EU: Russia, Georgia share responsibility for 2008 conflict

September 30th, 2009

(CNN) — Historical tensions and overreaction on the part of both Russia and Georgia contributed to a five-day conflict between the two in 2008, a European Union fact-finding mission concluded in a report released Wednesday.

“The conflict is rooted in a profusion of causes comprising different layers in time and actions combined,” said the report from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia .

“While it is possible to identify the authorship of some important events and decisions marking its course, there is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone. They have all failed, and it should be their responsibility to make good for it.”

Georgia launched a campaign against South Ossetia , a Russian-backed separatist Georgian territory, on August 7, 2008. The following day, Russian tanks, troops and armored vehicles poured into South Ossetia and another Russian-backed breakaway Georgian territory, Abkhazia, advancing into Georgian cities outside the rebel regions.

A total of about 850 people were killed on all sides, the report said, and untold numbers of others were wounded or went missing. About 100,000 civilians fled their homes, and about 35,000 have been unable to return.

“The fighting did not end the political conflict, nor were any of the issues that lay beneath it resolved,” the report said. “Tensions still continue. The political situation after the end of fighting turned out to be no easier and in some respects even more difficult than before.”

Russia and Georgia each blamed the other for starting the conflict, and accused each other of a variety of offenses leading up to and during the fighting, including ethnic cleansing.