A number of recent media reports – including a prominent front page New York Times story – have questioned the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively in its August war with Russia.

However, new evidence gathered by Radio Free Europe suggests that The New York Times and others are wrong and ethnic-Georgian villages came under heavy shell fire in the days leading up to and evening of August 7.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Beketov, a Russian newspaper editor who criticized the authorities has been severely beaten and may not survive. The state-run RIA-Novosti news agency cited a hospital official yesterday as saying his condition was extremely grave.