Ossetian genocide distorted by Georgian Foreign Ministry

In response to the statement made by the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor's office that the genocide of Ossetians in South Ossetia has been verified, Georgia's Foreign Ministry has made the accusation of there having been "ethnic cleansing of Georgians under Russian control". And it has called the interpretation of the August events put forward by the Moscow investigators "lies".

Commenting on the statement made by the head of the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor's office, Aleksandr Bastrykin, Georgia's Foreign Ministry correctly noted: "the international community is well aware of what actually happened - there were hundreds of people killed and thousands of refugees".

According to the public commission investigating the war crimes, 365 South Ossetian citizens were indeed killed. The investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor's office has documentation confirming the deaths of 162 Ossetians. More than 5000 people have been recognized as victims of the Georgian aggression. During the war, 655 residential houses were completely destroyed. A further 2000 buildings were partly damaged. Tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated to Russia under refugee status. This is not even to mention the Russian soldiers who fell and were wounded while protecting the civilian population.

Yes, on the Georgian side, as Tbilisi maintains, 155 civilians were also killed, and people were wounded and went missing. But the Georgian Foreign Ministry should first of all ask itself this: would there have been these victims if President Mikheil Saakashvili had not given the order to start the hostilities? And would Georgians have fled the Ossetian villages after the August conflict if they did not feel guilty for the wild behaviour of their country's officials?

The Georgian Foreign Ministry is not only reproaching Russia for the August events. It emerges that, "since the 1990s thousands of people fell victim to Russia's criminal policies regarding Georgia, and hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes." This is probably referring to those Georgians who fled Abkhazia in 1993 after another unsuccessful attempt by Georgia to get its hands on Sukhumi. And those who preferred to leave the republic after the adoption of the Act on the State Independence of South Ossetia in 1992, fearing revenge for the genocide carried out on the Ossetians between 1989 and 1992. A group of investigators from Moscow are, incidentally, gathering evidence on the crimes committed during those years, since they are working on the action brought against Russia by Georgia at the Hague Tribunal and are preparing a counter-charge.

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