joins me that shows the movie that's the case it's the grand imperial. it's all western. you can to let you know that you sit down to go and. read this and the colonel was such a treat. ten am here in the russian capital you're watching our t.v. and i want the eve of the third anniversary of the war the russian president gave an interview to our t.v. echo must be radio station and the georgia based pick a television channel well the leader look back at the bloody events of the conflict which left a deep scar on russian georgian relations let's have a listen to what president had had to say. i said mr president thank you very much for agreeing to answer our questions and put in those from the georgian people t.v.

channel august two thousand and eight the russia georgia war that was three years ago but its consequences i still post today even though the war on the last half of five days right now we are in sochi in georgia is just a few kilometers away. right across the border from here but i can go to a party at i am georgian and i will be simply denied entry and it will be oppression border guards will stop me five hundred thousand georgian refugees have found themselves in a similar situation been unable to return to homes how could you help those people . i think it is possible to help them but that would require action aimed at finally restoring peace so the georgians and the sachems could engage in civilized dialogue that would enable them to deal with even the most complex challenges including the issue of refugees or you issue of entry and

transit all of these matters are secondary to the conflict the took place almost exactly three years ago therefore the diplomatic efforts negotiation and the willingness to listen to one another these are the necessary prerequisites for resolving these issues and on top of that one also needs to recognize the reality that has emerged in the region as a result of the military gamble in two thousand and eight. that's the evidence that has them let us go back to the events of two thousand and eight megs then you met with the georgian president mikheil saakashvili and there was an impression at that point he was in the e.c. and that moscow was that he had arrived at some sort of an accord and the dispute would not be allowed to boil all into an armed conflict which is what you tell us whether you managed to agree on and then with the georgian president about danny. porter. you know catherine i had the same impression of the time when i can still recall meeting president saakashvili for the first time he was in some petersburg

we met in the constantine palace and mr secretary arrived i told him literally little you know there are many problems in the region of the moment georgia is an absolute these unrecognized states but i can assure you that as a newly elected president of russia i should do everything in my capacity to help him find some compromise solutions that would accommodate everyone and would eventually facilitate a reintegration of georgian territory that's acceptable for all the parties in agent to go c.-h. and naturally this is what i told it word for word and his response was of course we are ready to cooperate and i also had this impression that we could at least try to find some creative solutions it's not a new chapter entirely but first of all there was an opportunity to meet on a regular basis what happened later on we held meetings we had conversations as far as i remember our last meeting took place in austin are there we agreed of who would sit down and have

a serious discussion and the venue for that would be right here some and. i told so i could really come to sochi and we will have a sensible discussion on all of our issues by that time saakashvili had started going on about georgia's problems and its perception of the situation and i explained russia's opinion to him but since we were an astronaut at the time marking its anniversary i invited philly to come. russia and he said all right i'm ready to do this i would i can tell you earnestly i spent the next month checking regularly for any feedback from our jordan counterpart but there was nothing but at the same time georgia was getting more and more visits from envoys from across the ocean to feel as they would be done at the soviet speed the moment of truth for me as i realized later while analyzing those events in hundred site over and over again came with a visit by u.s. secretary of state condoleezza rice. following that is it my georgian colleague simply dropped all communication with us you simply stop talking to us but we start

writing letters and making phone calls it was apparent that he had some new plans and those plans were implemented later on with the legal system. mr president am i correct to assume that the way you see it that visit by the u.s. secretary of state was meant to urge president saakashvili into war. but i must know i don't think so the united states is a very large country headed by pragmatic people but in politics connotations and nuance is a very important there was a time once back when i was head of the presidential administration when i paid a visit to the white house and met with none other than condi rice and the van head of the president's executive office and at some point we were joined by george w. bush he simply walked in in a common casual manner like hey hello and the first thing he told me was you know misha sack is really is a great guy i said to him mr president i don't know i've never met him maybe i will

one day. unfortunately his words have proved to be darkly prophetic mind you goes with the very first words i heard from george bush during our personal meeting. as it is i don't believe the americans had heard georgia's president to invade but i do believe that there were certain subtleties and certain hints made statements like it's time to restore constitutional order or it's time to be more assertive which could effectively feed apparent hopes that the americans would back him in any conflict they would stand up for georgia and even go to war with the russians therefore i do see a relation between ms rice's visit to georgia and the events that followed just as i see a link in my further discussions with the us president our phone conversations and then our personal meetings. so there was no green light from the white house this is a phrase they often appear when analyzing the war of two thousand and eight. when i

would have to at least have some official information or intelligence reports to be able to make such a statement i don't have them but we can make an analysis my jordan counterpart ceased all communication with us following the visit by congolese or rice or maybe that was just a coincidence but i'm almost absolutely sure that that was when they came up with a plan for the military gamble which in hewitt in august two thousand and eight. president saakashvili claims that russia has been preparing for war long before august two thousand and eight inside your pre-disaster then president vladimir putin saying we will show you some northern cyprus that's a quote according to. you a part of the government at the time can you confirm or deny that such deliberations took place. that is just totally wrong mr saakashvili generally does a lot of talking and he often loses control of what he's saying there were no

discussions of the kind i would know as i've been part of the government for over ten years that's number one and secondly conflicts are no good for anyone ever those who say you can resolve something from violence are noirs conflicts have never resulted in anything good if we had managed to prevent this war it would have been to everyone's benefit and georgia's in the first place the fact that it didn't happen is a real tragedy and in my opinion only one person is responsible for this it's just the way governments function and that man is the president of georgia. but still in the. hall that in any case mr president war represents a failure of diplomacy and looking back some three years later what would you have done in a different way what is it that russia failed to do order to prevent a war. when you marc. fils i can tell you frankly how i

realized back in july two thousand and eight that mr savage billy was nurturing such plans in his inflamed mind maybe i would have addressed him in an even tougher way and i would have tried to drag him out of his environment at home get him to come to russia some third country in order to talk to him simply talk him out of this but of course i had no idea so when it all happened even though we had been aware that there were plans in georgia to restore their territorial integrity through the use of force i still thought it was a paranoid scenario that would never become reality you always keep hoping that common sense will prevail over this kind of rationale that is why i was surprised by what happened on august the eighth and i've explained it many times i realize that by unleashing this war suckers fully who personally devoted his country to destruction will and that is the scariest part both for him and for the georgian people. so you would just pull the i was interviewed by alex even if you could have

mr saakashvili here actually a void of him during this summit in astana well what can i say first of all he's a difficult man to evade because he sticks to you like a barnacle if he wants to get hold of you he will do a fair job of it he approached me several times and he spoke remember it clearly we talked while sitting on a bus and we talked while walking in a park i'll tell you more in the evening we went out for a cup of tea and a glass of wine and even there we sat on a sofa and kept discussing the prospect of a meeting so saakashvili is making this up let alone his conscience along with many other things. speaking of saakashvili personally and of russia georgia relations after two thousand and eight there has been no progress whatsoever they're non-existent and this is clear that to a certain extent it's been due to the personal attitudes of either leader or georgian president mikheil saakashvili put forth and the official proposal recently

advocating the dialogue is no preconditions why did you turn it down considering that saakashvili is a legitimately elected president of georgia but. i did it only because saakashvili had committed a crime against the russian federation and its nationals hundreds of our citizens were killed on his orders including russian peacekeepers i will never forgive him for that and i will not talk to him even though he occasionally tries winking at me with various international forums i can talk to anyone else no problem we can discuss any issues of course as long as we observe the present international legal status of the region and stay within the context of the decisions i've had to take and believe me those were very hard decisions but mr circus really as a person i'll never shake hands with i realize that he is the legally elected president of georgia and it's only up. the georgian people to grant will deny him

a vote of confidence anyway i am confident about one thing sooner or later i called seconds really will no longer be president of georgia such as the rules of politics and whoever becomes the next president of georgia they will have a chance to restore the positive and beneficial relations with russia moreover i can tell you personally but it is absolutely painful for me to see that our countries lack positive relations because we are very close as nations and as people if not for his dimwit campbell of two thousand and eight we could have kept up our dialogue for years despite all of its political complexities and we could have a ventilator arrived at a solution that would be acceptable for everybody including the georgians and the populations of abkhazia and south etc that is exactly what i'll never forgive saakashvili for and i think the georgian people ought to express their assessment of saakashvili but do it through a democratic process wrapping up our discussion of the sockets really i can tell

you this you should actually be thankful to me for holding our troops at some point if they had marched into tbilisi georgia would most likely have a different president right now. with the witnesses. both of which is not quite in question of course is reached releasing. three because i believe that the peace enforcement operation which took five days was a mission accomplished our mission was not to capture tbilisi or any other city in georgia our only objective was to hold the invasion that saakashvili had unleashed decides i'm neither a judge nor an executioner i'd like to stress once again that it's up to the people of georgia to assess saakashvili and decide his fate through a democratic vote well maybe they could also use other means the way it sometimes happens in history but the posing circus really by force was not on my agenda back then and i can tell you earnestly i still think it was the right decision even

though it would have been a piece of cake. for one more question in here and they still believe that well wishers initial response was look intimate self-defense the further actions of the russian troops were excessive why wasn't this an option to push the georgian forces out of the city and stop at that point to. of course. you know sophie people are free to make speculations like that and that was what i have come across the many times but try putting yourself in the shoes of russia's commander in chief my shoes that is a sure sure we could have merely forced them out and stopped there but we'll be hearing from dog which will fall back to our initial position and our american friends and that allies with all of us rearm get our new aircraft and whatnot and then with june the same offensive with renewed vigor the world was letting them do that it would have been a crime against the memory of those who died protecting their land and therefore

our mission at the time was to destroy georgia's war machine so that it wouldn't be able to target civilians i settled. on the russian federation because as you know it's all mixed there. when i think you're better i mean that mr president you were referring to the peace enforcement operation and i keep thinking back to today libya and syria when do you consider it acceptable to step in what is your rationale for deciding whether it's ok to launch a peace enforcement mission. here is russia for the millenium to get out in libya and here it is imposing sanctions against syria at the ocean. you see alexey it's always case by case there are no identical countries and there are no identical solutions i guess it's clear to you what is going on in libya so there's a man who has been running the country for forty years and at some point in decided to use force against his own people this was condemned by the entire international

community including russia which is we're not taking any part in the military campaign reza few nations are attempting to instill order in libya through military means we don't think it's the right thing to do but there is one nuance you should keep in mind georgia had been split into three parts by the time of the war that it should have been about pulling the country back together for them to run. merely restoring constitutional order of libya is still in one piece such a risk does exist for libya but so far all the parties in a conflict ending the so-called rebels in the program daffy forces have pledged to preserve their country's territorial integrity so the situations are quite different however i'm not saying this to explain how we make decisions i'm merely trying to demonstrate that all of these situations and scenarios are totally diverse this goes for other countries as well.

if syria is a more complex issue but sadly their situation has been unfolding in a very dramatic way so far. all of us practical politicians should keep a close watch on the developments in that country it daffy for one had issued unequivocal orders to slaughter opposition activists by contrast syria's president never ordered anything like that unfortunately people are dying in syria in grave numbers and that arouses our deepest concerns therefore in my discussions with president assad were during our personal conversations and in our correspondence i've been advocating one principle idea that he should immediately launch reforms reconcile with the opposition would restore civil court and start developing a modern state should he fail to do that he's in for a grim fate and we will eventually have to take some decisions on syria to naturally we've been watching developments very attentively the situation is

changing and so are our objectives. and allow me to speak bluntly that now is sad because philly's action until vile different from what russia was doing to grozny back in one nine hundred ninety nine. it's just this is a question i get to hear rather often the difference is that russia was not after the same objectives in grozny as georgia was in skin bar we were pursuing a legitimate task of restoring order we were not sent on mass killing our own people who were fighting criminals the people who defied a legitimate government draping themselves with various slogans from hugo islamic notions to pure extremist propaganda there was nothing of the kind in either south or sente or abkhazia since these two republics have long existed as self-proclaimed independent states which have their own governments and maintain some sort of law and order these cases are essentially different but most of them were the little fish florida. and let us look at some of the numbers in the wake of the war

question and worse and the representatives of the city as the facts of government i think the frightening civil. well that's claims like two thousand lives i was the number that was announced later on this investigative committee estimated the casualties at no more than one hundred fifty people. and while it was in this l.h. top of two thousand that had served as one of the main reasons for launching the so-called peace enforcement operation how do you account for this discrepancy no. it's of when they have explained by rationale for taking that decision on the numerous occasions you see i didn't go look at any figures from the equation isn't exactly a case of the mathematics of mourner was let me remind you what was going on where on the night between august the seventh and all gets the eighth i received a phone call from the defense minister i was on vacation at the time sailing down

the volga river and the whole world was looking forward to the olympics that were about to take off in china. the minister told me the ga had launched a full scale combat operation to be honest my initial reaction was complete damn i told the minister we should check if this is really completely out of his mind maybe it's just a provocative act and maybe he stress test blow your sanctions we're trying to send out some kind of message and i will later the minister reported to me this is no bluff. allowed artillery barrage which are they using grad rocket launchers and. i said all right i'll wait for another update or some more time passed and the minister called again i have something to tell you i believe they've just leveled the tent full of our peacekeepers killing every one of them and what was i supposed to do i said return fire and shoot to kill no figures have been announced at that point unfortunately such situations are always about instant situation reports and

instant decisions and difficult ones to which i can tell you that was the hardest night of my life casualty is that it started coming in later and just like they did . divergent deal done they still do yes i'm not a detective nor a forensic expert i don't perform exhumations. in friends and colleagues thomas that many bodies were buried back then and remain missing to this day. children analysts present different estimates but you know we can't use this kind of logic two thousand lives is serious enough and one hundred fifty doesn't even qualify as casualty stuff up essentially. of all citizens who they created them because they knew. some of them may have been away so. my answer to your question is the number of casualties should never influence your decision on what retaliation measures you're going to play if you're a sane person that is. mr president you said you gave the order to return fire to

the operation continued after that heavy weapons role being an accomplished turned into an all out war could you tell us about how you made the decision to continue the operation and another question that all our colleagues would like. to call. did you call prime minister putin regime or did he call you and was this the first time i contacted him about a conflict was about twenty four hours after it had broken out that matter was involved was already ablaze what mr putin just made a statement condemning tbilisi's move that was the right thing to do of course we spoke twenty four hours after the attack over a secure line i do understand it's not very appropriate to discuss matters like this but i self-worth it's also a lot of trouble to establish a secure line with someone who's in a different country that we talk and we talk you know when he came back but even before his return i called a meeting of the security council i explained my position my decision to return

fire and been gauging conflict security council members voiced their support for my decision some time later we had the meeting in sochi which mr putin attended in relation to this we have to mention mr sarkozy who was at the time chairman of the year what it is that i can't talk about him without a smile unlike the other president we discussed today because i like him. yes i see of according to sun it was soccer you see who persuaded you to halt the russian forces march towards tbilisi with. you must come of course not but no head of state is capable of talking another head of state into anything look at the world trying to pull it down for giving up have they persuaded him to do anything you know and i don't think they will but surely he would sooner die in his bunker really let me stress this again taking cities was never our goal our goal was to stop the war machine which was at that time a minute or two breakaway territories and regrettably at our citizens what he did

was very kind i called me and said i heard there was a conflict do you want me to fly over to moscow i said i would be happy to see him then he told me i'm currently chairing the e.u. i could come over to discuss the incident he's very good at this sort of thing and he loves doing it. he came to moscow and we talked i explained my position to him what he told me i understand and i agree that some things i will be able to say in public or some i won't but regardless of that i want to have a part in stopping this conflict of the things that i told him all right let's put a plan together block that plan was later called. the ceasefire by as we told him he could take the plan to georgia the best thing about what he did was probably that he had the courage to come to russia at a time when literally everyone was talking about maybe later on he was brave enough to go on to georgia with our initiatives and he garnered a satisfactory reaction to a little truth or at least president secretary first and foremost that's that was

his contribution to the diplomatic corps that helped solve the conflict because to this day i'm very thankful to president sarkozy for having done that. his role was very important but he never said anything like maybe you should stop it he understood that my decisions were my own his goal of course being to stop the conflict as soon as possible. that i thought that it was. which wasn't even in the west it's a belief that weaponize an uprising in south ossetia is not in accordance with the spirit of the peace treaty mediated sarkozy plan which at the end of the war called for the return of the armed forces to pre-war positions by russia though recognized the sovereignty of this republic and kept its armed forces in the region right now there are russian military bases in ever says yeah how did sarkozy the co-author of the plan react to this. well i would not want him to bear responsibility for

a decree that i signed he was not involved in the work on the decree to recognize that republics. there's no way that you know. i can say that i never discussed the matter with him he did not come to moscow to discuss that it was never involved in the matter also of course i can tell you that he knew several other e.u. representatives disapproved of the decision but they told us we were creating problems for ourselves i heard them pleasing our partners here not my priority when i made this decision. and as for the medvedev psycho's the plan it was not about the breakaway republics but your plan was aimed at stopping the war but such willy's undertaken had caused in that sense it was a complete success russia's position on the bat is quite simple problem a good plan both carried out and it was successful i consider all of the return for taishan the events to be wrong. but french officials prime minister few know

i'm recently president sarkozy have said they were still waiting for president no bad of to complete what about of serco z. plans. i can tell you one thing france has its own position and so does the e.u. these positions are different from ours we can't do anything about that they're just different but i believe i have fully completed the medvedev sarkozy plan the plan said nothing about russia not recognizing a card in south africa or anything of the sort as for the retreat or forces have retreated to what russia believed to be their pre-war position was. those are big i didn't hear a pin union and the international perception of the conflict the united states and the e.u. have been criticism of russia for failing to complete them a bit if that was a question in the dish and the us senator is simply stated like the european parliament they believe their precious actions in georgia have led to the occupation of the twenty percent of georgia's territory as

a liberal leader how do you feel about them phrasing it that way. that's. almost or my visit but i think that as the liberal leader of a modern and developing russia i can only give one possible answer these statements are unfounded they reflect the preferences of certain senior citizens in the senate who jews are nonobjective reasons have aligned themselves with certain individuals that's completely up to them we are talking about a forum of harlem world and i do not much care about how they phrase their statements my position is different it is embodied in the decrees i've signed over that difficult period which i will be frank with you although you may disagree i am not ashamed of having signed those decrees not only am i not ashamed i believe these decisions were much needed and they were right there was no other way to stop the tragedy those decisions were very difficult to make i realise what sort of repercussions they might bring i can tell you that i have had long discussions with

my aides about these decrees and we saw no obvious solution to the crisis at first nevertheless i think the decisions i made were well thought out the essence of it was to recognise the territory as a subject to international law so we could protect them. as for what that might bring a question that inevitably follows no one knows you know i would be very happy if the georgian abkhazia and south a certain authorities went to the negotiating table to discuss how they would continue living side by side how peace and security could be enforced in the region what the future holds for their closely related peoples what they could create together i would be happy if it came to that russia would never obstruct such negotiations. we have talked about the reactions of the u.s. senate and the european parliament let me now ask you about how our partners in the collective security treaty organization.