(via Marko Mihkelson) Evidence that large Russian forces were in South Ossetia before the events of the night of August 7 began is beginning to emerge from Russian print media sources. On September 3 Krasnaya Zvezda published an account given by Captain Denis Sidristy, of the 135th motorized rifle regiment.
"We were on exercises," Captain Sidristy begins. "It was quite a short distance from the South Ossetian capital. Nizhnii Zaramakh, a North Ossetian nature reserve. We were stationed at our camp after planned exercises, but on the night of August 7 we got the order to move towards Tskhinvali. We were woken by the alarm signal - and told to march. We arrived, took up our location, and on the morning of August 8 we took such a battering that we hardly knew what had hit us..."
The newspaper Permskie novosti has reproduced the transcript of a mobile phone message received from a recruit on August 10:
"I have very little time," the boy went on. "Listen: we've been there since August 7. The whole of our 58th army. You're probably watching what's happening there on TV? Today we broke through to Vladikavkaz for armaments. Now we're going to break back again..."
Other events, like the fact of the sailing of the Moskva missile cruiser from Sevstopol on the morning of August 7, tally with the reports that Russia was already planning to invade and occupy Georgia and depose its President Saakashvili before he gave the order to attack.
The increasing volume of such reports makes the establishing of an international inquiry into the origins and beginning of the Georgia conflict all the more urgent.
Update: Kalle Kniivilä has more (in Swedish) here.
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