GEORGIA’S latest actions are aimed at ousting Russian peacekeepers from South Ossetia and bringing a NATO police force there, Col-Gen Leonid Ivashov, former chief of General directorate for international military cooperation of the Russian Defence Ministry, stated in Moscow last Saturday.
‘I’m convinced that Georgia’s latest actions have been aimed at creating conditions for introducing peacekeepers from NATO member countries into South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
‘If Russia shows weakness, a decision to this effect may be taken in the near future,’ said Leonid Ivashov.
He added: ‘Russia should act more decisively than it has until now in the regions of the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhaz conflicts.
‘Russia should use all the means at its disposal to force Georgia to halt aggression against South Ossetia and protect both the Russian peacekeepers that are in the region and Russian citizens.
The Russian UN envoy accused Security Council members of ‘connivance’ in an emergency session of the council on Saturday.
The council did not support Russia’s call for a ceasefire in the conflict. Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vitaliy Churkin, said that Georgia’s military action against South Ossetia was possible because of the connivance of a number of member countries of the Security Council.
‘Georgia is continuing its treacherous attack on South Ossetia. This is happening despite the appeal of the Russian leadership to cease fire immediately, the fratricidal conflict, and resume the negotiating process.
‘Such a scenario has become possible because of the connivance of a number of Security Council members who last night blocked the assessment of the ongoing tragedy based on the document proposed by Russia. A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent.
‘Furthermore, Georgia is using a scorched earth tactic. A number of settlements in South Ossetia have been completely destroyed. According to some reports, Georgian snipers are not letting ambulances through and are not allowing medical services to save people. The situation is so catastrophic that the International Red Cross has requested a humanitarian corridor to urgently evacuate the injured.
‘According to the estimates of the South Ossetian side, more than 1,400 civilians have already died as a result of the intensified fighting in Tskhinvali alone. One cannot describe this as anything but a crude violation of international law.’
On Saturday Battalions of the Russian 58th Army of the North Caucasus Military District fully ‘liberated’ the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali from the Georgian armed forces, declared Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Troops Vladimir Boldyrev.
He said that fighting is now under way in South Ossetia to ‘liberate the whole zone of responsibility’ of the Russian peacekeeping forces.
Meanwhile, Russian volunteers from all over the Caucusus are flocking to South Ossetia.
Volunteers ready to defend South Ossetia with arms in hand continue to arrive in the conflict area.
Volunteer detachments are being formed in several Russian regions.
Thousands of people have left the North Caucasus for Tskhinvali.
Dagestan alone has sent 1,500 militiamen.
A 300-strong detachment consisting mainly of Cossacks has left North Ossetia.
There have also been many volunteers from Ossetian ethnic communities around the country.
Russia has meanwhile slammed the Ukrainian government for ‘encouraging Georgia into ethnic cleansing’.
Ukraine has no moral right to claim to a role in resolving the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said, in connection with a statement made on 8 August by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry about the tragedy in South Ossetia.
‘Russia is amazed by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s statement of 8 August regarding the tragedy in South Ossetia,’ the ministry says. ‘Without expressing a word of regret about the deaths of an enormous number of civilians and Russian peacekeepers, who were doing their duty to resolve the conflict on a UN mandate, Ukraine has started making unjustified complaints about the Russian Federation,’ it continues.
‘The Ukrainian state, which recently has been recklessly arming the Georgian army to the teeth, in doing so has directly encouraged the Georgian leadership to intervene and to carry out ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia. It has no moral right to lecture to others, even less lay claim to a role in resolving the conflict,’ the Russian Foreign Ministry says.
On Saturday with their capital being shelled, the people of the republic of South Ossetia appeal to the government of the Russian Federation and the people of Russia!
‘The international community, which has been hypnotized by the blatant disinformation of the Georgian government and the staggering cynicism of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s insinuations, is failing to take measures to end the hostilities by the Georgian side.
‘On the contrary, attempts are being made to deprive the people of South Ossetia of Russian peace-keeping support and thereby be condemned to annihilation by the Georgian fascists. Meanwhile, Georgian nationalists are achieving their objectives, having wiped out about 1,500 inhabitants of South Ossetia, having deprived others of their homes and turned them into potential refugees.
‘Indefatigable national ambitions and territorial claims are being stirred up by the Georgian media and the support of the US, the world hegemonist which has its own geopolitical interests in the region.
When in April 1989, 20 Georgian women were killed following the dispersal of an unofficial anti-state, anti-Soviet, nationalist rally in Tbilisi, the Georgian side demonstrated national hysteria and invited in the world’s media. Although there are reports that those events, too, were a clever insinuation of the Georgian ‘masters of the theatrical genre’.
‘Now, when thousands are being killed, the Georgian nation is rejoicing, approving the actions of its fascist government. The West has turned a deaf ear. It is impossible to live as part of the fascist state of Georgia.
‘We ask for juridical and legal help in recognising the independence of the Republic of South Ossetia. We ask both the government of the Russian Federation and the ordinary citizens for help in bringing to the international public the truth about the tragedy in South Ossetia.’
Meanwhile forces from the other breakaway from the georgian state Abkhazia have started military operation in the Georgian-held Kodori Gorge.
‘Our aircraft are now carrying out an operation in the upper part of Abkhazia’s Kodori Gorge that is controlled by the Georgian side,’ Sergey Bagapsh, the president of the unrecognised republic of Abkhazia, said on Saturday 9 August.
‘The operation in the Kodori Gorge will be continued,’ he stressed.
Abkhazia’s defence minister Ruslan Kishmaria is saying that Georgia has been building up its forces in the Zugdidi District, the Georgian-controlled part of the Abkhazia conflict zone.
Meanwhile in Moscow General Ivashov has continued to speak out.
According to him, there exists ‘an indisputable law of military policy and strategy.
‘As soon as the first shot rang out and the aggression started, all laws and agreements from peaceful times are repealed, apart from the Geneva humanitarian convention,’ said Ivashov.
In response to the aggressive actions of Georgia in South Ossetia, Russia should ‘sever diplomatic relations with Tbilisi, expel the Georgian embassy from Moscow and break off all political relations with Georgia’.
He added: ‘When politicians and diplomats lose, then the military join in. It is necessary to admit this defeat and to order the military to inflict defeat on the Georgian armed forces. This has still not been done,’ said the expert.
According to him, soldiers and officers on the front line do not understand such terms as ‘opposition to the violations of the agreements’ and ‘peace enforcement’.
‘Soldiers and officers should receive clear orders: either defence or attack. A concrete task should be put before them: crush and destroy the aggressor. When a soldier is told that he must promote peace enforcement, he does not know what to do,’ said Ivashov.
Ivashov is convinced that Tbilisi would only commit aggression against the peaceful population of South Ossetia after having received carte blanche from Washington.
‘Washington is standing behind Saakashvili. He yielded to the will of Washington and, as a matter of fact, unleashed war, destroyed a city, annihilated around 2,000 civilians and crushed our peacekeeping battalion,’ said the general.
According to him, ‘for almost 24 hours our peacekeepers were under heavy artillery fire, only armed with sub-machine guns and two or three cartridge magazines.
‘Saakashvili is a fascist puppet, he is the new Goebbels who today deceives public opinion and creates some sort of political disguise,’ said Ivashov.
Meanwhile, Putin has left the Olympic Games and has arrived at the Russian border with South Ossetia.
Having changed his itinerary after attending the opening of the Olympic Games in China, Putin arrived in Vladikavkaz. He cancelled his planned visit to a children’s summer camp in Biryusa near Krasnoyarsk and flew straight from Beijing to the capital of North Ossetia.
The president’s press secretary said that during his visit to North Ossetia, Putin is planning to discuss with the republic’s leadership and the heads of the relevant federal agencies, issues of rendering assistance to refugees arriving from South Ossetia as well as aid for North Ossetia itself to cope with the arrival of a large number of evacuees.
Putin is also expected to visit a refugee camp to study conditions there.
The only solution to the struggle in the Caucasus is through the revolutionary reconstitution of the USSR, whose foundation ended the nationalist feudings in the region.
The revolutionary reconstitution of the USSR requires political revolutions to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and its friends and in many cases relatives of the new bourgeoisie, and the restoration of rule through workers and peasants soviets.
These will remove imperialist agents and US and NATO troops from countries such as Georgia, and the Ukraine.
This will constitute a huge step forward for the world socialist revolution.
