Russia lashed out on Friday at a speech last week by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the Georgia conflict, saying she had “grossly distorted” the truth to advance US designs in Russia’s backyard.
“This is not the first time that representatives of the US government have grossly distorted the events caused by Georgian aggression against South Ossetia,” the foreign ministry said, referring to Rice’s speech Thursday.
In a sharply-worded, four-page statement, the ministry said Moscow was surprised neither by the tone nor the content of Rice’s address, which it attributed to Washington’s support for a “bankrupt” regime in Georgia.
And in a highly unusual and thinly veiled attack on Rice herself, the ministry said: “Responsible politicians do not shrink from admitting facts in their public speeches.”
“Why others do not do this and instead turn everything on its head, is another question, apparently linked to their own designs in the region, to geopolitics and indeed to morality itself,” it said.
In her speech in Washington, Rice said Russia had gone too far in Georgia, was taking a “dark turn” toward authoritarianism and was “on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance.”
The statement said Rice’s acknowledgement that “several” Russian troops had been killed in the fighting last month willfully glossed over the fact that “hundreds and hundreds” of civilians were killed by Georgian forces.
The foreign ministry also took particular aim at Rice’s assertion that the recent conflict was rooted in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
“In fact, professionals know quite well that the roots go down far deeper in history, when Abkhazia and Ossetia became part of Russia independently of Georgia,” it said.
In the statement, the foreign ministry said Russia had not been seeking to further any “geopolitical aims” in the Caucasus with its military action but had undertaken it solely to defend its citizens under attack in South Ossetia.
In rushing to Georgia’s defense, however, the US took an “exclusively geopolitical” approach in its reaction that closely resembled the “zero-sum game” logic of the Cold War, the ministry said.
In another striking use of Cold War terminology, the ministry said that, in contrast to the ideological split of the past, there was nothing in the current situation that could be compared to the “domino theory” of Soviet times.
That was a reference to the US Cold War doctrine, used notably to justify the war in Vietnam, which held that if the West failed to stop communism from taking root in one country others would follow like falling dominos.
Despite the stinging tone, the Russian statement also said that Moscow had no interest in any further confrontation with the United States and the West and would try to pursue “positive” relations with them.
“Russia is determined not to succumb to rhetoric and be drawn into confrontation ... We will continue to promote a positive, unifying agenda in our relations with the US and other partners,” the statement said.
The ministry decried calls to block Russia from the WTO and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which Rice had raised as possible consequences of the war in Georgia.
“All attempts to ‘punish’ Russia, including ... the politicization of our admission into the WTO and OECD, are counterproductive,” it said.
“Those of our partners who soberly evaluate the situation agree with us,” the ministry said, in one of several suggestions that other countries did not see eye-to-eye with Washington.
“We do not want the United States to speak in the name of the whole world,” it said.
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