GEORGIA:GEORGIA DID not believe Russia would respond to its offensive in South Ossetia and was completely unprepared for the counter-attack, the deputy defence minister has admitted.
Batu Kutelia told the Financial Times that Georgia had made the decision to seize the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali despite the fact that its forces did not have sufficient anti-tank and air defences to protect themselves in the event of serious resistance.
"Unfortunately, we attached a low priority to this," he said, sitting at a desk with the flags of Georgia and Nato crossed behind him. "We did not prepare for this kind of eventuality."
The Georgian military felt there was minimal risk of a Russian counter-attack, despite the way in which Russia devastated Chechnya in two wars during the 1990s and the fact that separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia had Russian backing.
Georgian forces were unprepared when the counter-attack came, Mr Kutelia said. "I didn't think it likely that a member of the UN Security Council and the OSCE would react like this," he said.
His amazement that Russia would use force against a smaller neighbour was echoed by David Darchiashvili, head of the parliamentary European integration committee. "No one expected Russia would mobilise and invade," he said. Georgia's 20,000-strong army - built up at a cost of $2 billion with the help of US advisers and cast-off Warsaw Pact equipment - was organised to deal with wars with separatist enclaves on its borders, not to do battle with Russia.
Mr Kutelia still blames the Russians and their South Ossetian allies, saying that in early August Ossetian fighters began to shell Georgian positions and villages.
He said Russia had begun to move heavy armour through the Roki tunnel from North Ossetia before Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, unleashed his military against the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on August 7th, but offered no evidence to back this up.
Mr Kutelia said that damage to Georgia's military infrastructure was "significant", and that it would take an enormous amount of foreign help to rebuild defensive capabilities.
Russian troops have entered many of Georgia's military bases, often under the eyes of a defeated Georgian army. They have confiscated US Humvee vehicles, blown up coast guard vessels and ransacked some of Georgia's most modern military bases, destroying radar and other air defences. They have reportedly captured Georgian tanks, small arms and ammunition. So far, Russia has made no move to return its booty.
Moscow indicated yesterday it would be another 10 days before the bulk of its force left Georgian soil. However, a column of T-72 battle tanks was seen lumbering across the border from Georgia into Russia - the first sign of heavy armour withdrawing from Georgian soil - but elsewhere Russian forces remained in place.
Moscow said even after the pullout it would station 500 troops in what it called a "zone of responsibility" as part of a peacekeeping operation to protect South Ossetia.
That would leave Russian troops still inside the Georgian heartland and close to the main east-west highway on which its economy depends. Meanwhile, Russian conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance of Tchaikovsky among the bombed-out buildings of South Ossetia on Thursday in a concert he said was to alert the world to the region's suffering. An ethnic Ossetian and one of Russia's best-known musicians, Gergiev lambasted Georgia for shelling the region's capital in a failed assault this month and drew a parallel with the attacks on New York on September 11th, 2001.
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin has expressed his deep concern at reports that cluster bombs were used by Russian forces in Georgia, causing a number of civilian casualties.