Russian human rights watchdogs urges to impose sanctions against Russia for its aggression against Georgia

A well-known Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov has called upon the international community to condemn actions of Russia in Georgia.

Under the pre-text of defense of Russian citizens Russia started aggression against Georgia, the statement by Kovalyov received by the site “Grani.ru” reads. He calls upon expelling Russia from G8, to impose anti-Russian sanctions at the level of the UN, OSCE and PACE. Lev Ponomaryov, Mikhail Kriger, Stanislav Dmitrievski and other human rights activists and public leaders have joined the address.

“Russia has lost a moral right for peacekeeping in Abkhazia and South Ossetia when bypassing the leadership of sovereign Georgia openly chummed up de-facto authorities of these breakaway regions,” the statement reads. “And now, having shed all the vestiges of respectability, having brought airborne units into Georgia, bombing territories which are not a part of the former South Ossetia autonomous republic, Russia has become a part in an armed conflict.”

A human rights activist Elena Bonner in her turn has called upon the UN to stop the peacekeeping mandate of Russia immediately. “Never again a country bordering on the zone of the conflict should receive a peacekeeping mandate,” Elena Bonner said to Grani.Ru. “It inevitabely becomes a part of the conflict, and often incites its escalation”. Bonner calls upon the NATO or the UN to bring its peacekeeping forces into the conflict zone.