SOUTH OSETIA: ONE YEAR AFTER THE TRAGEDY August, 8th will be one year since the day of the Georgian aggression in South Osetia. During that days all the world was shocked by the facts of perfidious attack of Georgian troops to unprotected citizens of Tshinval and Russian peace-makers. Now the time passed and everyone can see and estimate the evidence of this tragedy: dead children, women and ruins of houses. It is possible to now real reasons and offenders of what have passed. Now everything is clear and there are no questions about disproportional Russian respond to Georgian aggression. It is a pity but we still have the threat of exacerbation of situation in Caucasian region. It is evident that Georgian lider Saakashvili is preparing several provocations at the Osetian border in the August of 2009. Russia is deeply concerned about the revanchist policy of Georgian leaders directed to the remilitarisation of the country. While in many states this activity face calm and even positive feedback.
During the last month we can see repeating trend of several countries to act secretly, hide military cooperation with the Georgian part, including its masking as humanitarian help to overcome the consequences of the conflict. Russian government considers it like a lack of political foresight. Further remilitarisation of Georgian army, assistance in restoration of military infrastructure, training of special forces could only appreciate leaders of Georgia to continue their military course, policy of threats and provocations regarding to their neighbours and as a consequence to the rapid and unpredictable growth of tension in whole region. It seems that not everybody realize the danger of maintaining of venturesome policy of present Georgian leaders. On the night of August 7-8, 2008, the leadership of Georgia unleashed military aggression against South Ossetia. Using heavy artillery, tanks, Grad volley fire systems and bombers, the Georgian army conducted massive indiscriminate fire at residential quarters and infrastructure facilities of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval, its suburbs and a number of other human settlements for many hours. This preplanned barbaric blow was deliberately dealt at night in a purposeful calculation to kill as many civilians as possible and put the entire life support system of the population out of action. According to South Ossetian side data as of September 9, 2008, which are still being specified, the number of killed stood at 1492, among them families with children, including infants, and pregnant women. The nightly shellings of Tskhinval from Georgia became more frequent in late July and early August. In this connection some families made a decision to take children to other areas of Georgia or to Russia for summer holidays. Yet of course many children remained in South Ossetia. The number of those who were still in Tskhinval and the adjacent areas at the time the aggression began has not yet been precisely established; among them schoolchildren alone numbered at least 500. For three days these children had to take shelter from a mass barrage in damp and cold cellars in summer clothes, without food and water. When adults tried to take children out of the zone of fighting, they were often killed or injured on the streets of the city and outside it. After capturing on August 8 a considerable part of Tskhinval and adjacent South Ossetian settlements, Georgian troops started a cynical “hunt” for people for the purpose of their total extermination. Civilians were being fired upon from tanks, armored carriers and small arms, including by snipers. Georgian heavy armor deliberately crushed people, and Georgian special-forces units, as they methodically mopped up the captured neighborhoods, threw grenades into cellars and ruins so as to finish off the survivors and injured people hiding there. Ambulance cars trying to take wounded people out of the zone along the northbound Zar Road were shot down with aimed fire. Georgian artillery men had beforehand zeroed in on this route, obviously knowing that only civilians were to leave the city along it. Direct evidences of the killings of children in South Ossetia committed by Georgian troops are the eyewitness testimonies collected and documented by law enforcement bodies of the Russian Federation and by nongovernmental organizations.
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