Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008
From: Pavel Felgenhauer <pavelf@online.ru>
Subject: Sources re conflict
It does not make any sense asking Vladimir Putin the time of day, if one cannot constantly check him out. For Putin lying comes like breathing. He's a pro, KGB trained.
Of more objective sources.
The report in the Vlast 18.08 weekly is not bad, contains maps and information on the Russian units involved in the fighting, as well as a timetables of events. It does its best to be both-sided, but at present that is not possible, since reliable info from the Georgian side is mostly absent. Both sides are issuing too much propaganda and falsehoods that make a good detailed analysis not possible.
Only the Pentagon may at present have an objective picture of the exact events and their timing during the battles near and in Tskhinvali, but they sit tight. And anyway the Pentagon does not know all the particulars of the planning and decision-making and intrigue in Moscow and Tbilisi that accompanied the prewar and war itself.
I believe only facts that are verified by diverse sources, make military common sense (are possible: Say, the official Russian version that the Georgian attack was a total surprise, but our folks in two days gathered 20000 troops all over Russia and put them deep into Georgia with 2000 pieces of heavy equipment and armor and guns using two narrow roads as an act of military master improvisation - is fiction) and do not smack of outright propaganda. This makes detailed assessments of the events at present almost impossible. Not bad overall assessments have been printed by Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, say, by Rt. Col. Anatoly Tsiganok in 29.08., but there it’s also inevitably only a Russian-sided version of events.
I do not know of any Georgian reconstructions of the events. The English assessments I have seen strongly smack of propaganda or are on top of that unprofessional.
A good history of the Georgian attack and the Russian invasion maybe written someday.