Russia, Georgia Trade Barbs On Anniversary
August 8, 2011 by UPI - United Press International, Inc.
MOSCOW, Aug. 8 (UPI) — Russia, on the anniversary of its war with Georgia, said the country’s president is “ill-bred” though it didn’t make the same claim against the Georgian people.
Russian forces responded when the Georgian military invaded the separatist republic of South Ossetia in 2008. The conflict spilled over to engulf forces from Abkhazia, another separatist republic.
Moscow recognized both republics shortly after the conflict and signed agreements in 2010 to build permanent military installations in the breakaway regions.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio station in a Monday interview the war wasn’t over because Moscow wanted to occupy his country.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded by saying Saakashvili was “a pathology and anomaly of the Georgian people and, moreover, is ill-bred,” Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Protests turned violent in Georgia early this year after pensioners argued that life was better under the Soviet Union.
The International Court of Justice, meanwhile, had ruled that it had no jurisdiction in a case of alleged human rights violations by Russians in the two separatist regions in Georgia.
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