KRASNOYARSK, August 8 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev shared his experiences and memories of the August 2008 war in South Ossetia in a film titled “The Burring August” by Alexander Sladkov.
The film was shown on the Russia-1 television channel on Thursday evening on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. It was Dmitry Medvedev, the then president of Russia, who sent Russian troops to South Ossetia. Medvedev said it was emotionally hard for him to realize that new victims were inevitable and that the dead Russian peacekeepers would never come back.
“It was also clear that we were facing a war and that it was irreversible,” the Russian prime minister went on to say.
“I wondered why I had to face such a trial only three months after I had taken the president’s office…The decision to send troops was difficult. But it was translated into real time actions. Any head of state should be ready to make such decisions,” Medvedev emphasized.
Film director Alexander Sladkov included the words of Vladimir Putin, who was the Russian prime minister in August 2008, on the South Ossetian war.
“I have heard a lot about our actions being inadequate. But what is adequacy? Is it when tanks, heavy artillery and volley fire are used against us? Do you mean that we were supposed to catapult or swing penknives?” Putin asked the opponents and critics.
The Georgian army made an attempt to seize control over the territory of the unrecognized Republic of South Osseita on the night from August 8 to 9, 2008.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the start of a peace enforcement operation in Georgia in the morning of August 9.
The hostilities ended on August 12. The peace-enforcement operation in Georgia was over. By that time, the Russian army had gained control over the territory of South Ossetia and the adjacent regions.