Former president and Nobel peace price winner Gorbachev said on CNN:
there is no doubt Georgia provoked the clash.
“This was the use of sophisticated weapons against a small town, against a sleeping people. This was a barbaric assault,”
“Western television didn’t show what happened in Tskhinvali. Only now they’re beginning to show some pictures of the destruction. So this looks to me like it was a well-prepared project. And with any outcome, they wanted to put the blame on Russia.”
Wikipedia, with sources:
The Georgian Army entered the province of South Ossetia during the early hours of August 8, 2008, after a prolonged artillery onslaught on the city of Tskhinvali.[10]
The sleeping town Tskhinvali was shelled with MLRS.