The UN is soon to issue a report on whether Russian helicopters were involved in a recent attack on Georgian government building in the Kodori Valley (link for WSJ subscribers only – alternative link here). According to the Wall Street Journal:
The choppers hovered in darkness for almost two hours, coordinating a ground-and-air attack on three settlements, according to more than 50 witnesses interviewed by United Nations-led investigators. Minutes before they left, a guided missile designed to be fired by helicopters struck a Georgian government building.
No one was killed in the attacks, which were little-noted in the West at the time. But four months later, they look set to cause waves on a global stage as the U.N.-led probe issues a final report on the incident as early as this week. The Wall Street Journal has seen two preliminary reports.
Frustratingly, though, despite having allegedly seen the reports, the Journal then goes on to say precisely nothing about their contents, restricting itself to speculation about what the final draft of the report:
The final report has to be approved by experts from both Russia and Georgia and is likely to reflect the politically sensitive nature of the debate. People familiar with the matter say Russia and Georgia are haggling over one key point: Russia is pushing to include language that indicates there is no hard evidence to conclude that helicopters were even in the area that night, despite the witness testimony.
So, expect the report to be suitably vague.
By the way, has it occurred to anyone that, if a Russian helicopter was involved in the attack, it may have been on a ‘freelance’ mission – hired on the black market by someone in Abkhazia to undertake the attack for money.
(Thanks to Mark MacKinnon for the link – he’s written more on the implications of the report here.
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