South Ossetian Foreign Minister Dmitry Medoev told RIA Novosti that Georgia’s actions on the border with South Ossetia are aimed at seizing minerals, which, in his opinion, will then be transferred to foreign investors for development.
On Wednesday, South Ossetia reported that Georgian police had put up a checkpoint on the territory of the Republic, in the village of Tsnelis. In response, South Ossetian security forces raided armored vehicles. In turn, the Georgian party said that it was building a police checkpoint near the line of the South Ossetian border on its territory. The authorities of South Ossetia demanded that Georgia remove the police post by Friday, otherwise they promised to take "legal means to protect the population from emerging threats." After that, the US State Department called on Russia to use its channels to prevent escalation at the border.
“Finally, the true customers of this provocation have been worried,” Medoev commented on the statement by the State Department. In his opinion, "the Georgian provocation ... in addition to achieving purely domestic image-building goals, there was one more, apparently, the main one." “The territory in question has long been known for the production of talc, marble chips, and in general this gorge is replete with reserves of marble, serpentinite, barite, jade, not to mention industrial deposits of clay and whole massifs of valuable wood species ... I suspect that the Georgian government found an investor to whom these lands were transferred under the guarantee of the safety of doing business, "Medoev said.
He drew attention to the fact that the Georgian police forces were involved in the implementation of this plan, and the Georgian Security Service provided political support under the guise of diplomats participating in the Georgian-Ossetian negotiation process with the connection of Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms.
“Judging by the stoic silence of the usually hyperactive Georgian media, the Georgian government wanted to carry out this “operation” without too much publicity - Georgian society is already painful about the sale of land and resources to foreigners ... There is an absolutely immoral business principle used by international corporations in various regions of the world, they are not interested in the Ossetian population, nor even the fate of Georgia itself. Their main goal on all continents is to control resources and make profit, "the Foreign Minister said
According to him, there are many questions for the Georgian side, but the main one is how you can, "declaring in words the desire for the peace process, in fact, bring the matter to the outbreak of a new war for the sake of someone's selfish interests"
