Russians losing propaganda war
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7562611.stm The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.
It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation.
Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.
Blame game
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford has reported: "Many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about what has happened to their city.
"They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on 13 August 2008
Has Moscow learned yet how to play the media game?
Human Rights Watch concluded after an on-the-ground inspection: "Witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage described [in Tskhinvali]."
One problem for the Russians is that they have not yet learned how to play the media game. Their authoritarian government might never do so.
Most of the Western media is based in Georgia. The Russians were slow to give access from their side and this has helped them lose the propaganda war.
Georgia, meanwhile, was comparing this to Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956. Even the massacre at Srebrenica was recalled.
Mud sticks
The comparisons did not fit the facts, but some of the mud has stuck and Russia has been on the international defensive.
The visit by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia is a signal of support for Mr Saakashvili.
Significantly, she is not paying a matching visit to Moscow but will return directly to the United States where she will brief President George W Bush in Texas.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on 13 August 2008
Washington has accused Russia of widening the conflict
She has refused to condemn Georgia and barely acknowledged Russia's point that it had to protect its peacekeeping forces (a battalion-sized unit allowed in South Ossetia along with Georgian and North Ossetian and South Ossetian forces under a 1992 agreement).
