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'Like at Stalingrad, we must fight for every house in this town'
Evening Standard12 Aug 2008
A graphic first-person account of the fighting in South Ossetia emerged today.
South Ossetian nationalist Alan Kochiev has relayed his account of the fighting to friends in Moscow.
He has taken up arms against the Georgians and his version of events illustrates the depth of ethnic hatred that lies behind the conflict.
Kochiev, 26, lives in Tskhinvali, capital of the breakaway republic, and when the Georgians attacked he became a "citizen soldier", defending the city with friends.
During lulls in the fighting he uploaded this account from his mobile phone. What he wrote cannot be assumed to be true but illustrates the tensions in the troubled country.
9 August, 6.30
We are getting ready to defend ourselves. They say [Georgian president Mikhail] Saakashvili wants revenge. The bombing has started. My neighbour Yanik and his father were killed early today. The father leaves a daughter, one, and son, four.
I found only six lads from my platoon after the initial combat, the rest are now missing. I cannot find a friend of mine who has not contacted me after a firefight near the village of Pris.
Today I saw Georgians firing at a car with an infant inside. Everybody inside the car was burnt alive, only the mother survived. She was tearing her hair out afterwards, wailing asking God asking why the hell she survived. Volunteers from North Ossetia and seemingly all around the world are now arriving in our town."
10 August, 12.08
Tskhinvali is ours. We raided a warehouse for guns and Russian troops have finally arrived and cordoned off the entire town. The Georgians are knocked out. We are taking up positions throughout the town and will defend it. There are lots of dead people around.
A captive Georgian tank mechanic said only 100 out of their 500 tankmen survived yesterday. The guys took over a tank, placed the captive at the steering control and went shooting at the Georgians. The captive fought as long as he could.
I'm alive! Thanks everyone for all the support, we all need it now. The town is totally destroyed, like Stalingrad in the Second World War. We have to fight for every house. I can't write anymore now.
Now my phone is dying. Russian troops are in the town's suburbs. The forest is being scoured for Georgian soldiers hiding there. We captured two Georgian tanks and burnt out two more. Everyone dreads night, it is going to be tough.
I don't even know if my parents and sister are alive. But I do know that today I saw a father and his child burning inside their car. Before that, the Georgians had shot their heads off. Everything inside the car is splashed with their brains.
10 August, 21.00
The bombs rain down again. The Georgians are keeping the town under mortar fire and hitting us with Grads (multiple rocket launchers). We evacuated people to Vladikavkaz in trucks. All you can hear is the neverending cry of women in your ears.
The other day Georgians fired a mortar shot that hit a car. An entire family burned alive inside, the parents and two little children all died. It is the third family that I have seen killed in just two days. But I also heard a tank ran over a woman in the village of Tzunar. Apparently it went back and forth over her for some time.
11 August
The Georgians cannot put up with their defeat. They are monsters. In one village they caught a mother and a daughter, cut off their heads and raped the dead bodies.
