The truth about the war between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008 sounds somewhat convoluted, at least as expressed in the final report of the independent EU fact-finding mission charged with establishing the causes of the conflict. "Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive on 7/8 August could not be substantiated by the mission," reads the document, which was published Wednesday. To put it more simply: It was Georgia who started the war.
This is the conclusion that the team of European investigators, headed by the Swiss diplomat and Caucasus expert Heidi Tagliavini, have reached after spending almost a year visiting the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Moscow and the locations of the fighting in a bid to reconstruct the course of the conflict. Their findings fill some 1,000 pages.
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Yet the triumphant mood in Moscow was tinged by a hint of bitterness. "The report has a major flaw," complained Sergei Makarov, a member of the Duma for the Kremlin party United Russia and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. "It does not address the US's role in the conflict."
