If you look at it objectively

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008 SVETLANA SOLDOVNIK

Patriarch Alexy II called for an assessment of the actions of the politicians who started armed clashes in South Ossetia.

“As Christians, we cannot help but give a moral assessment to the criminal actions of the politicians who started the conflict, which led to massive casualties among civilians and peacekeepers,” Alexy II said on Tuesday at a meeting with the President of the Conference of European Churches (CEC), Pastor Jean-Arnold de Clermont at the patriarchal residence in Moscow.

The Patriarch thanked the President of the CEC, who visited Georgia and South Ossetia on a humanitarian mission in August, for his desire to “independently and objectively understand the causes and consequences of the recent armed conflict.”

“Such trips allow their participants to look at the situation differently than the politically biased media presents it,” said Alexy II.

The Patriarch also noted that Pastor de Clermont’s official statement regarding the events in South Ossetia showed his understanding that “today there is an extremely ambiguous situation in this region.”

Although in the Patriarch’s speech transmitted by Interfax, the politicians who committed “criminal acts” are not identified in any way, for some reason there is no doubt about whom the head of the Russian Orthodox Church actually had in mind.