clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Russia's cruel intention

In South Ossetia, I witnessed the worst ethnic cleansing since the war in the Balkans

• 
  Luke Harding
  


• 
  The Guardian,
  


• Monday September 1 2008


• Article history

After three weeks in Georgia reporting on the war and its aftermath, I find one conversation sticks with me. I had arrived in Karaleti, a Georgian village north of Gori. I had gone there with a group of foreign journalists in a Russian army truck; our ultimate destination was Tskhinvali, in South Ossetia. Several houses along the main road had been burned down; an abandoned Lada lay in a ditch; someone had looted the local school.

read more >>