EU report: Georgian attack started war with Russia

[laststeamtrain]

Source: AP

EU report: Georgian attack started war with Russia
By RAF CASERT, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 2 mins ago

BRUSSELS – Georgia's attack on its breakaway South Ossetia region marked the start of last year's war with Russia, which retaliated with excessive force, an EU-commissioned report said Wednesday.

The report on the five-day war in August 2008 lay blame on both sides, but cited Georgia as starting the conflict with its night shelling in South Ossetia — an act it said was not justifiable under international law.

The EU report went on to blame Russia for conducting a military campaign deep inside Georgia. "All this cannot be regarded as even remotely commensurate with the threat to Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia," the report said.

Russia's retaliation went "far beyond the reasonable limits of defense," it said, criticizing the devastating Russian assault on a tiny neighbor that in recent years has moved closer into the West with hopes of joining NATO.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_georgia

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Remember how nutty this was? Certain nefarious people going rogue & trying to heat up the cold war? Our neocon nutty buddies ready to try anything?

[felinetta]

1. At last the truth is out. I have known this all along.

[evenso]

2. Putin set a trap.....Saakashvili fell right into it.

[pampango]

3. Saakashvili certainly did, but Russia is hardly blameless either.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/830d20ec-adc5-11de-bb8a-00144...

"An unjustified Georgian attack on South Ossetia sparked the five-day war last August, says the report. Heidi Tagliavini, the Swiss diplomat heading the enquiry, says in an introductory statement: “In the Mission´s view, it was Georgia which triggered off the war when it attacked Tskhinvali with heavy artillery on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008.”"

"Ms Tagliavini is consistently careful in her judgements. She says: “While the onus of having actually triggered off the war lies with the Georgian side, the Russian side, too, carries the blame for a substantial number of violations of international law.

“These include, even prior to the armed conflict, the mass conferral of Russian citizenship to a majority of the population living in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia(part of setting the trap to be sure). It also includes, in terms of an additional violation of international law, the military action by the Russian armed forces on Georgian territory, far beyond the needs of a proportionate defence of Russian Peace Keepers in Tskhinvali who had come under the Georgian attack.”"

"The report rejects outright Russian allegations that Georgia was carrying out a genocide against the South Ossetian population. But it accepts Tbilisi’s charges that ethnic cleansing took place against ethnic Georgians driven from South Ossetia. Ms Tagliavini says there were also “other violations of international humanitarian law which must be attributed to all sides”."

Putin did a great job of setting a trap in the backyard of a much smaller country and had the good fortune that the president of that country isn't very bright and stepped right into it. These military successes, as in Chechnya, make Putin very popular at home.

[TheLastMohican]

4. This article is a joke

What they don't mention is that the population of SO and Abhazia didn't have Georgian citizenship, they had Soviet Union citizenship prior to that, so they chose to accept Russian since SU fell apart.
It is not like Russia started to hand out passports to Georgian citizens. Why people decided to go for the russian passports? Well we all look for better lives for us and our children and Georgia isn't exactly a place of prosperous economy where people live on 10 bucks per month.

[pampango]

5. Russia violated international law on "extraterritorial collective naturalisations".

See page 169 of Volume II of the EU report.

"A “passportisation” policy aiming at the conferral of nationality on the citizens of another state without sufficient factual links, especially if it is implemented on a large scale, violates first the specific prohibition of extraterritorial collective naturalisations, and also several general principles of international law. The policy is thus not in conformity with international law."

There is a lot more in the report about the "passportisation program".

You're right that the population of SO and Abhazia didn't have to accept Russian passports. It was voluntary. International law, however, states that a country cannot conduct "extraterritorial collective naturalisations" even if the beneficiaries of this are happy to receive it. (It would similarly be against international law for the US to offer collective citizenship to the residents of several northern Mexican provinces. Many, if not most of the residents in these provinces, might be happy to become American citizens, but that doesn't give us the right to offer it to them.)

http://www.ceiig.ch/pdf/IIFFMCG_Volume_II.pdf

(edited to add link to the EU report)