"The Georgian leadership has cut off natural gas supplies to South Ossetia on the brink of the coming winter... Such a move cannot be qualified as anything else but an example of inhumanity," Sergei Lavrov said at a session of foreign ministers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the Finnish capital of Helsinki.
"We urge the OSCE to take immediate measures to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe which could take place due to Georgia's actions," the Russian minister said.
Lavrov also voiced concern over widespread reports that OSCE representatives knew beforehand of Georgia's August offensive on South Ossetia, but did nothing. He called on the OSCE to launch an internal investigation into the matter.
"I believe this is totally unacceptable," he said, adding that he hoped "an investigation will be launched and results of it will be reported."
Last month, a South Ossetian official accused OSCE representatives in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali of concealing information that Georgia was preparing for a major offensive against the breakaway republic.
"The OSCE had a mission in Georgia and a field office in Tskhinvali. The office personnel and mission leaders were informed that Georgia was moving military hardware into the region, but mission chiefs concealed this information from the OSCE leadership," Inal Pliyev told a press conference in Berlin in mid-November.
The Georgian attack on South Ossetia led to a Russian military response to "force Georgia to peace." Two weeks after the end of this operation, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another rebel republic, as independent states. So far, only Nicaragua has followed suit.
