Kaczynski and Sarkozy — war and peace Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili decided to become a hero on the Olympics opening
day. To guarantee success, he drafted 100,000 reservists to
fight a 70,000-strong republic. Instead of looking for ways of
peaceful settlement with the unruly Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
he provoked a bloody conflict which took hundreds of lives.
Saakashvili wanted to consolidate his positions in his own
country. Having started the war, he did not expect to be its
main victim. Meanwhile, he could see it all in advance. A mere
25 per cent of South Ossetia’s population is Georgian and the
rest are Ossetians with Russian passports. Moreover, Ossetians
remember how Georgians seized their territory by force after the
Soviet Union’s disintegration. About 3,000 Ossetians perished in
that war. This time, shells hit also the base of Russian
peacekeepers, who have been stationed there under the 1992
Dagomys agreement. This was a violation of international law.
Infantry and tanks joined the attac