El contrapunto a la tesis de que Georgia inició el enfrentamiento invadiendo Osetia del Sur lo pone Michael Totten con su reportaje sobre el terreno "The Truth About Russia in Georgia" (vía Barcepundit). Según el relato de Totten, los separatistas osetios violaron el alto el fuego atacando pueblos étnicamente georgianos y una columna rusa estaba penetraron en Osetia del Sur antes de que el ejército georgiano empezara a movilizarse.
On the 6th, (...) The shelling intensifies during the night and there is, again, tit for tat, but this time with weapons coming from the South Ossetian side which are not allowed under the agreement. By that time, the Georgians were seriously worried. All their armor that was near Abkhazia starts moving, but they are tanks, they don't have tank transporters, so they move slowly. They don't make it back in time. On the 7th, this continues. That afternoon, the president announces a unilateral ceasefire, a different one from the previous ones. It means I stop firing first, and if you fire, I still won't fire back. That holds until the next part of the story.
“On the evening of the 7th, the Ossetians launch an all-out barrage focused on Georgian villages, not on Georgian positions. Remember, these Georgian villages inside South Ossetia – the Georgians have mostly evacuated those villages, and three of them are completely pulverized. That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That's three confirmations. It was time to act. (...)
The first thing they did, and it happened at roughly the same time, they tried to get through [South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali, and that's when everybody says Saakashvili started the war. It wasn't about taking Ossetia back, it was about fighting their way through that town to get onto that road to slow the Russian advance.
Casi tan interesante como el relato de Totten son los comentarios que AMac hace en la misma entrada. Vale la pena leerlos también, ya que profundizan y amplian con rigor la información de Totten y potencialmente conducen a otra conclusión.
AMac hace referencia a un artículo que debía publicarse hoy lunes en Der Spiegel y que resumía un informe de la OSCE que presuntamente pone en tela de juicio la narrativa georgiana según la cual la movilización de su ejército fue posterior a la penetración de una columna rusa.
These are predictions of what tomorrow's Der Spiegel will say, not the article itself. And the article is a synopsis of an OSCE report, not the report itself. Still, if OSCE monitors at Didi Gupta and possibly at the Roki Tunnel itself have indeed reported that the 58th Army transit into South Ossetia began after the 8/7 11:30pm Georgian movement towards Tshkinvali, this would punch a big hole in Saakashvili's narrative. By removing what the Georgian government identified as the last-straw provocation that precipitated their military move, it would undermine their overall credibility.
La OSCE tenía varios observadores en el lugar, y aparentemente el informe explica que Georgia estaba haciendo preparativos para retomar Osetia del Sur por la fuerza desde principios de agosto.
De acuerdo con el timeline de Der Spiegel, la primera noticia del avance de una columna de tanques rusos por el tunel de Roki llega más de 2 horas después de la movilización del ejército georgiano al norte de Tskhinvali, capital de Osetia del Sur.
Según el comentarista AMac, el hecho de que Georgia bombardeara y ocupara Tskhinvali en lugar de asegurar el paso de Digi Gupta para detener el avance ruso también sugiere que el objetivo del Gobierno georgiano no era responder al avance ruso sino retomar el control de Osetia del Sur.
Veremos si el esperado artículo de Der Spiegel aporta detalles clarificadores.
Actualización: La OSCE niega que su informe contenga lo que Der Spiegel afirma que contiene.
[S]peaking to the EUobserver, OSCE spokesperson Martin Nesirky called the article in Der Spiegel "ludicrous", lamenting their appearance in a magazine he described as "normally very trustworthy". (...)
"None of these reports contains information of the kind mentioned in the Der Spiegel story."
"The OSCE's military monitoring officers do not have access to the Roki tunnel and therefore would not have been in a position to report, one way or the other, on the timing of Russian tank movements."
Entradas relacionadas:
- ¿Quién disparó primero en el Cáucaso? (1 actualización)
- USA ha contribuido a que estalle la crisis del Cáucaso
- ¿Somos todos georgianos u osetios?
- Rusofobia, provocaciones y doble rasero
- Luis Gómez: tres hipótesis sobre guerra en Georgia (con 3 actualizaciones)
- El conflicto en Georgia y el sesgo anti-ruso
