Russo-Georgian conflict

[Bardas]

Is Saakashvili such an idiot to believe he could take on the Russian Bear with a rag-tag army of kalishnikovs and pick-up trucks? Did he really expect the US and Nato would come to his aid and risk a world war?

Let this also be a warning to Gruevski that having your head up George W's arse is not being given a "Get Out of Jail Free" card when deciding to act like a fool in your neighbourhood.

[johnalexis]

American had its little finger in the pie.

"Saakashvili's persona and platforms presented an implicit challenge to the Kremlin, and that Saakashvili ultimately would draw the United States and Russia into arguments the United States did not want.

This feeling was especially true among Russian specialists, who said that whatever the merits of Saakashvili's positions, his impulsiveness and nationalism sometimes outstripped his common sense.

In his wooing of Washington as he came to power, Saakashvili firmly embraced the missions of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. His rise coincided neatly with a swelling U.S. need for political support and foreign soldiers in Iraq, and his offer of troops was matched with a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia's forces, from bottom to top.

At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, U.S. Marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of fighting a war.

Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces — with Israeli and U.S. firearms, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition.

The public goal was to nudge Georgia toward NATO military standards. Privately, Georgian officials welcomed the martial coaching and buildup, and made clear they considered participation in Iraq as a sure way to prepare the Georgian military for "national reunification" — the local euphemism of choice for restoring Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgian control.

All of these policies collided late last week. One U.S. official who covers Georgian affairs said everything had gone wrong.

Saakashvili had acted rashly, he said, and had given Russia the grounds to invade. "

Read the full article here : http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._assess11.html

[johnalexis]

Originally Posted by nsminc

Guys you think Russia is taking advantage of the situation to send a message to the US?

Apparently there's an issue of pipeline routes involved.

Russia is not Iraq. It will not stand being surrounded by countries controlled by the US and NATO. This is the first of the confrontations that are going to take place in the future.
The president of Georgia believed that the US and NATO would back him up in his actions against South Ossetia.
Russia rushed to defend this region but didn't stop there and bombed Georgia itself.

"Moscow confirmed that its soldiers had swept from Abkhazia into the town of Senaki, 40 km inside Georgia. The Defence Ministry in Moscow claimed that the raid on Senaki was intended to prevent Georgian troops from regrouping for "new attacks on South Ossetia"."


"Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, said that Russia would continue its military operation until "its logical end".

He hit out at the United States in particular for transporting 800 Georgian soldiers from Iraq, some of whom have been deployed in Gori on the border of South Ossetia. "

The above excerpts are from The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4507980.ece


I also read somewhere that two of the soldiers the Russians killed are black. Their identity is not yet known but they are suspected of being Americans.

[Vasco]

[Paulos Melas]

Well things are clear now. if a country is tiny and extremely irritating there is always the muscle option. Could somebody tell me the which country of kuber bulgar origin is tiny, irritating and offensive against greece? They should watch the fate of Georgia and imagine Monastiri as S. Ossetia.Because thats what will happen if they continue to play provogative games with a football team for army.

[Vasco]

There has been no doubt of Europe's priority in the conflict between Georgia and Russia: Bringing about a ceasefire on both sides and minimizing further bloodshed. Beyond that, nothing in this conflict is simple.
Diplomats accept Georgia's president initiated military action, perhaps to coincide with Olympics.

European leaders feel a special responsibility for preventing further escalation and several of them have condemned a "disproportionate" use of force by Russia. The European Commission has called for an end to all Russian military activity on Georgian soil.

But at the same time European diplomats accept that Mikheil Saakashvili initiated military action in seeking to reassert Georgian control of its breakaway province of South Ossetia, perhaps hoping that he could consolidate power there while the world was preoccupied with the Olympics.

At the time of the Rose Revolution in 2003, European lawmakers saw Saakashvili through similarly tinted spectacles, but nowadays they regard him as a somewhat headstrong figure who had already damaged his credentials as a democrat by the way in which he suppressed dissent in his country last November.

Georgia may claim that South Ossetia's leaders are controlled by the Russia's FSB security service but Europeans sense Saakashvili gave Russia the excuse it was looking for to intervene, insisting that its own "peace-keepers" in South Ossetia were under threat and had to be protected.

If Saakashvili thought that the Europeans in particular and the Western world in general would rally to his cause, he miscalculated. European diplomats have for a while been confessing a degree of "Georgia fatigue."

That was why several of the Europeans banded together at the NATO summit in Bucharest in March to frustrate U.S. President George W. Bush's demand that Georgia should be set on the first step there towards NATO membership.

It is unlikely now that when NATO's foreign ministers meet in December to look again at the question of Georgia and Ukraine being invited to join NATO's Membership Action Program they will be handing out any gilt-edged cards.

Saakashvili insists that the Russia action is "premeditated aggression." But European leaders do not echo his rhetoric when he goes on to claim that "If the whole world does not stop Russia today then Russian tanks will be able to reach any other European capital."

Whatever the provocations, they do not thank him for turning the "frozen conflict" over South Ossetia and its other breakaway region Abkhazia into a real one.

Most European leaders are in a phase of working to improve relations with Russia, not least because the EU countries are dependent on Russia now for nearly 40 percent of their energy supplies.

They know that the Russian leadership has not taken kindly to their lectures on democracy and they are acutely aware of how irritated Russia was by most of the Europeans and the West backing the declaration of independence from Serbia declared by Kosovo. They also need to keep Russia on side in much bigger strategic questions like Iran's nuclear program.

In diplomacy the "many-sidedness of truth" is often apparent.

Those sympathetic to Georgia can point out the hypocrisy of Russia brutally suppressing separatism in Chechnya while fostering it in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But others recall the parallels the Russians continually emphasized over Kosovo with the breakaway regions of the Georgian state that have enjoyed de facto independence since the early 1990s.

Where the Europeans will draw the line is if Russia continues to violate the statehood and sovereignty of Georgia.

We have already seen sharp exchanges at the UN between U.S. and Russian representatives, with Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, warning that "The days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe is over" and Europeans will certainly resist any Moscow-induced attempt to have the democratically elected Saakashvili removed by anything other than the actions of Georgian voters.

What Saakashvili has perhaps neglected is the bitterness the current Russia leadership feels not only over Kosovo but over the development of the US missile defence scheme in Europe, with installations planned in Poland and the Czech Republic, and over the steady expansion to the east both of NATO and the European Union.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his protege Dmitry Medvedev still smart for the humiliations suffered by the former Soviet Union during the Boris Yeltsin years. They remain firm believers in a Russian sphere of influence in which NATO and others meddle at their peril.
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NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer may condemn Russia for a "disproportionate use of force," echoed by Russia's traditional critics within the EU like Poland and the Baltic states.

But when it comes to anything more than supportive words, Georgia is likely to be disappointed by the European reaction. It is likely to look in vain to Brussels for practical or military help in regaining control of its separatist regions.

[nsminc]

Just saw on the news that Russian forces control Gori.

[Vasco]

From http://www.pravda.ru

Emmanuel Karagiannis
Lecturer at University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (specializing in the Caucasus region)

“Georgia’s military campaign in South Ossetia aims primarily at solidifying domestic support for the Saakashvili government, while drawing international attention to the country’s ethnic conflicts. Tbilisi knows very well that the violent reoccupation of the breakaway region is not a realistic option, bearing in mind that the majority of the population holds Russian passports.

Therefore, the Georgian government is seeking a limited war that could possibly lead to new negotiations between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali. Moreover, Tbilisi was well aware that Moscow would face a difficult dilemma: if it did not respond to Georgian attacks, the Kremlin would risk its credibility; on the other hand, if the Russian army launched a counterattack (as it finally did), it would be subject to accusations of invading a small pro-Western country.

In any case, Georgian belligerent actions will seriously undermine prospects for peace in the Transcaucasus. Moscow should keep in mind that this is a limited war; any extension of the war into Georgia proper would only invoke sympathy for Georgia’s puerile government from the die-hard Cold Warriors in the West.”

Ariel Cohen
Ph.D, is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security at the Heritage Foundation, and the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis (1998); Eurasia in Balance (2006); and Kazakhstan: the Road to Independence (2008, forthcoming).

"Russian-Georgian War is a Challenge for the U.S. and the World.

As the Olympic Games open, it is tragic and ominous that the conflict between Georgia and Russia has erupted. As hostilities in the Georgian break-away enclave of South Ossetia escalated Thursday and Friday, Georgia attacked the Russian-backed separatists with artillery. The capital of Tskhinvali suffered severe damage and Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia.

Russian peacekeepers there responded with force; Cossacks from the neighboring Russian territories moved in to combat the Georgians, and now Russian armor and artillery have invaded Georgian territory, and the Russian Air Force is attacking Georgian military bases.

Russia has long prepared its aggression against pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili, in an attempt to undermine his rule and prevent Georgia from joining NATO.
Russia also has supported separatists in Abkhazia, which is also a part of Georgian territory. Moscow has granted the majority of Abkhazs and South Ossetians Russian citizenship, effectively enacting a creeping annexation of these territories. This is a slippery slope which is leading to redrawing of the former Soviet border.

Former president Vladimir Putin spoke last spring about Russia “dismembering” Ukraine, another NATO candidate, and detaching the Crimea, a peninsula which was transferred from Russia to Ukraine when both were integral parts of the Soviet Union.

The United States and its European allies need to take all available diplomatic measures to stop Russian aggression. Senator John McCain was right in calling for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the crisis.

The US and its allies need to demand that Russia withdraw all its troops from the territory of Georgia and recognize its territorial integrity.

Talks need to start in a neutral forum, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to finally settle the South Ossetian and Abkhazian problems. This can be done by granting these territories full autonomy within the Georgian state, as Tbilisi has repeatedly suggested.

Beyond this, the United States and its allies and other countries need to send a strong signal to Moscow that redrawing the borders of the former Soviet Union is a danger to world peace; cannot be done without violation of international law; and is likely to result in death and destruction – a price that neither the Russian people nor others should pay.”

S. Frederick Starr

Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program. Research Professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

“The core issue here is not between South Ossetia and Georgia, although serious problems exist there, but between Tbilisi and Moscow. Both sides doubtless have made mistakes and acted intemperately. But Russia, because of its size and role in the world, has special obligations to become part of the solution and not part of the problem.

It must understand that its actions in this case, as well as in Abkhazia, will inevitably call to mind such unfortunate events in the past as the seizure of Karelia from Finland. It is hard to imagine Russia sitting passively if another country attempted to subvert ITS territorial integrity as it is seeking to do with Georgia’s.”

[Tsontos]

Vasiliye do you think South Ossetia is a reason Russia didnt do much in Kosovo? Or would you say there are too many seperatist examples which don't suit Russia e.g Chechnya for that to be a legitimate claim?

Is there a feeling in Serbia the Russians didnt do enough?

[Truth Bearer]

So poor little Georgia fell for the Yankee bullshit didn't they??