No doubt London-based Tariq Ali’s is a highly informed perspective on growing Russia-Ukraine tensions in the latest edition of the New Left Review in the sense that he has “identified” the errors or mistakes made by some very well-known writers and publications.

He, for example, has said that LRB (London Review of Books) wrongly described Russia as an invader during the Russia-Georgia conflict of 2008. According to him, Georgia, not Russia, invaded South Ossetia. No. Tariq sahib is wrong.

The separatists who were strongly backed by Russia in South Ossetia/Abkhazia had violated the ‘ceasefire’ agreement by starting hostilities against Georgia, annulling the agreement the two sides had reached soon after the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states in early 1990s. In other words, Russia had triggered that conflict through its proxies in South Ossetia. In my view, the LRB writer is not wrong.

Hamid Khan (Lahore)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022