South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity told Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Saakashvili tried to buy me off. In January 2003 he sent three of his bureaucrats over, who offered me $20 million, and asked in exchange that I either stand down as president or re-orientate my people away from Russia, and towards Georgia."
"I, of course, firmly refused. And later I found out from reliable sources that Saakashvili had sent me not $20 million, but $50 million. But his thieving emissaries evidently divided up the difference between them on the way over to Tskhinvali - $10 million for each brother."
Kokoity, a former Soviet wrestling champion, became the republic's leader in 2001. After Georgia's August 8 attack on the province and the ensuing Georgia-Russia war, Russia recognized South Ossetia as an independent state.
Asked why he had taken a pro-Russian stance as leader of the separatist province, he said: "If Russia hadn't protected us, the Ossetian people would have been wiped out a long time ago by Georgian genocide. Every honest Ossetian understands this."
Georgia's bombardment of South Ossetia in August followed years of efforts by Tbilisi's U.S.-backed leadership to bring the province, along with breakaway Abkhazia, back under central control. The two regions broke away from Georgia after wars in the early 1990s.
Saakashvili's motives for attacking the region, killing large numbers of civilians and provoking a crushing military response from Russia, remain a source of debate.
When asked whether Georgia understood what it was letting itself in for in starting the war, Kokoity said: "They didn't understand. They had already killed so many Russian peacekeepers. But until then they had got away with their provocations. So they thought that they would get away with it this time, too."
"Only Russia's intervention, and then its recognition of our republic, saved the South Ossetian people. This is now a guarantee that there will be no more war. Now people are investing in South Ossetia, building things. And we will never forget those who saved us," he told the paper.
"Now we are getting a lot of requests, particularly from young people, to rename the central street in Tskhinvali, which carries the name of Stalin, after Dmitry Medvedev, and to name another central street after Vladimir Putin," he concluded.
