David,

Attached please find a response from Pavel Felgenhauer to the JRL posting by Professor Herspring sent on August 22nd and posted on JRL #4 - JRL 2008-156: http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2008-156-4.cfm

 I would appreciate it if you posted Pavel’s brief response in regard to the questions raised by Professor Herspring’s statements about Pavel’s analysis that appeared in our publication Eurasia Daily Monitor.

Thanks,
Glen Howard
President
The Jamestown Foundation

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JRL:

In regard to Professor Herspring’s recent posting on JRL on August 22 - the good Professor and former Navy captain does not, apparently understand the difference between the deployment into battle of a combined army task force, supported by air and Navy, and a limo or pizza delivery service that can be expected to turn up in an hour after receiving an order.

I have been since the unsuccessful coup in August 1991 following closely Russian/Soviet patterns of military readiness and deployment. If the Russian response would have been indeed only a reaction to a sudden Georgian attack, it would have taken at least a week to send a vanguard force into South Ossetia and a month to organize a full-scale invasion.

The 4,000 vanguard troops sent into Georgia with hundreds of pieces of armor that reached Tskhinvali within 15 hours of the Georgian offensive consisted of troops based from Moscow and Pskov that are thousands of kilometers from the battlefield. The nearest airstrip to Tskhinvali is Beslan - over 200 kilometers of narrow mountain road, a narrow 5 kilometer tunnel and they also had to break throw Georgian positions to reach Tskhinvali. The 20,000 plus Russian troops thousands of armor, naval ships and air forces from all over Russia were assembled and ready for the invasion of Georgia in August beforehand and began moving into the attack before the Georgians that much more roads of approach and less distance to cover.

In my most recent article published in EDM on August 25, I have quoted VPK - a military/intelligence establishment closely connected publication in Moscow - that states the same - the troops were propositioned for an invasion of Georgia and fully prepared for immediate attack action. In that article I wrote:

“A Moscow defense weekly connected to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's former KGB associates and published by the state corporation Rostekhnologiy has admitted that the invasion of Georgia was prepared well in advance. The troops that crossed the Georgian border on August 8 were concentrated in attack positions in full readiness for immediate action under the cover of military exercises Kavkaz-2008 that ended on August 2. Massive troop reinforcements were also ready to follow up the initial attack (VPK, August 20).”

Reports that the Russians were somewhat caught off guard on August 8 - are crude and false propaganda.

Sincerely,
Pavel Felgenhauer.