Reactions to the conflict in Georgia

International reactions

Russia faced strong criticism from the US, UK, and "New Europe" where Vice President Dick Cheney stated "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community." "Old Europe" had a more neutral or pro-Russian reaction where Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini stated "We cannot create an anti-Russia coalition in Europe, and on this point we are close to Putin's position".

Financial market reaction

The effect of the war on the Russian financial markets was first noticed on the stock market benchmark index RTS which fell 6% by August 8, 2008 at 12:45 GMT in its lowest level (1,732.26) since May 2007, including blue chips such as Lukoil Holdings shares, and Russian analysts expect the fall to continue for some time but then to rise upwards again, recovering losses. The Russian ruble also fell by 1% relative to a basket of currencies.

The Georgian financial markets also suffered negative consequences as Fitch Ratings lowered Georgia's debt ratings from BB- to B+, commenting that there are increased risks to Georgian sovereign creditworthiness, while Standard and Poor's also lowered Georgian credit ratings.

While Georgia has no significant oil or gas reserves on its own, it is an important transit route that supplies the West, and journalists expressed fear that the war may damage the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, 30% of which is owned by BP. The BTC pipeline was shut down before the conflict because of the blast in Turkey on August 6, 2008, that was threatened and then claimed by the PPK' and the war created further problems for the operating company Botas International Ltd. Georgia claims Russia is targeting the pipeline. On August 8, 2008, Russian air forces devastated the port of Poti, which the Georgian government calls "a key port for the transportation of energy sources," close to the Baku-Supsa pipeline and the Supsa oil terminal. On August 12, 2008, BP, an operator of the main pipelines through Georgia, closed the BTC pipeline, the Baku-Supsa Pipeline and the South Caucasus Pipeline for the safety reasons. Gas supplies through the South Caucasus Pipeline were resumed on August 14, 2008.

The price of oil was not negatively affected by these events, on August 8, 2008 light sweet crude for September delivery settled down $4.82 to $115.20 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Allegations of media bias

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin accused foreign media of pro-Georgian bias in their coverage of the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia over breakaway South Ossetia. "We want television screens in the West to be showing not only Russian tanks, and texts saying Russia is at war in South Ossetia and with Georgia, but also to be showing the suffering of the Ossetian people, the murdered elderly people and children, the destroyed towns of South Ossetia, and Tskhinvali. This would be an objective way of presenting the material," he said in a statement to Russian news agencies. Current Western media coverage of the events in the separatist republic is "a politically motivated version" in the eyes of government officials. Other western media editors disagreed with this view, however, with the Washington Post arguing that Moscow was engaging in "mythmaking".

On August 11, 2008, the government-funded Russia Today TV channel accused CNN of presenting video footage made by Russia Today in South Ossetia as pictures of bombed Gori. The Western media has defended its coverage, with Chris Birkett, executive editor of Sky News saying: "I don't think there’s been a bias. Accusations of media bias are normal in times of war. We’ve been so busy with the task of newsgathering and deployment that the idea we've managed to come up with a conspiratorial line in our reporting is bananas." CNN has also defended its coverage.

William Dunbar, a reporter for Russia Today in Georgia, resigned in protest of bias in the Russian media. He claimed he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia. He told The Moscow Times: "The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it. I felt that I had no choice but to resign." However one senior journalist from Russia Today called Dunbar's allegations of bias "nonsense". "The Russian coverage I have seen has been much better than much of the Western coverage,” he said, adding, "My view is that Russia Today is not particularly biased at all. When you look at the Western media, there is a lot of genuflection towards the powers that be. Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected."

HRW called the Russian death toll figure of 2,000 unfounded, citing a doctor who said that between August 6 to 12 the hospital treated 273 wounded, more military than civilian. The doctor also said that 44 bodies had been brought to the hospital since the fighting began, both military and civilian. According to HRW, "the doctor was adamant that the majority of people killed in the city had been brought to the hospital before being buried".Anna Neistat, leader of a HRW team investigating the humanitarian damage in South Ossetia, told The Guardian that

HRW investigators had... recorded cases of Ossetian fighters burning and looting Georgian villages north of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. "The torching of houses in these villages is in some ways a result of the massive Russia propaganda machine which constantly repeats claims of genocide and exaggerates the scale of casualties... That is then used to justify retribution."

BBC News world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds filed a story on August 15 citing the reports of refugee Ossetians in Russia and a Human Rights Watch report describing much of the damage in Tskhinvali as due to Georgian fire in concluding that the the Georgian attack into South Ossetian on August 7 was being "played down" contrary to the "evidence". Reynolds called attention to what he considered exaggerated Georgian claims and the fact most of the western media is based in Georgia (the cause of this, as he writes, being Russia's reluctance to admit western media) is his story about how "mud" thrown in the "propaganda war" "stuck" to Russia: "the Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.

On August 17 the New York Times reported that while "Russian authorities have given Western journalists little or no access" to areas under its control, "Russian journalists are allowed to move around freely."

Cyberattacks and censorship

South Ossetian officials stated that two Ossetian news media sites were attacked. Dmitry Medoyev, the South Ossetian secessionist envoy in Moscow, claimed that Georgia was trying to cover up reports of deaths.

The National Bank of Georgia website was defaced and replaced with a gallery of 20th century dictators, with Saakashvili added. Georgian news portals were under Internet denial-of-service attacks and reportedly the site of the Georgian Ministry of Defense was attacked as well. The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs site was defaced and replaced with a collage of Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler photos. According to the The New York Times, Georgian websites crashed frequently on August 8.

Estonian media claimed that the attacks are similar in nature to the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and were carried out with the same techniques. Estonian authorities have pledged to provide Georgia assistance in cyber-warfare. Estonia has sent to Georgia two specialists in information security from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Estonia, and Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website is currently hosted on Estonian server. The Office of the President of Poland has provided the website for dissemination of information and helped to get access to the Internet for Georgia's government after breakdowns of local servers caused by cyberattacks.

Georgia had stopped broadcasting Russian television channels across the country. Web sites hosted on domains with addresses ending in .ru “were briefly blocked” from Georgia. Some pro-Russian sites in other zones were also reported to be blocked. Both actions were taken due to Georgia's belief that Russia was conducting an information war.

RIA Novosti news agency's website was disabled for several hours on August 10 by a series of computer cracker attacks. "The DNS-servers and the site itself have been coming under severe attack," said Maxim Kuznetsov, head of the RIA Novosti IT department. On August 11, Russia Today TV stated: "In the course of the last 24 hours RT’s website (www.russiatoday.com) has endured numerous DDoS attacks, which have made it unavailable for some time. Channel’s security specialists say the initial attack was carried out from an IP-address registered in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

The Russian internet news source, Gazeta.ru, reported that the Fox News channel cut off an American-Ossetian girl, Amanda Kokoeva, after she stated that she was attacked by Georgian Forces and saved by the Russian Troops, although this accusation is not reflected in the full Fox News video. People accustomed to Fox programmes said that such commercial cut-offs are not out of order there. Fox News was also accused of censorship by TV Channel Russia Today which showed its own interview with Amanda [4] and earlier by several internet blogs and forums. The video also allegedly experienced multiple problems with the counters available on YouTube. The video rating and view count are not being updated and new comments are being deleted, according to some sources. Gazeta.ru stated, "... the counter was at 347,000. At midday the view count on YouTube, fell without any sort of explanation to 45,747." However the counter was seen being reset, and stopping at around 4000. As of August 16 the counter, seems to be up and running again. The reasons for the counter freezes remain unclear.

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