There are some important new findings by a BBC investigation into the beginning of the war in Georgia in early August of this year.  Seumas Milne has the details:

Not only does the report by Tim Whewell – aired this week on Newsnight and on Radio 4’s File on Four – find strong evidence confirming western-backed Georgia as the aggressor on the night of August 7. It also assembles powerful testimony of wide-ranging war crimes carried out by the Georgian army in its attack on the contested region of South Ossetia.

They include the targeting of apartment block basements – where civilians were taking refuge – with tank shells and Grad rockets, the indiscriminate bombardment of residential districts and the deliberate killing of civilians, including those fleeing the South Ossetian capital of Tskinvali.

The carefully balanced report – which also details evidence of ethnic cleansing by South Ossetian paramilitaries – cuts the ground from beneath later Georgian claims that its attack on South Ossetia followed the start of a Russian invasion the previous night.

Obviously, this does not excuse any crimes committed by Ossetian or Russian forces in the days that followed, but it makes very clear that Western politicians and pundits who have referred repeatedly to Russian “aggression” have been quite simply wrong.  If early Russian reports of Ossetian civilian casualties in the thousands may have been exaggerated, there is apparently good reason to believe that there were at least 300 or 400 such casualties.  These were civilian casualties inflicted in an absolutely unnecessary war escalated by an ally of the United States.