A WAR AND TWO OLYMPICS

 

 Following the 5-day war which started on August 7, 2008 in Georgia, Swiss diplomat Tagliavini prepared a report on the incident for the EU and the OSCE. The report holds Saakashvili, Georgia's then president, responsible for triggering the armed conflict.

There are many analysts who have made analogies between the situation in Georgia at the time and what is happening in Ukraine today. Few, however,  make the connection between these two conflicts and two events that took place or are about to take place thousands of kilometers away : the summer Olympics in  August 8, 2008 and the winter Olympics, which must begin on February 4, 2022 , both hosted in China.

It is very likely that now, as in 2008, the neoconservatives of the US administration have hoped to trigger a similar incident, which would kill 2 birds with one stone. On the one hand, such a conflict would create the conditions for drastic sanctions on Russia. On the other hand, the attention of the international public would have been diverted from the Winter Olympics, depriving the Chinese authorities of the global audience expected for such an event.

So far, however, it appears that no Ukrainian Saakashvili has been found to provoke the Russian army by attacking the Donbas insurgents, thus re-editing a scenario first used on August 7, 2008.