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Putin Argues U.S. Incited Georgia Fight

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The Washington Post

Published: August 29, 2008

MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he had reason to think U.S. personnel were in the combat zone during the recent war in Georgia, adding that if confirmed, their presence suggested "someone in the United States" provoked the conflict to help one of the candidates in the American presidential race.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili called the claim "ridiculous," likening it to Putin saying that "extraterrestrials were also there."

In Putin's first extended remarks defending Russia's military intervention in Georgia, which has drawn international condemnation, he blamed the Bush administration for failing to stop Georgian leaders from launching the Aug. 7 attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia that sparked the war.

Speaking on CNN, Putin argued that the U.S. policy of training and supplying weapons to the Georgian army had emboldened the country to abandon long-standing negotiations over the future of South Ossetia and to try instead to seize the region by force, an assault that resulted in the deaths of Russian soldiers stationed there as peacekeepers.

Putin suggested U.S. military advisers were working with Georgian forces that clashed with the Russian army, a prospect he described as "very dangerous."

Putin said he based his assertions on information provided to him by the Russian military, but he offered no evidence and cautioned that his "suspicions" required further confirmation.

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