An illegal military attack by Georgia on its breakaway region of South Ossetia triggered last year’s war with Russia, an international report said yesterday.
Russia was also guilty of breaking international law by invading deep into Georgian territory in response to the attack, the European Union-backed investigation into the causes of the five-day conflict concluded.
The report deals a severe blow to Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has repeatedly argued that he ordered troops into South Ossetia as a defensive action in response to a Russian invasion. Moscow insisted that it sent forces to South Ossetia to repel a Georgian attack.
The nine-month inquiry led by a Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, said that the war was triggered by “a large-scale Georgian military operation” against the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali late on August 7, adding: “Operations started with a massive Georgian artillery attack.”
Ms Tagliavini said in a written statement: “None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack lend it a valid explanation.”
Her inquiry rejected as not “sufficiently substantiated” Georgian claims of a Russian incursion into South Ossetia prior to the outbreak of the war. But it noted “an influx of volunteers or mercenaries” into South Ossetia from Russia and said that some Russian troops were in the war zone earlier than the Kremlin had claimed.
The Russian air force also bombed targets in Georgia hours before Moscow said that it had begun military operations at 2.30pm on August 8.
The inquiry concluded: “There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia, beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was justifiable under international law. It was not.
“It follows from the illegal character of the Georgian military assault that South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence.”
The report said that there was also no justification for Georgian attacks on Russian peacekeeping forces based in South Ossetia. It went on: “There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation. 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. It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack.
“Consequently, the use of force by Georgia against Russian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali in the night of 7/8 August 2008 was contrary to international law.”
The inquiry condemned Russia’s response to the fighting, however, as going “far beyond the reasonable limits of defence”. It said that the Kremlin broke international law in justifying its actions and in recognising South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, as independent states after the war.
Initial Russian defensive actions in South Ossetia were legal, but subsequent military occupation of large parts of Georgia – tanks came within 25 miles of the capital Tbilisi – was not “even remotely commensurate” with the threat posed to its peacekeepers.
Russia’s invasion broke international law and continued destruction of Georgian territory after a ceasefire negotiated by President Sarkozy of France “was not justifiable by any means”. The report added: “In a matter of a very few days, the pattern of legitimate and illegitimate military action had thus turned around between the two main actors Georgia and Russia… It must be concluded that the Russian military action outside South Ossetia was essentially conducted in violation of international law.”
The report rejected the Kremlin’s assertion that it had acted in defence of Russian citizens in South Ossetia, most of whom hold Russian passports. It said that people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia remained Georgian citizens under international law and it condemned Russia’s “passportisation” policy as “an open challenge to Georgian sovereignty and an interference in the internal affairs of Georgia”.
The inquiry described Russian claims that Georgia was committing “genocide” against South Ossetians as “neither founded in law nor substantiated by factual evidence”. It noted that Russia reduced to 162 its initial claim that 2,000 South Ossetians had been killed by Georgian troops.
It accused Georgian and Russian soldiers as well as South Ossetian militias of committing atrocities that amounted to “war crimes”. But the similarity of weapons used by all sides made it difficult to attribute responsibility for particular acts.
The report condemned Russia for failing to control South Ossetian irregulars who it said were guilty of ethnic cleansing of Georgian villagers from their homes in the conflict zone. Georgia’s use of Grad missiles and cluster munitions in its night attack on Tskhinvali amounted to “indiscriminate attacks” on the civilian population.
While Georgia’s attack on Tskhinvali marked the start of the war, the inquiry said that it “was only the culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations and incidents” involving Russia and separatist leaders in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Assessments of the war had to consider “a great power’s coercive politics and diplomacy against a small and insubordinate neighbour, together with the small neighbour’s penchant for overplaying its hand and acting in the heat of the moment without careful consideration of the final outcome”.
The Kremlin welcomed the report. Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, said: “It confirms what we’ve know all along – who started the war and who bears responsibility.”
Georgia insisted that the inquiry proved that Moscow had been plotting a war for a long time. Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s Minister for Reintegration, said: “The report proves that Russia was all the time preparing this war and August 7 and 8 were the culmination. The report is not about who started the war; the war did not start on August 7 or 8.”
The inquiry said that Georgia reported 228 civilians killed and 184 soldiers dead or missing in the war. Russia said that 64 of its troops died and 162 South Ossetian civilians.
More than 100,000 people became refugees during the conflict. Several thousand South Ossetians remain homeless and some 25,000 Georgians have been unable to return to South Ossetia. By Tony Halpin, The Times.