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Saakashvili Was Mad to Attack Tskhinvali, French Official Said
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was mad to attack Tskhinvali the night of August 7-8, an unnamed senior French official said.
“He gambled, he lost,” Reuters quoted as saying an unnamed senior official involved in the negotiations on the peace deal. “The Georgians fell into a crude trap. They thought that Putin would not retaliate in the middle of the Olympic Games.” Putin’s departure to Beijing was also misleading.
But Russia’s response was “too heavy-handed,” the official said, specifying however that French President Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t make successions to Russia to secure the peace deal. In Moscow, they realized that Russia was perceived as the aggressor and Putin was perfectly aware of it.
Indeed, Sarkozy was very cautious during his shuttle mission. He didn’t argue with Medvedev and Putin about the peacekeepers’ status and about South Ossetia’s future during the lengthy talks in Moscow. In Tbilisi, the French president didn’t oppose Saakashvili, who disagreed with Russia’s position.
www.kommersant.com
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