North and South Ossetia are separated by the Roki Pass at 2,500 metres altitude and are connected by the tunnel that runs under it. The unique four-kilometre-long tunnel was a lifeline for the people of South Ossetia during the Georgian-South Ossetian armed conflict in 1989-1992. In 2008 it saved the South Ossetians again.

Through this “hole”, as it is known locally, Russia sends to Tskhinval military equipment, ammunition, medical supplies and humanitarian relief. Without it Tskhinval would not have held out long. Georgia’s assault on the rebellious city on August 7–8 was so massive that had it lasted several hours longer, no living soul would have been left in the capital of South Ossetia.

Eyewitnesses and fighters on the South Ossetian side give similar accounts: the only place to hide from fire and explosions was in the basements, and you couldn’t survive long there without water and food. Besides, not all basements could provide protection against the medieval barbarity of the attackers, who used several dozen Grad multiple rocket launchers and long-range howitzers, some of them 203 mm calibre. The shells of such howitzers without the warhead are a metre long, weigh 100 kilograms and are intended to be used against strong fortifications. There are none in Tskhin val.

So the regular Georgian army used the Grads, the howitzers and self-propelled guns against women, children and old people. The Georgian tanks were shooting at residential areas and schools.
Two tanks stood in front of the main building of South Ossetian University and methodically pounded salvo after salvo of 64 (two rounds) of 152 mm armour piercing and high explosive shells at the university’s empty windows until it was totally destroyed. Standing among smoking ruins I imagined for a minute what would have happened if Russian tanks had done the same to Tbilisi University…

This is a nightmare for us, after all, we are not like the fantasists from the CNN, as one of mine colleague has said. In South Ossetia the CNN is a byword used to describe those who spread lies from television screens and the printed page or keep silent when it suits them, forgetting about their “contribution” to the killing of thousands of people, many of whom were still not buried on the fifth or sixth day of the slaughter in Tskhinval. Some may be interested to know where the Georgian army got its Grads and concrete-busting howitzers: they came from the Czech Republic, from Bulgaria and from fraternal Ukraine.

Their profits cost South Ossetia more than 2,000 lives lost during the 24 hours of effective use of the deadly gifts that you sent from Prague, Sofia and Kiev. So you would do well to keep silent about the alleged Russian atrocities in Georgia. There have been none. The atrocities have been perpetrated by the other side with your help. Then there is something that should never have happened and that the South Ossetians had not permitted themselves to do for nearly 20 years, all the years that they were in confrontation with Georgia. Georgians are leaving their villages in South Ossetia at the “urging” of angry South Ossetians.

The villages of Tamarasheni, Kekhvi, Kurta, Achabeti and others that formed a semicircle around Tskhinval no longer exist. It was from there that the Georgian army’s mortars bombarded the city, from there the Georgian troops with automatic rifles launched their attack on the old people, women and children of South Ossetia. The Georgian people, whom Saakashvili professes to love so ardently, are victims of his policy of Grads and self-propelled guns.

Thousands of homeless people are sheltered in Tbilisi’s offices and hotels. They have Mikheil Saakashvili to thank, whom they have elected their president twice. The trip from Vladikavkaz to Tskhinval took four hours; for security reasons we had to make a detour on the Zar Road with its hairpin turns. This was the road where Georgian militants stopped a bus with refugees and shot point-blank at 38 women, old people and children in May 1992. This was the place where Georgian aircraft attacked a column of refugees escorted by Russian armour vehicles on August 9, 2008.

Again, the attack claimed dozens of lives. The 16 years between 1992 and 2008 might never have elapsed. The attack seemed to send a message to the generation that grew up between the wars: we killed you in the past you and we will kill you now. And forever? Unfortunately, their irrepressible faith in their leader had been the undoing of the Georgian people in the past and continues to be so today. The universal worship of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a fascist and a mystic, put Georgia on the brink of collapse and plunged it into abject poverty. Blind faith in the superior talents of Eduard Shevardnadze, a phony communist and democrat, led to hundreds of thousands fleeing from Abkhazia, the rape of Western Georgia by his men and a government riddled with corruption.

The hopes pinned on Saakashvili, who was obviously not fit for the job, led to a total collapse of Georgia as an ethnocratic state within the 1991 borders. Today it is impossible to imagine any negotiations with South Ossetia on its status. “We are independent, and it doesn’t matter very much whether or not we are recognised,” say the people of Tskhinval.

However, it is impossible to continue not to recognise it. Not recognising means consigning tens of thousands of Russian citizens in South Ossetia to continued extermination and expulsion from their land and from their homes. People here see only one guarantor, Moscow. Moscow has provided its guarantees. Ossetians are sure it will continue to honour its pledge. On the return journey our Niva offroader drove back to Vladikavkaz across a Georgian enclave.

Today we can safely call it a former Georgian enclave. Such is the logic of war. It was dictated by the Georgian authorities firing rockets and howitzers. Russia responded in a way that would deter further egregious acts of aggression. The answer is prompted by logic. The logic of war, to which the Georgian elite has left Moscow no alternative.