Pavel Felgenhauer is a respected Russian military reporter and generally well known man-about-town among the opposition, and his latest piece in Novaya Gazeta about Russia’s early war planning for the invasion of Georgia is making quite a stir, and has gotten picked up by numerous other sources. Below is an exclusive English translation of the original NG piece. “This was not a spontaneous war, but a planned one” By Pavel Felgenhauer, columnist for Novaya Gazeta Today it is perfectly obvious to me that the Russian incursion into Georgia was planned in advance, moreover the final political decision to complete preparation and begin the war in August was, it would seem, taken already in April. And the Ossetians intentionally provoked the Georgians, and any response, tough or mild, would have been used in the capacity of an excuse to attack. And if the Georgians had endured without complaining, then the Abkhazians would have begun, like now, a long prepared operation for the «mopping up» of the upper part of the Kodori Gorge. If a war has been planned, an excuse will always be found. Towards August, a significant part of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet was ready for a lengthy battle outing, units of constant readiness of the Land forces, the airborne-landing forces and the marine infantry were ready to move out, while during the course of the «Caucasus-2008» training, which ended on 2 August, a week before the war, the forces of the military-air forces, the military-sea fleet and the army completed on a locale at the Georgian border the last readiness inspection. Concurrently towards the beginning of August the Railroad troops in Abkhazia completed repair of RR routes, along which this week were flipped over to Inguri tanks, heavy equipment and items of supply for an approximately 10-thousand-strong grouping, intruded without any excuse or formal reason into Western Georgia. Naturally, not for any «national-economy aims», as officially declared Moscow, the rapidly repaired railroad was used.