An illegal military attack by Georgia on its breakaway region of South Ossetia triggered last year’s war with Russia, an international report said yesterday.

Russia was also guilty of breaking international law by invading deep into Georgian territory in response to the attack, the European Union-backed investigation into the causes of the five-day conflict concluded.

The report deals a severe blow to Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has repeatedly argued that he ordered troops into South Ossetia as a defensive action in response to a Russian invasion. Moscow insisted that it sent forces to South Ossetia to repel a Georgian attack.

The nine-month inquiry led by a Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, said that the war was triggered by “a large-scale Georgian military operation” against the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali late on August 7, adding: “Operations started with a massive Georgian artillery attack.”

Ms Tagliavini said in a written statement: "None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack lend it a valid explanation."

Her inquiry rejected as not “sufficiently substantiated” Georgian claims of a Russian incursion into South Ossetia prior to the outbreak of the war. But it noted “an influx of volunteers or mercenaries” into South Ossetia from Russia and said that some Russian troops were in the war zone earlier than the Kremlin had claimed.

The Russian air force also bombed targets in Georgia hours before Moscow said that it had begun military operations at 2.30pm on August 8.

The inquiry concluded: “There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia, beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was justifiable under international law. It was not.

“It follows from the illegal character of the Georgian military assault that South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence.”

The report said that there was also no justification for Georgian attacks on Russian peacekeeping forces based in South Ossetia. It went on: “There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation. Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive on 7/8 August could not be substantiated. It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack.

“Consequently, the use of force by Georgia against Russian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali in the night of 7/8 August 2008 was contrary to international law.”

The inquiry condemned Russia’s response to the fighting, however, as going “far beyond the reasonable limits of defence”. It said that the Kremlin broke international law in justifying its actions and in recognising South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, as independent states after the war.

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