Translated material
"Everything will be true"
The UPC has collected evidence against the Georgian aggressors
Yesterday in Moscow, RIA Novosti hosted a presentation of a new publication about the August war in South Ossetia. The book “Ossetian tragedy. White Book of Crimes against South Ossetia. August 2008" is a collection of photographs, documents, eyewitness accounts and other materials included in the criminal case, which is being conducted by the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation (ICP) on the fact of Georgian aggression. Presenting the book, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, spoke in detail about the criminal case itself, and also provided the latest data from the investigation.As Mr. Bastrykin said, the case regarding the events in South Ossetia is currently being investigated under two articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - 105-2 (murder of two or more persons) and 357 (genocide), but in the future it can be supplemented with four more - 353 (planning, preparation, initiation or waging of aggressive war), 356 (use of prohibited means and methods of warfare), 359 (mercenarism) and 360 (attacks on persons or institutions enjoying international protection). The investigation period was extended until April 2009. “By this time, we will have completed the investigation, clarified the qualifications, formulated the plot of the charges and systematized the evidence,” explained the head of the UPC. -- After this, the materials will be transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where a working group has been created, which includes representatives of the UPC. In the future, all international judicial procedures will be followed to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Mr. Bastrykin did not rule out that a special international judicial body similar to the Hague Tribunal would be created, which would examine the events in South Ossetia. He also did not rule out that if persons accused of crimes on the territory of South Ossetia end up in Russia, they could be detained and brought to justice, regardless of their positions. At the same time, Mr. Bastrykin emphasized: the investigative authorities “do not adjust the course of the investigation to politics, therefore everything that we present to the international community will correspond to the truth.”
According to the head of the UPC, the investigation has documents at its disposal indicating that the goal of the Georgian military operation “Clean Field” was the mass extermination of civilians and the displacement of survivors of non-Georgian nationality. “This operation was planned in advance, and this gives us grounds in the future to talk about qualifying the actions of the military leadership and the Georgian army as actions of an aggressive nature, which were aimed at destroying the South Ossetian people as a national-ethnic community,” he said.
“The investigation has about 600 documents in Georgian and English seized after the flight of the Georgian armed forces,” said Mr. Bastrykin. - We studied these materials together with specialists from the General Staff, and, in our assessment, they represent the plans of the Georgian leadership to use troops in the operation to seize Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These plans were developed in 2005-2007, which indicates that options for using force to establish control over the republics were being worked out in advance in Tbilisi. They provided for the destruction of both military and civilian facilities, including villages where citizens of Ossetian nationality live. The headquarters and training ground of the Russian peacekeepers were also marked as artillery targets.”
According to the head of the UPC, as a result of the military operation of the Georgian army, which began on August 7 at 23.30, the death of 162 civilians was reliably established. This does not mean that there were exactly that many victims. According to him, many were buried immediately after death, including in mass graves, and the investigation took into account only those whose personal data could be established. As a result of the hostilities, more than 5 thousand local residents were recognized as victims. A total of 655 residential buildings were completely destroyed and 2,139 structures were damaged. Directly during the fighting, 48 Russian soldiers were killed, including ten peacekeepers, and 157 people were wounded. Two more servicemen are listed as missing. Earlier, the General Staff of the Russian Federation stated that the losses of the Russian army amounted to 64 people killed and 323 wounded. Mr. Bastrykin explained this discrepancy by the fact that the military took into account total losses, including non-combat ones.
According to Mr. Bastrykin, on the Georgian side, 17 thousand soldiers, including 2 thousand reservists, took part in the military operation, 100 tanks, 70 armored personnel carriers, 30 Grad installations, as well as nine Su-25 attack aircraft, modernized Israel.
The head of the UPC spoke separately about the mercenaries who fought on the side of Georgia. “We have received irrefutable evidence of the participation in these events of representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist organization UNA-UNSO,” Mr. Bastrykin said. This is evidenced by personal belongings, photographs, field uniforms, notebooks of fighters discovered in the Georgian enclave in South Ossetia, as well as an order dated July 27, 2008 from the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs to assign a vehicle to the commander of the UNA-UNSO militant detachment Kucherenko. In addition, according to the UPC, the sabotage and sniper groups of the Georgian units included American, Czech, Turkish and Ukrainian mercenaries.
According to Mr. Bastrykin, the actions of the Georgian side violated the Geneva Convention of 1949 “Relating to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” and the Geneva Convention of 1980 “On the Prohibition or Restriction of the Use of Certain Types of Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Cause Excessive Injury” or having an indiscriminate effect." Facts of mockery of the bodies of Russian soldiers by Georgian military personnel were also recorded. When asked about possible crimes by Russian troops against the Georgian civilian population, the head of the UPC said that the investigation does not have such facts.