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Medvedev praises Georgian prime minister for courage to say that Saakashvili was guilty of starting a conflict in South Ossetia

In spring this year, Ivanishvili said that nothing could justify the actions of the Georgian armed forces in August 2008
Photo ITAR-TASS / Catherine Shtukina
Photo ITAR-TASS / Catherine Shtukina

MOSCOW, August 4 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has described as courageous the remarks of Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili that President Saakashvili was responsible for the armed conflict in South Ossetia in August 2008.

“Suffice it to say what Prime Minister Ivanishvili said. He was right when he said ‘it was you (Saakashvili) who provoked everything and it was you who started the conflict’,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Russia Today television channel on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the tragic events in South Ossetia.

“It must have been very hard for him to say such courageous words,” the Russian prime minister emphasized.

Bidzina Ivanishvili who became Georgia’s prime minister in October last year after his Georgian Dream Coalition had won a parliamentary election has said many times that it was possible to avoid the 2008 war with Russia.

“Those events would have never taken place, if Georgia had normal power at that time,” Ivanishvili said in autumn last year. In spring this year, Ivanishvili said that nothing could justify the actions of the Georgian armed forces in August 2008. In his words, the West has a clear understanding of what happened. Ivanishvili believed that if it had not been for mistakes made by Saakashvili, Georgia could have normalized its relations with Russia and at the same time approached NATO.