Medvedev and Saakashvili discuss the Georgian war

I've added the Financial Times to my ever-growing list of websites to monitor, because I've been impressed by the quality of their journalism - not for financial matters in particular, but for world affairs in general.

Case in point - this week they have a column entitled "Why I had to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions," written by Dmitri Medvedev:

After the collapse of communism… Georgia immediately stripped its “autonomous regions” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy. Can you imagine what it was like for the Abkhaz people to have their university in Sukhumi closed down by the Tbilisi government on the grounds that they allegedly had no proper language or history or culture and so did not need a university?

Meanwhile, ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognise Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia. We argued consistently that it would be impossible, after that, to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians… what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them. In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others…

This was not a war of our choice. We have no designs on Georgian territory. Our troops entered Georgia to destroy bases from which the attack was launched and then left…

Paired with that is another column, entitled "Moscow’s plan is to redraw the map of Europe," written by Mikheil Saakashvili:

Moscow is using its invasion, prepared over years, to rebuild its empire, seize greater control of Europe’s energy supplies and punish those who believed democracy could flourish on its borders...

Moscow says it invaded Georgia to protect its citizens in South Ossetia. Over the past five years it cynically laid the groundwork for this pretence, by illegally distributing passports in South Ossetia and Ab­khazia, “manufacturing” Russian citizens to protect. The cynicism of Russia’s concern for ethnic minorities can be expressed in one word: Chechnya...

The next step in Russia’s invasion script, of disinformation and annexation, is regime change. If Moscow can oust Georgia’s democratically elected government, it can then intimidate other democratic European governments...

I find it remarkable that the FT provides a forum at which the President of the Russian Federation and the President of Georgia publicly outline and try to justify their positions and the reasons for the conflict. These articles do not define who is right or wrong, but placing the dialogue on the internet for public consumption and discussion is an admirable use of the modern journalistic technology.