Barankevich: no lessons taken from 2008 August war in South Ossetia

The Russian party is not interested in any information about the last year's was in South Ossetia. This was stated by General-Lieutenant Anatoly Barankevich, ex-secretary of the Security Council of South Ossetia, at the roundtable "South Ossetia. War. Peace. Uncertainty" dated to the 20th anniversary of the start of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict.

"After the war none from the Russian leadership asked me: 'What had really happened there? Why such great losses were there? What can be done to avoid such losses in the future?'," Mr Barankevich said at the roundtable November 23, where the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was also present.

November 23, 1989, is considered to be the starting point of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. South Ossetia marks this date to be the start of its fight for independence.

According to Anatoly Barankevich, he had repeatedly informed the South-Ossetian leadership about the war with Georgia forthcoming in August 2008; however, they took no actions.

"Should they had held timely mobilization and given arms to people, then, probably, the situation had been different. But some time in advance, on the contrary, they held another withdrawal of weapons from the population. By the start of the war, warehouses were full of weapons, but people had nothing," he said.

"When I asked the authorities of South Ossetia, whether they had a defence plan of Tskhinvali, they showed me the plan of 2004 - the one that I made myself, being the Minister of Defence of South Ossetia," said General Barankevich.

He has also reminded that well before 2008 Georgia made a number of violations; however, nobody, including Russia, paid any attention.

"For example, Georgian militaries made troops replacement and re-deployment twice more often than stipulated in the treaty. When I was Minister of Defence of South Ossetia before 2006, we were forced to remove our heavy machinery from Tskhinvali and vicinities, and from the countryside. We were ordered to fill in the entrenchments, destroy dugouts and all the shelters prepared for the case of aggression. And some shelters were backfilled. This was demanded by OSCE observers and even by Russian peacemakers," said Anatoly Barankevich.

Meanwhile, the Russian Joint Staff and Ministry of Defence assert that they study the experience of the war in South Ossetia in quite detail. The "Rossiskaya Gazeta", the edition of the government of Russia, writes that some conclusions have been made already.