Kremlin fights back in PR battle over Georgia

By Guy Faulconbridge - Analysis

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia easily won its brief war with Georgia, but despite a media blitz to project its side of the story, it concedes it still has a way to go to win the propaganda battle.

Facing an international outcry, the Kremlin finally weighed into the war of spin, granting a flurry of interviews with President Dmitry Medvedev to foreign media about Moscow's gamble in the Caucasus.

Until then Medvedev, who has steered Russia towards the biggest dispute with the West since the Cold War, had not given a single interview to foreign media since the crisis began.

That was in contrast to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who used dozens of interviews with Western media to compare Russia's actions in his country to the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe.

"Russia completely lost the information war in the first few days," said one prominent Russian journalist who asked not to be named.

"Then they realised the mistake and hit back -- they rolled out the general staff and then these interviews by Medvedev," the journalist said. "They have done better than they used to, but they have a very long way to go."

Medvedev on Tuesday gave, in short order, interviews to CNN, the BBC, TF1, Al Jazeera and Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled English language channel. He also wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times that appeared on Wednesday morning.

Powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin continued the blitz on Thursday, giving a robust interview to CNN, in which he accused U.S. officials of provoking the whole conflict.