Ossetians Say West Is Behind Conflict

Matt Siegel
Moscow Times
Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008

VLADIKAVKAZ — It has been three days since Alyona Zagoyeva has eaten or slept. After a weekend spent huddled in the dirty basement of her Tskhinvali apartment building with 20 of her neighbors, she seems exhausted and has to hang on the door handle for support. Her eyes blaze with anger, however, when asked about what she has seen.

“Georgians aren’t people,” she said. “They’re animals. We just want to thank Presidents Medvedev and Putin for their help. Our hope is that one day we’ll be able to return to our homeland.”

As thousands of refugees continue to flee the devastating violence in Georgia’s breakaway republic of South Ossetia, that anger is increasingly being projected abroad. Egged on by sometimes inflammatory Russian media reports of the fighting, something approaching anti-Western hysteria is starting to take hold among the population here.

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In dozens of interviews across the Russian republic of North Ossetia over the last three days, locals and displaced people vented their anger at what they see as the havoc caused by American and European regional machinations.

Standing by the side of the Zaramakh Highway, now marked heavily with tank treads, Pyotr, a 60-year-old vendor selling grilled meat in the Ossetian style, thinks that he has the conflict all figured out.

“Every country wants to look out for its own interests,” said Pyotr, who refused to give his last name. “There’s gas and oil down there and access to the sea. That’s why the West wants to take it.”

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