Russian troops are indiscriminately murdering civilians and interning them in concentration camps, the embattled Georgian president charged yesterday, as he begged the West not to “appease” Moscow as it did with Nazi Germany.
The startling accusations came as Russian troops blatantly violated a cease-fire by sending an armored convoy through the strategic city of Gori.
PHOTO GALLERY: Conflict Continues In Georgia
The invaders first poured into Georgia five days ago – ostensibly in defense of a pro-Moscow breakaway region, South Ossetia. “What they are doing is exactly what Stalin did to Finland, what they’ve done to Afghanistan, what in the Second World War Germany was doing to Poland and to other European countries,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili, a US-educated lawyer who once practiced law in New York, described the situation in Georgia as the rape of his country.
Russian military forces and their separatist paramilitary allies are firmly in control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the Black Sea coast, the two autonomous regions supporting the Kremlin.
Russian forces had already seized the city of Gori, effectively cutting Georgia in half. Yesterday, an Associated Press reporter saw dozens of Russian trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori and moving deeper into Georgia.
Soldiers waved at journalists and one jokingly shouted, “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.” The convoy roared southeast, toward the Georgian capital, but then turned north and set up camp about an hour’s drive away from it.
In Abkhazia, Russian-backed separatists moved into Georgia proper as the Georgian army retreated. One of them sneered that the Georgians received “American training in running away.”
In response to the outrages, President Bush said he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi “to demonstrate our solidarity with the Georgian people.”
He warned Russia to respect US military-run humanitarian missions to Georgia, which include deliveries by C-17 cargo planes and naval ships.
Saakashvili said Russian forces have run amok. “Russian tanks are going for villages inhabited by Georgian populations and throwing people out of their houses, putting people into concentration camps that they are setting up in those villages, and separating men and women,” he told CBS News.
“They are taking things like even furniture, toilet seats, killing people, terrorizing people.”
He pleaded with the West for help, warning it couldn’t repeat the “appeasement” of the ’30s. “This is a cold-blooded murder of a small, free independent country by a ruthless big neighbor.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mocked Georgia as “a special project of the United States.” The United States had been training the Georgian military, and the nation has been seeking NATO membership. With Reuters, AP
cbennett@nypost.com