[7] Continuous anti-Russian statements by the Georgian government,[8] such as the September 2006 speech by President Saakashvili in Poland, were interpreted by some Russian media sources as depicting Russia as the "barbarous tribe of Huns".
On July 3, 2014 the ECHR ruled that Russia engaged in a systematic policy of arresting, detaining, and expelling Georgian nationals between September 2006 and January 2007, violating several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
"[43] President Putin said, on October 1, Georgia's arrest of four Russian army officers for spying was "an act of state terrorism with hostage-taking",[1] a statement that was downplayed by Saakashvili as "an overreaction caused by nervousness that they have created by themselves.
On September 30, the European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke by telephone with Mikheil Saakashvili, urging him to find a rapid solution and offering assistance.
[47] On the same day Yury Baluyevsky, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, responded that Russia does not plan a war with Georgia and warned about the "consequences of the provocation by the brash politician".
In Georgia, the process of deportation and crackdown on allegedly illegal Georgian businesses in Moscow was described as “ethnic cleansing.” [52] Vice-president of the Federal Migration Service of Russia, Mikhail Tyurkin, said that immigrants "head home, to their mothers and children" and termed the mission "humanitarian.
"[33] The Russian authorities are also claimed to have begun targeting ethnic Georgian celebrities living in Moscow, including the famed Georgian-Russian fiction novelist Grigory Chkhartishvili better known by his penname Boris Akunin.
They live with us and they should not be blamed if officials, politicians and the Presidents of the two countries hate each other… If you do not want large-scale ethnic cleansing to be launched in Russia… pin this badge before coming out in the street.”[56][57]On October 7, a minor unsanctioned rally organized by opposition youth activists in support of the Georgians was dispersed and more than a dozen of its participants detained by Moscow police.