Putin’s Aide Accuses U.S. of “Organizing” 2008 Russia-Georgia War
In his interview with the Russian daily Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, Chairman of the Maritime Collegium of the Russian Federation, and the aide to President Putin accuses the United States of “organizing” the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, calling it “Saakashvili’s military adventurism.” During the 2008 Russia-Georgia war Patrushev was Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
The renewed accusation comes just days after the ruling GD issued a statement with strikingly similar content, echoing the narrative developed by Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party which frames the 2008 war as a culmination of the repeated efforts of the United National Movement (UNM) administration, backed by its Western patrons, “to bring Russian troops to Georgia.”
“Lies and provocations are the habitual companions of the policy of Washington and other Western countries,” says Patrushev, adding that “It was the Americans who organized Saakashvili’s military adventure in August 2008, although they claimed that they had nothing to do with it.” He said: “Direct US intervention in Georgia’s affairs led to the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I believe that the Georgian people know that they are paying for the actions of the Americans with their suffering.”
In the article, Patrushev discusses Russia’s maritime ambitions. Speaking of Russia’s maritime efforts, he says that “the role of the power factor is not diminishing in international relations” and “NATO continues to build up its naval presence in geopolitically significant areas of the world’s oceans, including in the oceans and seas adjacent to the territory of the Russian Federation.”
He accuses the West of “actively pursuing a strategy of restraining Russia in the Black Sea, where NATO is preparing to increase its presence in violation of the Montreux Convention. To increase their influence in the oceans, the United States and its allies are ignoring or trying to revise other international agreements.”
In the same interview, among other, he also accuses the Western countries of aiding Ukraine’s incursion in Russia’s Kursk region, and blames the U.S. for the suffering of Ukrainians “as the United States has turned it into a military anti-Russian project. Through Washington’s efforts, all the conditions have been created for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and part of its territory, including areas that some American allies have been eyeing for a long time.”
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