Tbilisi Mayor and Secretary General of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Kakha Kaladze, described as “incomprehensible” the decision by part of the opposition forces to consider August 7 as the start date of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.
“This is incomprehensible. Let’s look at when people came to pay their respects during the commemoration of the war’s date; let’s pull materials from the archives, where it is very clearly visible that it was August 8. Perhaps we should ask the National Movement why they changed the date. No one will be able to rewrite history; we all know everything very well.”
According to Kaladze, the events surrounding the 2008 war were the result of the “treasonous policy” of the authorities at the time.
“The outbreak of the war was blamed on the Georgian state, on the army, and this is explicitly written [in the Tagliavini report]. When you sign off on all this, it is simply unthinkable,” the mayor said.
The Russian propaganda narrative claims that the war with Georgia began precisely on August 8 with the shelling of Tskhinvali by the Georgian army. Moscow refers to its involvement in the conflict as a “peace enforcement operation,” claiming it was forced to intervene to stop the genocide of the Ossetian population.
However, as early as the morning of August 7, 2008, regular Russian troops crossed the border into Georgia through the Roki Tunnel and invaded its territory. This is the main argument supporting the position that it was the Russian Federation that initiated the war against Georgia.