Russia Indeed Started Georgian Conflict

Don't take my word for it. Definitely don't take Pravda's word for it - or the New York Times or the Associated Press, which willingly and openly pushed the Russian government line that it was the Georgians who started this conflict.

Russia engaged in a premeditated and preplanned invasion of Georgia, using the South Ossetians as a wedge to invade. The Russians already had the troops in place, as they were holding exercises in the nearby Russian territories, and simply used those forces for this invasion.


Michael Totten, who is interviewing folks on the ground in Georgia, reports:

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

As I've been noting all along, the Russians provoked a conflict, so as to thwart the Georgian relationship with the US and to send a message to other former Soviet Republics to either stand with Russia or else be warned that the Russians will treat them as enemies.

Indeed, little has changed in the decades since George Kennan noted that Russia (or the then Soviet Union) viewed its neighbors either as vassals or enemies.

So, why did the Georgians get hammered hard? Well, NATO dithered and refused to grant the Georgians a membership action plan, which puts countries on a path to membership, while other countries, like Albania and Macedonia were given a MAP, even though the Georgian military was in a better position than the other two countries.

The Russians saw this as a wedge issue on which to pounce.

And they did.

So, it's no surprise that the Russians are now recognizing the two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which the US and the West oppose.

The Russians are playing the world media for fools, and the media has bought into the Russian propagandists.