MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. Georgia’s former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, had promised Vladimir Putin he would not tackle the issue of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from the position of strength only to eventually break his word, the Russian leader told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".
"We had a lot of discussions with him on the subject when he was still in office," Putin said, adding that he had asked Saakashvili to refrain by all means from trying to use force in relations with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Georgian president then promised to "never do that."
"‘No, no, I'll never do that,’ he said. And he still stormed in, stormed in and got knocked back!" Putin said.
When asked about the current cool-off in relations between Russia and Georgia, the Russian leader said that that country’s authorities had "jumped aside."
"It was no fault of ours. They should thank Mikhail Nikolayevich [Saakashvili] for that," Putin remarked.
On August 8, 2008 Georgia mounted an overnight armed attack against South Ossetia. Russia intervened to protect civilians and its peacekeepers. In the five-day armed clash more than one thousand people, including 72 Russian peacekeepers, lost their lives. On August 26, 2008 Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Episode 11 of the video interview is available at https://putin.tass.ru/en.