29.04.2009 00:04 | Evgeny Poddubny: “Nobody could imagine such war is possible in the modern world”

August, 2008. Three days of war. 100 days later. The journalists, who were in South Ossetia, tell. Evgeny Poddubny, correspondent for TV Center​

(the fragments).

Without right to live

In the Morning of August, 8 it was already clear that Georgian generals and authorities made war not against their Ossetian colleagues, but against civilians of South Ossetia. The night bombardment of Tskhinval doesn’t give a handle to doubt in this statement. Nobody could imagine such war is possible in the modern world. It’s cruel to attack the night city with “Grad”, to shoot at the people, who were sleeping just because the president of Georgia bluffed them having said that the war wouldn’t be. In no case would such atrocity be justified. It’s a crime. Georgian authorities denied the citizens of South Ossetia the right to live long before the first shot. 

Without right to die

In the afternoon of August, 8 there was one more event, which had an effect on the move of opposition. Georgian tanks were already in the streets of the city. The defense of Tskhinval cracked, the fighters did not even had bullets for submachine-guns. The null information about Russian authorities` reaction for Georgian aggression negatively impacted on the fighting spirit of soldiers and feelings of the people. The tanks closely approached to the command post of peacemakers and were shooting at apartment houses and republican hospital. The journalists took cover in the bath house in the territory of peacemakers` command post. Many said goodbye to a life because they did not believe in happy end. But soon the Secretary of the Security Council of South Ossetia ​Anatoly Barankevich showed up in the location of Blue helmets accompanied by several tens of civil guardsmen.

Without right to be helped

On August, 9 we forced our way to republican hospital. The events were filmed and they became the main introduced evidences of humanitarian catastrophe of Tskhinval. I worried about my friend Sergey Tskhovrebov: he is a surgeon and I knew that in case he’s alive he might be in the hospital. Sergey met us on a ground floor. The doctors used one of the rooms as a mortuary and put the bodies there. I told to Sergey that his wife Anya was alive. He was embracing me for nearly ten minutes. All the wounded men were in the basement, the inhabitants of the nearby houses took cover there too. Then I saw the tanks were shooting at the hospital. And I still cannot understand how Georgian shot could squeeze off.

Without right to have a future

One nurse came up to us and told that we have to make some sequences in the house near to the hospital. In a few minutes we came into the house, the man met us. He silently went with us to the bedroom and threw back the blanket, there were his dead daughter and wife on the bed, he brought the burnt bodies home in his arms.

- Where do I go from here? - The father and the husband, who lost everything he lived for, said in a low voice. We kept silent.

Without right to know the truth

On August, 9 we watched Georgian TV. There was not a word of truth in the running commentaries of their reporters. On the screen Georgian “Grads” fired at Tskhinval and off-screen commentary assured that it were Russian rocket systems, which were razing to the ground Gory. My Moscow friends and colleagues told that almost all the Western TV channels showed the same. We very much regretted that during the war there was no one survey squad of CNN or BBC together with us in Tskhinval. It seems to me that if they were there, they could not tell lies.

On August, 15 I was already in Vladikavkaz. We sat with my friends and I told them about everything I saw. We were happy to stay alive, we were glad that we did our work, but nobody of us could smile and rejoice.