MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. The responsibility for the August, 2008 events in South Ossetia les with Georgia’s ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili and political leadership of Georgia, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview for TASS and RT.
"The way the political life works is that the final decision is made by the national leader, and responsibility lies with them. On Georgia’s side, it was him who, as the national leader, made a decision to begin the aggression," Medvedev said, answering a question on who was responsible for Georgia’s aggression in South Ossetia.
"Even if understand the role of the US, of provocations, at the end of the day, this is a decision of a single person - the head of the state," the politician said, underscoring that "he [Saakashvili] and the Georgian leadership of that period is responsible."
Medvedev called the ex-president a "fool, who bought into all this story, a person with a bloated ego, which eventually turned him into a political corpse."
According to the official, Saakashvili was mentally unstable in 2008 already, which affected the events of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict.
"It was apparent that he was a psychopath, a person with unstable psyche, who took stimulants during the conflict - I don’t know what he sniffed, smoked, chewed his ties. It was apparent that he was psychically unstable, and it also affected what transpired," Medvedev said, talking about Saakashvili’s personal responsibility for the tragedy that happened in South Ossetia in August, 2008.
On August, 26, South Ossetia celebrates the 15th anniversary of recognition of independence by Russia. On August 8, 2008, Georgia attacked South Ossetia; Russia acted in defense of the people of the republic, many of whom had Russian citizenship, and its peacekeepers operating in the region since 1992. A five-day armed conflict resulted in over 1,000 people killed, 72 of them being Russian servicemen. On August 26, 2008, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another former Georgian autonomous region, Abkhazia.