TBILISI, Georgia — Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili claimed a “diplomatic victory” over Russia on Thursday despite a damning report into last year’s war, but opponents accused him of lying to the Georgian people.
An EU-sponsored report released Wednesday said Georgia had triggered the war with an unjustifiable assault on breakaway South Ossetia, drawing a devastating Russian counterstrike.
But the Georgian government and the country’s main television broadcasters said the independent report pinned the blame firmly on Russia and confirmed Saakashvili’s assertion he was forced to respond to a massive Russian invasion.
“This is a big diplomatic victory for Georgia,” Saakashvili said in an address at a construction site in Tbilisi’s historic Old Town, broadcast live on Georgian television. “We proved that we were right and it will always be so.
“The fact that such a document was created will be enough in one, five, 20 or 30 years to bring a lawsuit and all leaders of this country [Russia] who committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing will be brought to international justice.”
Georgia’s opposition, however, accused Saakashvili of distorting the report’s findings.
“Again, the Georgian authorities have tried through their controlled media to hide the truth from their people,” former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze told a news briefing.
Another defector from Saakashvili’s camp, former UN Ambassador Irakly Alasania, said Georgia’s international standing had been damaged by the president’s “irresponsible” actions.
“It was his decision that really triggered full escalation,” he said in an interview, speaking in English. “But there were the whole set of preconditions and provocations that we can also blame the Russian Federation for.”
The report said Georgia’s Aug. 7 assault was the culmination of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents. Russia’s military response went beyond reasonable limits and violated international law, it said.
After initially saying its Aug. 7 operation was to neutralize separatist forces that were firing on Georgian villages, Georgia then said it was responding to a Russian invasion.
The commission said the Georgian allegation of a large-scale military Russian incursion had not been substantiated.
Though claiming victory, Saakashvili appeared to suggest that the EU had put strategic interests first.
“We did not have illusions that Europe, which is preparing for a cold winter and which needs Russian gas, would put the main blame on [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin,” he said. “But I know that despite that, Europeans will not close their eyes to the truth.”
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