Wounded Georgian soldiers say ready to fight again
TBILISI (Reuters) - David Malachini knows he is lucky to be alive after being held hostage for 10 days in South Ossetia. But he says he is ready to go and fight again for Georgia once his wounds have healed.
Malachini is one of 15 Georgians exchanged for five Russian servicemen on Tuesday in a prisoner swap in central Georgia.
"If we have to, we will go back and fight for our motherland again. We want our territory back," said Malachini, 26, as he lay in a hospital bed on the outskirts of the capital Tbilisi, hooked up to an intravenous drip.
Malachini was injured in the leg in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali last week during heavy Russian aerial bombardment of Georgian forces.
With a dozen or so other soldiers he was taken captive. They were moved from cellar to cellar, and Malachini still does not know whether their captors were Russians or South Ossetians. He received no medical treatment and was sometimes beaten.
"They treated me badly, even though I was wounded," he said.
Malachini had been part of a Georgian operation to recapture the rebel, Moscow-backed province of South Ossetia on August 7-8.
The attack triggered a huge Russian counter-offensive into Georgia, the largest such military deployment by Moscow beyond its own borders since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Completely outnumbered and outgunned, Georgia's small, U.S.- trained and equipped army retreated, leaving Russian forces in control of swathes of its territory. Moscow says it will pull back all its forces to pre-conflict positions by Friday, after signing up to a peace plan brokered by France.
Russia says Georgia, a mountainous ex-Soviet republic of 4.5 million people, now stands no chance of recovering control of South Ossetia or of Abkhazia, a second breakaway province by the Black Sea also backed by Moscow. Many analysts back this view.
DEFIANT IN DEFEAT
But Malachini's steely defiance in the face of Georgia's military defeat is widely shared among his comrades.
"Yes we are sad that we could not recover Georgian territory, but we are soldiers and we carry out our orders," said Kocha Chachanidze, 32, from his bed in a nearby ward.
Chachanidze was shot in the back after the conflict erupted and when he regained consciousness found himself in a hospital in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz.
"They (the Russians) took reasonably good care of me, then I was handed back as part of the prisoner exchange," he said.
Asked if he thought Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had blundered in sending troops into South Ossetia, Chachanidze said he could not comment on politics, adding: "War brings good to nobody but he (Saakashvili) is our commander-in-chief."
Georgia's 28,000-strong armed forces have now withdrawn to their normal bases under the French-brokered peace plan.
At the Vaziani army base near Tbilisi, soldiers conducted a drill on the parade ground in the sultry August heat.
"We will protect our homeland," David Aslanmazishvili, 23, of the 4th infantry brigade, said proudly. But there was frustration and disappointment too in his tone.
"We came under attack from South Ossetian rebels, we beat them back easily. If ordered to take the whole of South Ossetia we could have done so. But the Russians came in with heavy aerial and artillery bombardment. There were many Russian tanks.
"The Russians were absolutely ready for this conflict, it is impossible to have staged such a massive attack without lengthy and careful preparation," he said.
(Editing by Jon Boyle)
