some facts about Georgia that are hard to come by

The Washington Post clarifies matters in an editorial on the “state of play”*** in Georgia:

Mythmaking in Moscow
Georgia wasn’t committing ‘genocide,’ and the Russians aren’t keeping the peace.

That’s just in case you weren’t paying attention. Here are the details, with “assertions of fact” that are false in the WaPo’s original italics:

Georgia committed genocide against the people of South Ossetia. This charge was initially leveled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and has been taken up by others, including President Dmitry Medvedev, who on Thursday came up with the interesting formulation that South Ossetians “had lived through a genocide.” Mr. Medvedev has referred to “thousands” killed, and Russian officials frequently have cited 2,000 South Ossetians killed (out of a population of 70,000). They have said Georgia razed the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. These purported depredations are given as the main motivation for Russian military intervention. … Independent journalists back up the account provided by Human Rights Watch. The Wall Street Journal, for example, yesterday reported finding Tskhinvali, where most of the fighting took place, mostly intact and with “little evidence of a high death toll.”

Russians in Georgia are “peacekeepers” on a humanitarian mission to protect civilians. This formulation has alternated with repeated Russian statements, repeatedly disproved, that Russian forces were not in Georgia at all, or were leaving, or were about to leave. In fact, journalists, human rights observers and others have documented that Russian troops have ranged far into Georgia, including the city of Gori and the port of Poti. They have razed, mined and looted Georgian army bases and destroyed civilian houses and apartment buildings.

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*** It only looks like theater. The stakes are real enough.