Truth – the first victim of war

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Who is right in the war that has begun, and who is at fault – God willing, the tribunal in The Hague will figure this out. I hope that it will be able to assess the contribution to this crime both of current president of Georgia Saakashvili and of former president of Russia comrade Putin.

And western politicians, I hope, will reach conclusions. For example, about why they did not stop the provocative acts of Russia, when she was giving out her passports to Ossetians and Abkhazians, making people, in essence, its hostages? Why did they allow the presence on an explosive territory of only Russian troops, calling themselves peacekeepers?

Saakashvili is no angel – this is understood. But when people tell me about this, citing as evidence only lies, well, like it or not I start to wonder.

Lies began to pour in a torrent from the screens of Russian TV already on 8 August. At first they said that the peacekeepers had lost ten people dead. About the dead among the civilian population for half a day nothing was reported, besides the phrase: there are victims of Georgian bombardments.

Towards evening they said that there were – several hundred civilians killed. In another couple of hours – that there were already 2000 of them. (It is this roundedness of the number in the quantity of those killed that to me, a military person, eloquently says: this – is a lie!). About those killed by Russian troops on the territory of Georgia was said nothing at all. Although it is known that Russian planes had bombed Gori and Poti, as well as objectives near Tbilisi.

To understand from Russian TV where the Georgian troops are located and where the hurriedly deployed 58th army of Russia was absolutely impossible. Some kind of informational chaos. I understand that such chaos is inherent to the Russian army in general, and all the more so when it starts to wage war. But still, there is the Informburo, paramilitary in structure, specially created back in the time of the Chechen wars, which, even though it lied through its teeth, at least did not allow major goof-ups: the lies were all filtered and sorted.

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