Posted on 08/16/2008 6:10:34 AM PDT by MaestroLC
A LEADING Russian conductor yesterday called for an investigation into civilian deaths in the Caucasus, the latest festival artist to weigh into the conflict.
Valery Gergiev, director of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, said there were large numbers of casualties sustained in South Ossetia, near where he grew up, in the first hours of the fighting.
Citing reports that 1,600 bodies were found after early attacks by Georgian forces, he asked: "Do you know how many more were burned alive?"
Gergiev, who works with orchestras from Rotterdam to New York, conducts three major concerts in the Edinburgh International Festival this weekend with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Speaking to The Scotsman yesterday, he called for an end to the fighting. "I believe there should be no further violence and we should simply let people bury their dead."
However, fiercely critical of Georgia's forces, he called on the western media to investigate their actions. "The world should know the truth of what happened," he said.
Gergiev's immediate family live with him in St Petersburg, but he has relatives in the war zone. He told yesterday of a friend who lost five members of his family.
Gergiev arrived in Edinburgh just after the Georgian prima ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, who spoke out passionately for her country, accusing Russia of trying to carve up its territory.
"The only question I have, including to Nina, whom I know a little bit, is does she know what happened overnight on the first day?" Gergiev said.
In the city of Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, bombs and missiles started falling at 11:35pm, he said.
"Does the world know how many people were killed? Does the world know who killed these people? Does the world think Russians killed Russians?
"An investigation has to take place, the faces have to be discovered and declared. There is total confusion in the West," Gergiev said.
"They don't understand who bombed Tskhinvali. The city was totally destroyed."
The International Festival's theme this year is Artists Without Borders, and the conflict in Georgia has brought it a sharp and unforeseen edge.
Gergiev was named artistic director of the Mariinsky by Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev nearly 20 years ago. He ran a series of fund-raising concerts for the victims of the school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia.
The Georgian Anchiskhati Choir was also performing in the Festival yesterday.
Its director, Zaal Tsereteli, said his singers had just left for Stockholm, en route to Edinburgh, when the conflict started.
"It's really hard, it's really hard," he said. "It is very unpleasant, and very bad, very dangerous for our families there."
Does anyone have a link to a timeline of this conflict. I haven’t really paid full attention. Now I am reading that the Georgians attacked the Russians first.
Not enough, apparently.
This is typical Soviet-era revisionist history making in action.Expect this crap to pile up till it reaches the ceiling.
Russians provoked Georgians, who fought traitor separatists on their OWN territory, which is 100% legitimate, and then well-prepared Russian hordes swiftly overrun Georgia.
Yes, that is exactly what happened.
Nope. Russian “peace keepers” in Ossetia (a part of Georgia’s sovereign territory) lobbed artillery and rockets into Georgia proper. Georgians attacked the Ossetian separatists in response, which was what Putin wanted, and he sent in the Red Army to kick the Georgians’butts and to overthrow their dmeocratic government.
More on the conflict from Wikipedia.
Has anybody seen pictures of the dead Russian/Ossetians laid out similarly? I've seen none. How would the Russians organize and dispose of the bodies without impromptu morgues, and how would the Russians fail to take pictures of them?
Conclusion: the whole thing is a lie. The mass murders are of Georgians. The Russians lie about their losses to justify death and destruction on the Georgians.
Nope. Russian “peace keepers” in Ossetia (a part of Georgia’s sovereign territory) lobbed artillery and rockets into Georgia proper.
That's a bogus statement... provide a source for your claim. Georgia claims the South Ossetians fired on two Georgian populated villages within South Ossetia. Georgia responded with an all-out GRAD missile attack on the South Ossetian Capitol.
This was after Georgian President went on TV and promised a cease fire. OSCE peace talks were scheduled for the next day.
here's some info I posted earlier.
Unfortunately for poor old Valery Gergiev and other Vlad trolls, the Ossetians and Russian militia thugs took a LOT of shots at western media while said thugs were butchering Georgian civilians. They even hit several journalists and killed at least one (Dutch IIRC). My guess is that will improve journalistic accuracy.
It does make it more likely that the world shall know the truth which is not exactly what poor Val wants.
You know, the US being wrong about Kosovo and Serbia does not justify you spewing endless Russian war propaganda. One wrong does not justify the next one.
Yeah, we all know that it was Algerians that killed all those millions of Russians in the gulag.
Thanks for the information.
Excellent points, Cheburashka, and it brings up another question.
How is it that Putin who wants us to think he gives a damn about Ossetians or Russians could rush into the arms of the terrorist muslim Iranians and ignore what terrorist muslims did to Russian school children, raping and torturing them for hours before butchering them.
Ossetia was a set up excuse for what Vlad DOES give a damn about: OIL, GAS, PIPELINES. IOW control and with control, power. He doesn't care what adults or whose children are raped, tortured, and butchered as long as he comes out ahead. He miscalculated.
Good job comrade. You will be rewarded by the homeland.
I haven't seen F 117A publish any propaganda at all.
But then you already knew that.
I'm not anyone's comrade. During the Cold War, I was a staunch anti-Communist. But the Cold War is over, and perhaps the world's greatest anti-Communist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, had a far different opinion of Vladimir Putin than do the neocon propagandists.
>>>>>>You will be rewarded by the homeland.
I am an American, and I do not want to see my country dragged into an unnecessary war that will get Americans killed for no good reason.
I think propaganda is in the eye of the beholder.
susie
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