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rather said the colonel was her turn as a treat. ten am here in the russian capital you're watching r.t. now on the eve of the third anniversary of the a set war the russian president gave an interview to our t.v. echo must be radio station and the georgia based a pick 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 medvedev had to say. mr president thank you very much for agreeing to answer questions including those from the georgian peak t.v. channel. two thousand and eight the russia georgia war that was three years ago but its consequences still post today even though the war on the last five days right

now we are. in georgia is just a few kilometers away. right across the border from here but i can go. i am georgian and i will be simply denied entry and it will be a russian border guards will stop me five hundred thousand georgian refugees have found themselves in the simula situation been unable to return to their 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 that the georgians and the setian 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 a second to the conflict that 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. then let us go back to the events of two thousand and eight. when you met with the georgian president mikheil saakashvili and there was an impression at that point both in billy's here and in moscow that we had arrived at some sort of an accord and the dispute would not be allowed to go into an armed conflict should you tell us whether you managed to agree on anything with the georgian president the fact that he said. that you know catherine i had the same impression at the time but i can still recall meeting president saakashvili for the first time it was in some petersburg we met in the constantine palace and mr secretary arrived

i told him literally you know there are many problems in the region at the moment georgia is an absolute these unrecognized states but i can assure you that as a newly elected president of russia i shall do everything in my capacity to help you find some compromise solution that would accommodate everyone and would eventually facilitate a reintegration of georgian territory if that's acceptable for all the parties in that cage a negotiation naturally this is what i told him what word for word and his response was but of course we are ready to cooperate and i also have this impression that we could at least try to find some creative solutions if not a new chapter in time 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. there we agreed that we would sit down and have a serious discussion in the venue for that would be right here some and. i told.

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 villi to to come. russia you know he said all right i'm ready to do this i can tell you earnestly i spent the next month checking regularly for any feedback from our georgian counterpart well there was nothing but at the same time georgia was getting more and more visits from envoys from across the ocean as they would be. 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 police are right. following that my georgian colleague simply dropped all communication with us he simply stopped talking to us he stopped writing letters and making a phone call it was apparent that he had some new planets and those plans were

implemented later. 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. no i don't think so the united states is a very large country headed by pragmatic people but in politics connotations a 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 then 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 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 know

those were the very first words i heard from george bush during our personal meeting. as it is i don't believe the american said 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 a parent hopes that the americans would back him in any conflict that 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 discussion 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 repeat when analyzing the war of two thousand and eight. well 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 georgian counterpart ceased all communication with us following the visit by conda lisa rice 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 ensued in august two thousand and eight. president saakashvili claims that russia has been preparing for war long before august two thousand and eight he cites your previous as 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 total bunk 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 through violence are liars and 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. in any case mr president war represents a failure of diplomacy and looking back at the situation three years later what would you have done in a different way what is it that russia failed to do to prevent the war. i can tell you frankly had i realized back in july two thousand and eight that mr saakashvili 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 realized that by unleashing this war. personally devoted his country to destruction and that is the scariest part both for him and for the georgian people. interviewed by alex even addictive mr saakashvili said that you were 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 we spoke. 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 is really is making this up with let it lie on 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 are non-existent and it's clear that to a certain extent it's been due to the personal attitudes of either leader georgian president mikheil saakashvili put forth and the official proposal recently advocating a dialogue is no preconditions why did you turn it down considering that saakashvili

is a legitimately elected president of georgia. i did it only because he 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 at 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 saakashvili 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 to the georgian people to grant or deny him a vote of confidence anyway i am confident about one thing sooner or later mikhail

saakashvili 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 that 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 gamble of two thousand and eight we could have kept up our dialogue for years despite all of its political complexity 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 the setia that is exactly what i'll never forgive saakashvili for and i think that the georgian people ought to express their assessment of saakashvili but do it through a democratic process. wrapping up our discussion i can tell you this 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 by now. question. 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 hope the invasion let's really had unleashed besides 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 deposing saakashvili by force who's 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. one more

question in here are they still believe that russia's initial response was legitimate self-defense the further actions of the russian troops were excessive why wasn't it an option to push the georgian forces out of the set and stop at that point to. you know sophie people are free to make speculation like that and i have come across them many times trying putting yourself in the shoes of russia's commander in chief my shoes that i'm sure sure we could have merely forced them out and stopped there but what we're hearing from georgia. back to our initial position and our american friends and their allies we. get our new aircraft and what not and then with the same offensive with renewed vigor. with letting them do that would have been a crime against the memory of those who died protecting their land and therefore our mission of the time was to destroy georgia stream so that it wouldn't be able

to target civilians. and the russian federation because as you know it's all mixed there. 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 being lenient to gadhafi in libya and here it is imposing sanctions against syria. 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 there's a man who has been running the country for forty years and at some point he decided to use force against his own people but this was condemned by the entire international community including russia. 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 it should have been about pulling the country back together for them rather than merely restoring constitutional order of libya is still in one piece such a risk does exist for libya but so far the parties in the conflict 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. syria is a more complex issue but sadly their situation has been unfolding in

a very dramatic way so far. all of us practical politician should keep a close watch on the developments in that country gadaffi 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 reform reconcile with the opposition restore civil accord 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 were our objectives. allow me to speak bluntly that.

action until different from what russia was doing to grozny back in one nine hundred ninety nine. 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 vaal we were pursuing a legitimate task of restoring order we were not set on mass killing our own people we were fighting criminals the people who defied a legitimate government draping themselves with various slogans from islamic notions to pure extremist propaganda there was nothing of the kind in either south or setti 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. let us look at some of the numbers in the wake of the war russian envoys and the representatives of the fact

a government i did the fight an on incentive. had claimed two thousand lives that was the number that was announced later on russia's investigative committee estimated the casualties at no more than one hundred fifty people. meanwhile it was this. that that had served as one of the main reasons paunch and the so-called peace enforcement operation how do you account for this discrepancy now. i have explained by rationale for taking that decision on the numerous occasions you see i didn't get any figures for motivation this isn't exactly a case for mathematics let me remind you what was going on last night between august the seventh and 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 that georgia had launched

a full scale. to be honest my initial reaction was completely down i told the minister we should check this really completely out of his mind maybe it's just a provocative act maybe he stress test set ians trying to send some kind of message and i later the minister reported to me this is no bluff. and they're using grad rocket launchers and whatnot i said all right i'll wait for another. time passed in the minister called again i have something to tell you i believe they've just leveled a tent full of our peacekeepers killing every one of them what was i supposed to do i said return fire and shoot to kill no figures had been announced at that point fortunately such situations are always about a situation reports and instant decisions and difficult ones too i can tell you that was the hardest night of my life casualties started coming in later and i just

did. divergent deal done they still do i'm not a detective nor a forensic expert i don't perform exhumations. friends and colleagues tell us that many bodies were buried back then and remain missing to this day. meanwhile georgian analysts present different estimates but you know we can use this kind of logic two thousand lives is serious enough one hundred fifty doesn't even qualify as casual. but all the themes of all citizens were evacuated then because they knew . that some of them may have been away certainly not my answer to your question is the number of casualties should never influence your decision on what retaliation measures your going to take if you're a sane person that is. mr president you said you gave the order to return fire operation continued after that heavy weapons rolled in and the conflict turned into

an all out war you tell us about how you made the decision to continue the operation and another question that all our colleagues would like are. called. did you call prime minister putin invasion did he call you. the first time i contacted him about a conflict was about twenty four hours after it had broken out involves already ablaze 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 and i do understand it's not very appropriate to discuss matters like this by cell phone it's also a lot of trouble to establish a secure line with someone who's in a different country we talked and then we talked 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 in gauging the conflict security council members voiced their support for

my decision some time later we had the meeting in which mr putin attended in relation to this we have to mention mr sarkozy who was at the time chairman of the new you i can't talk about him without a smile unlike the other president we discussed today because i like him and. i see of according to some who persuaded you to halt the russian forces march towards tbilisi with. of course not but no head of state is capable of talking another head of state into anything look at the world trying to talk him down to 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 let me stress this again taking cities was never our goal our goal was to stop the war machine which was at that time aimed at two breakaway territories and regrettably at our citizens what he did was very kind he 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 serve him which then he told me i'm currently chairing the e.u. i could come over to discuss the insulin but he's very good at this sort of thing you know and he loves doing it. he came to moscow and we talked i explained my position and he told me i understand and i agree that some things i will be able to say in public some i won't but regardless of that i want to have a part in stopping this conflict i told him all right let's put a plan together that plan with. the cease fire. we told him he could take the plan to georgia the best thing about what he did probably that he had the courage to come to russia at a time when literally everyone was talking about. he was brave enough to go on to georgia with our initiatives and he garnered a satisfactory reaction from. president saakashvili first and foremost. that was his contribution to the diplomatic corps that helped solve the conflict. 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. his goals of course being to stop the conflict as soon as possible. but it wasn't just in the west it's a belief that recognizing our president's office says yes it is not in accordance with the spirit of the peace treaty the needs of sarkozy plan which at the end of the war called for the return of the armed forces to the pre-war positions by russia though recognized as sovereignty of this republic and kept its armed forces in the region right now there are russian military bases in africa says 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

the two republics. i can say that i never discussed the matter with him he did not come to moscow to discuss that he was never involved in the matter else 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 but pleasing our partners here not my priority when i made this decision. as for the medvedev psycho's the plan it was not about the breakaway republic but the plan was aimed at stopping the war but saakashvili has undertaken had caused in that sense it was a complete success russia's position only that is quite simple probably made the plan both carried out and it was successful i consider all of the return for to the events to be wrong but i see. but french officials prime minister philo on recently president sarkozy have said they were still waiting for president medvedev to

complete. i can tell you one thing that 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 i believe i have fully completed the may get a plan the plan said nothing about russia not recognizing abkhazia and south satria or anything of the sort as for the retreat our forces have retreated to what russia believes to be their pre-war position was. regarding the european union and the international perception of the conflict the united states and the e.u. have been criticised and russia for failing to complete the maid of sarkozy plan in the edition the us senate there is simply stated like the european parliament they believe that russia's 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.

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 do to nonobjective reasons have aligned themselves with certain individuals that's completely up to them we are talking about a foreign a parliament and i do not much care about how they phrase their statement 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 realized what sort of repercussions they might bring up so i can tell you that i have had long discussions with my aides about these decrees and we saw no obvious.