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Another Piece Of The Puzzle

A parliamentary hearing on the origins of the war between Georgia and Russia in August ended in a furor on Tuesday after a former Georgian diplomat testified that Georgian authorities were responsible for starting the conflict. Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Tbilisi’s former ambassador to Moscow, testified for three hours before he was shouted down by members of […]

A parliamentary hearing on the origins of the war between Georgia and Russia in August ended in a furor on Tuesday after a former Georgian diplomat testified that Georgian authorities were responsible for starting the conflict.

Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Tbilisi’s former ambassador to Moscow, testified for three hours before he was shouted down by members of Parliament.

A former confidant of President Mikheil Saakashvili, Mr. Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials told him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the United States government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia. ~The New York Times

By itself, this would not be definitive, but it confirms what all of the other evidence we have suggests. The timing of the decision detailed in this testimony is important. What had happened in April? The NATO summit was held in Bucharest in early April. There the U.S. pushed for a promise that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members of the Alliance. Whether it was this support for Georgia’s future NATO accession that Tbilisi interpreted (or misinterpreted) as a “green light” or there was another, specific endorsement of a campaign in South Ossetia, we have another piece of evidence that Washington directly contributed to the Georgian decision to escalate.

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