MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. The US defense industry is the principal beneficiary of the Georgian-South Ossetian and Ukrainian conflicts, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an article published on the aif.ru website.
"The Georgian-South Ossetian conflict was a critical experience for America and its allies in waging hybrid warfare within the post-Soviet space," the politician said. "The process of ‘rearming’ Georgian troops helped pad the bank accounts of US-based [arms] manufacturers," Medvedev wrote, noting that "this is an ordinary scheme, tried and tested many times on various continents." Large-scale supplies of NATO armaments, tanks, drones and explosives are underway, including munitions outlawed many years ago because they primarily harm non-combatants, while funding of such "gifts" is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars, Medvedev noted. "Again, the main profit earners are US defense contractors. They are interested in dragging the conflict out as long as possible. Nothing personal, just business," the senior official stressed.
Georgia "was set up to be a 'battering ram' against Russia," Medvedev noted, recalling the events of August 2008. "The West was not concerned about the fate of such a battering ram. It was absolutely unimportant that people were dying from 'battering ram' strikes against an unbreakable wall, [or that] major businesses sustained losses and hundreds of small companies found themselves ruined," he added.