Georgia has accused Russia of war crimes, human rights violations and a “rampage” across its territory during the military conflict between the countries almost 10 years ago.

In closing evidence before the European court of human rights in Strasbourg on Wednesday, the Georgian government said Moscow was guilty of multiple violations during the fighting in August 2008.

Over five days, it said, Russian planes carried out more than 100 attacks on Georgian targets. The government said there was overwhelming proof that Russian bombs were dropped on civilian areas, killing and injuring innocent people. The evidence included witness statements, satellite footage, and video and phone intercepts.

The government in Tbilisi said Russian troops poured into Georgia’s two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia when the conflict erupted. Approximately 30,000 soldiers were deployed.

Ben Emmerson QC, acting for Georgia, told a panel of judges – including a Georgian and a Russian representative – that Moscow’s control of these territories was part of a plan “years in the making”, and the goal was to “occupy as much territory as it could get away with”.



Before and after a ceasefire, Russian ground troops entered ethnic Georgian villages, Emmerson said, sealing off entrances and exits. Ossetian forces and other irregular soldiers then systematically burned down Georgian homes and entire villages, he said, adding that they carried out summary executions and threatened individuals with death if they refused to leave.

Georgia took its claim to Strasbourg the day after the hostilities stopped. The long-running dispute – over what happened, and who was to blame for the war – reached its climax on Wednesday, when Russia and Georgia delivered their final speeches.

Moscow has complained repeatedly that the court is biased and politicised. It blames Georgia’s pro-western former leader Mikheil Saakashvili for starting the conflict by sending soldiers to rebel-held South Ossetia and says its role was as honest peacekeeper.

Georgians flee a house set on fire by South Ossetian militia members in a village near Tskhinvali. Photograph: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images

A 2009 EU investigation said Saakashvili started the war by launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the rebel city of Tskhinvali. The report dismissed Georgian claims that the attack was in response to a Russian invasion and accused both sides of violations. It also indicated that war crimes were perpetrated against Georgian civilians, and rejected Russia’s claim that Georgia was guilty of “genocide” in South Ossetia.

The judges are expected to rule later this year. Their verdict could be consequential. In 2015, the Kremlin said it was on the brink of withdrawing from the court, which has found against the Russian state on numerous occasions.

Emmerson told the judges: “It is an open secret that Russia has been lobbying in public and in private for a favourable outcome, mumbling dark threats that it will deratify the European convention on human rights and starve the court of funding if the case goes against it.

“There is no middle ground in adjudicating this case. The evidence is all one way.”

More than 30 witnesses gave evidence in 2016. Their testimony covered the war’s most gruesome episodes: the alleged ethnic cleansing of 20,000 Georgian villagers living in or adjacent to South Ossetia, who were driven and burned out of their homes, a deadly rocket attack on the town of Gori, and the torture of prisoners.



An Iskander SS-26 rocket exploded in Gori’s central square on 12 August 2008, killing a Dutch journalist, Stan Storimans, and 11 other civilians, the court heard. Cluster marks at the scene and shrapnel recovered from the journalist’s body identified the rocket as Russian.

However, Russian military officials who gave evidence denied an attack had taken place. Instead, they suggested Georgia’s evidence was fake, or that the Georgian army had bombed its own people to falsely implicate Moscow.

“The suggestions were, at times, preposterous and almost comic,” Emmerson said.

On Wednesday, Russia told the court US intelligence had made up the accusations against it in conjunction with human rights organisations. It said American spies had seized an Iskander rocket from an unsecured Russian facility, chopped it up, and distributed fragments to make it look as if Moscow had fired the weapon.

In 2015, Vladimir Putin passed a new law stating that Russia would ignore rulings from Strasbourg if they contravened the country’s constitution. The Kremlin has so far only done this once, refusing to pay $2bn (£1.5bn) to shareholders from the bankrupted Russian oil company Yukos.