NEW EVIDENCE EMERGES ON START OF GEORGIAN-RUSSIAN WAR
The Georgian government has put forth new evidence in support for its claim that Russian military had entered South Ossetia before its advance on Tskhinvali. The Georgian version of events during the war in August maintains that Georgia launched its incursion into South Ossetia in response to Russian forces crossing the border through the Roki tunnel, the border passage between Russia and South Ossetia in the morning and during the day on August 7. In response to this, Georgia saw itself as forced to respond through taking Tskhinvali and blocking the Russian forces from moving further into Georgia. According to the Russian version, its army was not sent into South Ossetia until the morning of August 8, in response to a Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and in order to protect its peacekeeping forces and civilians in the region.
The main new evidence, supplied by Georgian authorities, circulated among US and European intelligence agencies and provided to the New York Times, consists of three recorded telephone calls between a South Ossetian border guard posted at the Roki tunnel and his commander. According to the Times, the phone calls were made using the Georgian mobile network MagtiCom and intercepted by Georgia’s Ministry of Interior. The newspaper reported on September 16 that in a call recorded 3:52 AM on August 7, a border guard asked by his commander whether armor has arrived, confirms this, saying that armor and personnel has indeed crossed into South Ossetia. At 3:41 AM, the same border guard tells his commander that he has been requested to inspect vehicles that have “crowded” the tunnel and asks for permission to do this. At 3:52, the border guard tells the commander that the vehicles are through the tunnel. These accounts would imply that Russian units entered South Ossetia through the Roki Tunnel as early as in the morning of August 7.
Georgian officials interviewed by the New York Times regard the recorded phone calls to be indisputable evidence that Tbilisi’s version of events on August 7 is correct: the Russian army did enter Georgian territory and Georgia’s attack on Tskhinvali was in response to this. When asked why the recordings emerged more than a month after the phone calls took place, Georgian Minister of Interior Vano Merabishvili stated the files were lost due to relocations of the surveillance team during the war, and that it took due time to retrieve them. Russian military officials, however, told the Times that any troop movements through the tunnel before the Georgian attack were only rotations of its peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia or transports of supplies to these troops. Interviewed U.S. military officials state that while the recordings seem genuine, a full assessment of their implications cannot be made until more intelligence is gathered.
Other information indicating a Russian military presence in South Ossetia on August 7 has seeped out through the Russian media. The Russian Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), published on September 3 an interview with Captain Denis Sidristy of the 135th motorized rifle regiment, who was wounded in the war. An observant Swedish blogger, Kalle Kniivilä, noted that in the original version Sidristy states that his unit was on exercise in North Ossetia, close to the Georgian border. On August 7, his regiment was ordered to move to South Ossetia, toward Tskhinvali, where it settled in. He then says he witnessed the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali around midnight. Kniivilä however noted that the original version was later changed on the Krasnaya Zvezda website, so that Sidristy is reported to say that the order to move into South Ossetia came on August 7 at night and that the attack on Tskhinvali was witnessed on August 8 in the morning. The New York Times also comments on the issue, stating that after Krasnaya Zvezda had been approached on the subject of the story, the paper published a new interview with Sidristy on September 11, where the captain corrected his previous statement, now claiming to have entered South Ossetia on August 8. Clearly, these inconsistencies and changes on the website indicate a cover-up, which in turn seems to lend credence to the assertion that Russian forces moved in long before Moscow acknowledges that fact.
According to blog site “A Step at a Time”, the Russian newspaper Permskie Novosti has also reprinted a transcript of a mobile phone message from a Russian conscript, stating that he had been stationed in South Ossetia since August 7. The site also quotes reports that the Russian missile cruiser “Moskva” left the port of Sevastopol in the morning of August 7. Other reports, however, claim “Moskva” left port on August 9.
Light is yet to be shed on what really happened during August 7, a process which will require many additional pieces of information on the nature and size of Russian troop movements on that day. Nevertheless, the evidence now becoming available may prove to be an important piece of this puzzle, and is useful in explaining the level of threat perceived by the Georgian government ahead of its decision to march on Tskhinvali.
