The Russian Army has put on display war trophies captured during the Georgia conflict at a museum in Moscow, in an attempt to reinforce its claim that the United States and the West were responsible for encouraging Georgia to attack its breakaway region of South Ossetia.
After Moscow
officially recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent, the exhibition is another sign that, far from caving under Western criticism of its actions, Russia is keen to milk the propaganda spoils of the war.
The display, at The Central Museum of Armed Forces, features weapons, uniforms and personal possessions belonging to Georgian soldiers killed or wounded during the fighting, along with graphic photographs of the bodies of dead Georgian soldiers.
Also on display are a set of textbooks entitled American Language Course, Level IV. The museum claims they were taken from a Georgian soldier.
In a Soviet-style touch, there are more than a dozen photographs of President Dmitry Medvedev, and an array of his speeches and orders to the military during the conflict.
A timetable of the war leaves out several important events. There is also a distinctly anti-Western tone to the exhibition, with several pieces of "Nato" equipment and army clothing on display, and a list of which Western countries had armed Georgia.
The graphic nature of some of the exhibits shows the depth of ill-feeling that has developed between Russia and Georgia after last month's conflict.
Both sides have paraded their war gains in public - when the Georgians shot down four Russian pilots at the height of the conflict last month, they paraded two bodies on national television.
Russia is now taking its turn to display the spoils of the war which it unequivocally won.
- INDEPENDENT
