from 6 p.m. on, supporting Georgian statements.
In two other villages, interviews did not support Georgian claims. In
Avnevi, several residents said the shelling stopped before the cease-
fire and did not resume until roughly the same time as the Georgian
bombardment. In Tamarasheni, some residents said they were lightly
shelled on the evening of Aug. 7, but felt safe enough not to retreat
to their basements. Others said they were not shelled until Aug 9.
With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the
O.S.C.E. observations put the United States in a potentially difficult
position. The United States, Mr. Saakashvili’s principal source of
international support, has for years accepted the organization’s
conclusions and praised its professionalism. Mr. Bryza refrained from
passing judgment on the conflicting accounts.
“I wasn’t there,” he said, referring to the battle. “We didn’t have
people there. But the O.S.C.E. really has been our benchmark on many
things over the years.”
The O.S.C.E. itself, while refusing to discuss its internal findings,
stood by the accuracy of its work but urged caution in interpreting it
too broadly. “We are confident that all O.S.C.E. observations are
expert, accurate and unbiased,” Martha Freeman, a spokeswoman, said in
an e-mail message. “However, monitoring activities in certain areas at
certain times cannot be taken in isolation to provide a comprehensive
account.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

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