Revenge on refugees

The President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, told Kommersant that the Georgian enclaves on the territory of the unrecognized republic were virtually destroyed: “We have practically leveled everything there. They established the border of South Ossetia.” Justifying his actions, he asked: “Should we allow them to fire at us from there? Did they shoot us in the back again and mock our people?” At the same time, Kokoity said that civilians were allowed to leave the enclaves until “equalization”. But, to be honest, he stated this rather confusingly: “As for civilians, in those places where they still remained, we, unlike the Georgian troops, provided a corridor and gave the civilian population the opportunity to leave. But once again I want to assure you that there was actually no one in these enclaves. They took everyone out in advance - we had interceptions. After all, the Georgian side was seriously preparing for aggression. They took people out of there, they took out their so-called alternative government.” And now the president of South Ossetia refuses to allow Georgians who fled from there into his territory. “We don’t intend to let anyone else in there anymore. More than 18 thousand Ossetian refugees from Georgia are now in North Ossetia. We need to return them to South Ossetia.” Kokoity admitted that there were cases of looting on the territory of Georgian villages, but treated this as “the consequences of any war.” Meanwhile, on August 14, a message appeared that two looters caught on the territory of South Ossetia were killed by Ossetian forces “according to the laws of war.” The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of South Ossetia, Mikhail Mindzaev, explained that they were killed because they resisted an attempt to arrest them. And the chairman of the mixed control commission for conflict resolution, Boris Chochiev, said that any cases of looting would be severely punished. It is also known that two local residents, brothers Vladislav and Vadim Kazaev, were detained for accusing Kokoity of cowardice (it is known that almost immediately after the start of the conflict, the president of South Ossetia moved from Tskhinvali to Java). The President later accused the Kazaevs, as well as the former Prime Minister of South Ossetia Oleg Teziev, who left the republic in the mid-1990s due to a conflict with Kokoity, of “for serious remuneration, for those grants that they receive through the Soros Foundation, through some new American structures are trying to split the Caucasus.” Relatives of the Kazaevs believe that this is Kokoity’s way of settling personal scores.