Georgia said Russian PM, Vladimir Putin, and Moscow Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, would arrive in Tskhinvali on August 26 – the day when breakaway South Ossetia celebrates its recognition by Russia.

Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Nalbandov, said on August 24 that the Russian senior officials would be attending an opening ceremony of a new settlement erected after the August war on the venue where previously was a Georgian village of Tamarasheni in northern outskirts of Tskhinvali and from which Georgians were forced out during the August war.

“What the Russian senior officials are doing in the occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is cynical. It is even more cynical when they plan to open a settlement and give it a name after Moscow [Moskovsky],” Nalbandov said.

“This is a situation, wherein invader, at first, totally destroys a settlement, conducts there an ethnic cleansing and then announces about the plans to build there a new settlement and to name it after its capital,” Nalbandov continued. “That is almost the same situation when German Nazis destroyed villages of Oradour, Khatin or Lidica and then to think about restoring them and naming them after Berlin. Even Nazis have not done it.”

Construction of the settlement is carried out by SU-155, the third largest construction company in Russia, according to its website.

The settlement, which will include total of 160,000 square meters of dwelling space, is designed for total of 3,000 residents. According to the company, the settlement includes nine three-storey apartment buildings and over 200 two-storey houses.