2008 Review: August

RIA Novosti looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2008 continues, with August

August 1

* People in Canada, Russia, Mongolia and China witness total solar eclipse

August 3

* Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist and historian who told the world about the horrors of Soviet labor camps, dies at 89 in Moscow

* More than 150 peopled are killed in a stampede at a temple in northern India

August 8

* The Georgian military attack the capital of breakaway South Ossetia with tanks and infantry

* The 2008 Summer Games open in Beijing

August 9

* Russian troops start a military operation in Georgia's separatist region of South Ossetia to force Georgian troops to cease violence, Tbilisi declares martial law

August 11

* Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili signs a ceasefire plan for South Ossetia

August 12

* Russia announces the end of its "peace enforcement" operation in Georgia, but reserves the right to take further military action in the event of any Georgian attack on South Ossetia

* Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili denounces Russia and declares his country's withdrawal from the CIS

August 13

* Georgia and Russia agree to a modified version of a French-brokered peace plan

August 14

* Top Russian investigators open a criminal case on charges of genocide in connection with recent events in South Ossetia, a General Prosecutor's Office spokesman said

* A Moscow court rules to suspend Robert Dudley, who heads the Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP, from office for two years

August 15

* The United States and Poland sign a deal to deploy missiles as part of a U.S. defense shield in the ex-Communist-bloc country amid a military crisis in Georgia

August 18

* Russia starts pulling back troops from Georgia in accordance with a plan to resolve the South Ossetia conflict drawn up by the Russian and French presidents

August 19

* NATO freezes contacts with Russia until it pulls its troops out of Georgia, but stops short of harsh measures against Moscow

August 24

* Russia takes third place at the Beijing Olympic Games with 72 medals - 23 gold, 21 silver and 28 bronze

* A Kyrgyz passenger plane bound for Tehran crashes near the capital, Bishkek, killing 68 people, while 22 survivors

August 26

* Russia's president signs decrees recognizing Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states despite warnings by Western leaders not to do so

August 30

* Zenit St. Petersburg beats Manchester United 2-1 to lift the Super Cup, the annual fixture between the holders of the Champions League and the UEFA Cup