“There is no South Ossetia and no Republic of Abkhazia — such entities do not exist, and based on this, we are completely uninterested in whatever statements the de facto representatives of the occupied territories make,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said in response to journalists’ questions regarding self-proclaimed South Ossetia’s reaction to his statement concerning the outbreak of the August 2008 war.
Kobakhidze addressed the journalist, noting that both the occupation and the recognition were the consequence of actions taken by “his political party.”
“As for my statement, I merely repeated what your party included in the Council of Europe resolution. The resolution clearly states that the conflict escalated into a phase of full-scale hostilities after your party bombarded Tskhinvali without warning. This is written in the Council of Europe resolution, and I simply repeated it. Your party signed all of this in 2008, just a few days after the end of the war.
Based on this, ask your party: why did they do this in the first place, then why did they give confessory testimony at the Council of Europe and, together with the entire European community, sign the Council of Europe resolution, which explicitly states that the conflict turned into a full-scale military phase — that is, war — following your party’s unannounced bombardment of Tskhinvali, which was followed by Russia’s response. The resolution explicitly speaks of Russia’s response, and your party signed it.
If anyone handed anyone an argument, it was your party when it signed the Council of Europe resolution acknowledging that they themselves escalated the conflict into a state of war,” Kobakhidze stated in response to the question.
Kobakhidze also stated today that the outbreak of hostilities was preceded by a thousand provocative steps that provided the Russian Federation with a pretext to act against Georgia’s national interests.
“Among them were holding alternative separatist elections in the Tskhinvali region and renaming the Kodori Gorge ‘Upper Abkhazia.’ A law was passed and a presidential decree issued, creating alternative de facto separatist authorities. This was a series of steps that they ultimately capped off by endorsing what was included in the Council of Europe resolution.”
As a reminder, on August 8, Irakli Kobakhidze declared that the 2008 war was unleashed by “Saakashvili’s bloody regime” and that Georgia formally had a “traitorous commander-in-chief” at the time.
Shortly thereafter, the de facto Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Ossetia interpreted the Prime Minister’s words as an official recognition of Mikheil Saakashvili as the “culprit of military aggression.” At the same time, Tskhinvali noted that the former president “had a mandate to speak on behalf of the Georgian state,” and therefore responsibility for the war should be borne not only by him, but by Georgia itself “as a subject of this policy.”