Russian Military Gets Stronger - August, 2008

Russian Military Gets Stronger


August, 2008

Russian soldiers sit atop an armored vehicle in a long column of military hardware advancing past Gori August 13, 2008 near Gori, Georgia. A Russian military column, along with an assortment of paramilitary forces allied with them, penetrated further into Georgian territory August 13.


Russia's first foreign war since Soviet troops stormed into Afghanistan nearly three decades ago is showcasing a resurgent military that's trying to overcome years of decline after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia's oil wealth and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin's ambition to return his country to its position as a world power have fueled the buildup. But analysts are quick to point out that Russia has picked on a weakling in its invasion of neighboring Georgia and is still a long way from developing a world-class military. Television images of Russian troops and tanks pressing into Georgia provoked reminders of Soviet military might and Cold War invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to the 5-day-old conflict Tuesday, although Georgian leaders said the Russian attacks continued. Although Russian military spending is a small fraction of that of the United States — roughly $30 billion a year compared with more than $500 billion — the country's nuclear-equipped military is vastly improved from the early and mid-1990s, when soldiers foraged for food in potato fields and officers often had to hold second jobs.


"The Russian military pretty much went into free-fall in the early 1990s," recalled Steven Pifer, who was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000 and is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center in Washington, D.C. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Russia's military expenditures dropped to one-tenth of the Soviet Union's military budgets during the preceding decade, according to GlobalSecurity.org, an online military research site. Spending on weapons declined by 75 percent. After Putin became president in 2000, the former KGB spy embarked on a military buildup as oil production boosted Russia's economy by an average of 26 percent each year. The Defense Ministry launched an eight-year, $189 billion plan last year to build a new generation of intercontinental missiles, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and radars and make other upgrades. Russia also is improving the training, pay, benefits and treatment of soldiers, many of whom notoriously have been subjected to bullying and harassment by superiors. Thousands of Russian soldiers received combat experience through two conflicts in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Additionally, the Russian military leaders behind the Georgia attacks apparently studied the NATO air campaign over Kosovo and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Nathan Hodge, a land-warfare specialist for Jane's Defence Weekly, said Tuesday in an analysis of the Russian-Georgian conflict.


The Russian strikes into Georgia, which was once part of the Soviet Union, appeared designed to reverse Georgia's attempts to modernize and rearm, Hodge said. Georgia's $1 billion defense budget is much smaller than Russia's, but the smaller country nevertheless had developed a small, well-armed force with updated equipment, Hodge said. Retired Col. Christopher Langton, an analyst at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, called the Russian attack a "classic Soviet-style invasion" featuring tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and aerial assaults. Other analysts said it was relatively easy for Russian troops to move across the border from their own country without the need for a long supply chain. "If we're talking about a theater-wide war in Europe, it would be a very different picture," said Stephen Blank, a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Russia also boasts one of the world's most respected air forces, with sophisticated multirole warplanes such as the MiG-29 and the Su-27. It's moving aggressively to develop unmanned aircraft similar to those the U.S. uses.

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ilitary13.html

The ugly side of resurgent Russia?


Tbilisi has desperately sought international support since Russian forces moved into Georgia after the Georgian army launched an offensive to bring separatist South Ossetia, which broke away in the early 1990s, back under government control. Mark Seddon, Al Jazeera's diplomatic correspondent, says Georgia's actions had clearly been anticipated by Moscow and that the Russian response may be an ominous portent of its future foreign policy. There should be an iron rule for all journalists, commentators and politicians when discussing the crisis in Georgia, especially when in the United States, where I am now. It is this, make it absolutely clear that you know which Georgia you are talking about. The looks of horror that have crossed peoples faces here when I have told them that Russia 'has invaded Georgia' is something to behold. This is not to trivialise the conflict that has erupted, but simply to remind ourselves of what was once said about Czechoslovakia as the Nazis prepared to invade the country after Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, had given his blessing. Namely, that it was 'a faraway country of which we know little'. Brutally, the same may be said about Georgia and, more so, of the two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. For Zbigniew Brezinski, a former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, the former United States president, and now a foreign policy adviser to presidential hopeful Barak Obama, has apparently compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. Now Russia is, of course, in breach of international law, and having invaded a sovereign state, albeit one with sizeable pro-Russian enclaves, it is bound to expect a furious response from the West. But Brezinski, as a product of the Cold War, is unwise to make such sweeping claims, not least because Georgia is not Czechoslovakia and Russia is not the old Soviet Union.

Nato encirclement

Whether or not Western leaders like it, the increasingly autocratic political leadership in Moscow is reacting to what it sees as a gradual encirclement by Nato. The military alliance is moving steadily eastwards, and a new generation of long- range missiles are being prepared for deployment in what were Warsaw Pact member states. Moscow is not of course going to send the tanks into Prague or Budapest again. But recent history in the Caucasus suggests that on the inner fringes of the old Soviet bloc, where there are substantial Russian minorities, Moscow is not going to surrender them, and may use them to weaken what it sees as pro-Western governments. To which should be added something else; in those disputed areas with Russian minorities, those who stand in the way may be forced to leave. The untold story of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia is how those breakaway provinces have been emptied of their pro-Georgian populations, and how Russia has distributed passports for those who remain.

Olympic blunder

In retrospect, the move by Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgain leader, to reign in South Ossetia when he thought that the rest of the world would be distracted by the opening of the Olympics in Beijing, was one of the least smart moves he could have made - particularly as it had clearly been anticipated by Moscow. A sensible policy of co-existence may not have assuaged nationalists in both Georgia and Russia, but it has to be a better way ahead than the vicious conflict that has now probably led to the informal, but permanent annexation of Georgian territory by Russia. This is not to excuse, but to try and understand. It may also be timely for Georgia, which, like Ukraine, wants membership of Nato. Had Georgia actually been a member, Nato members could have been called upon to come to the country's aid.

Worrying foretaste

A nightmare scenario of a Nato conflict with Russia over breakaway provinces in Georgia should at the very least make Nato planners think very carefully about further expansion. It may be one thing to occasionally poke the Russian bear when it is weak, quite another to get into its cage when it is beginning to feel stronger and more confident. Historians may look back at this period, and describe something that we may like to call the 'Kosovo Doctrine'. Moscow was opposed to the independence of Kosovo, despite the fact that most Kosovans wanted it, for Moscow was determined to stand by its old Slav ally Serbia, and wanted to send a warning to others in the former Soviet Union. The new Russia is not the plural democracy that many of its founders had hoped for. If Boris Yeltsin clumsily allowed the Perestroika and reform of Mikhail Gorbachev to disintegrate on his watch, as Gorbachev had himself allowed the Soviet Union to disintegrate without a proper plan for dealing with the fallout from that process, the new bosses in the Kremlin, appear to be saying 'so far and no further'. This is not a pleasant sight, and Russia's raw and ugly power displayed by its iron-fist policy in Georgia, may be a foretaste of much to come.

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/eu...629447507.html


In related news:


Russia Not Releasing Two Provinces



Georgia is a U.S. Project - Russian FM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9hbLooJYOI

Russian officials said Thursday that the Georgian government will not regain control over two breakaway provinces that are at the center of a weeklong military conflict, as the Kremlin issued an uncompromising response to U.S. and Western threats over its military incursion deep into the territory of its tiny neighbor. Russian troops remained in control of the key Georgian city of Gori on Thursday, although a top U.S. military official said in Washington that the invading force appeared to be preparing for a withdrawal, consistent with the terms of a cease-fire signed Tuesday. Amid reports of scattered explosions and the continued destruction of Georgian military assets by Russian troops, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman James Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing that Russian forces appeared to be "consolidating" in apparent preparation for a pullback. The cease-fire calls for troops to return to positions held before fighting broke out last week and a large Russian force rolled into the disputed provinces of South Ossetia and Azbhakia. "We see them generally complying and moving back to a position where they can make their exit," Cartwright said. Russian air activity over Georgia, he said, had all but ceased. The situation on the ground, however, remained in flux. According to the Georgian government and wire service reports from Gori, Georgian police had approached the city Thursday for the start of an expected handover, but left after it became apparent that the Russian troops planned to remain, at least for now. Gori is near South Ossetia and sits near the country's major east-west transportation routes.

Confusing events

The status of Russia's presence in a second strategic town, the port city of Poti, and in other locations around the country was also unclear. Georgian officials said that Russian troops remained in Poti, and also in the towns of Senaki and Zugdidi in the western part of the country. The confusing events on the ground were matched at the diplomatic level, with Kremlin officials seeming to back the breakaway aspirations of the two Georgian provinces, in opposition to U.S. and European demands that the country — closely allied with the West — remain intact. Following the events of the past week, "One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the Associated Press reported from Moscow. "It is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state." Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met Thursday with leaders of the separatist movements in the two provinces and pledged to support them in discussions about the future of the two disputed regions.

Not concerned about threats

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began a trip to the region Thursday, beginning with talks in France on her way to Tbilisi. Lavrov, in remarks broadcast on Russian radio, sounded unconcerned about White House threats that Russia could suffer a chill in relations with the West because of its incursion into Georgia. "I don't know how they are going to isolate us," Lavrov said during an interview on radio station Echo Moskvy. "I have heard threats that we are not going to be admitted to the (World Trade Organization), but we see clearly that nobody is going to admit us there anyway," he said. His remarks were translated by the Interfax news service. "Excuse my language, but they're just stringing us along." The Russian Foreign Ministry also issued a formal response to Bush's recent remarks on the situation, rebuking the United States for taking what it said was a one-sided view of the conflict. "We regret that the U.S. still refuses to admit the real cause for what happened, which is that (Georgian President) Mikhail Saakashvili's regime, in violation of all its international obligations, unleashed a war against the people of South Ossetia," the statement said. Bush said Wednesday that Russia's actions could make it unfit for membership in international political, economic and security alliances. Bush also reiterated U.S. support for Georgia, dispatching Rice to Tbilisi and ordering U.S. military forces to begin delivering humanitarian aid. Russia on Tuesday agreed to stop offensive operations and pull its troops out of Georgian territory, but a day later took over Gori, seized munitions at Georgian military bases and set up positions along the country's main east-west highway. Paramilitary fighters accompanying the troops looted homes and stole cars, witnesses said. Statements by Georgian officials that the Ossetians were looting Gori were supported by Western reporters who witnessed homes being ransacked, cars being seized and buildings being set on fire. Black smoke billowed over part of the city Wednesday afternoon.

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...d/5944873.html

Russian Convoy Moves Deeper Inside Georgia: Witness



Russian tanks roll towards Tbilisi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ9yUnvNnNA

A Russian military convoy advanced to within 55 km (34 miles) of Tbilisi on Friday, a Reuters witness said, in the deepest incursion since conflict with Georgia erupted last week. The advance by some 17 armored personnel carriers (APCs) and about 200 soldiers coincided with a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to secure Georgia's signature on a French-brokered peace plan to end the fighting. Initially 10 APCs moved along the main highway from the Russian-occupied town of Gori, 25 km (15 miles) from breakaway South Ossetia, before stopping in the village of Igoeti. Several APCs headed down side roads and seven more arrived later. The exact mission of the incursion was not clear. At a news conference after President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the agreement, Rice called for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces. The vehicles advanced unimpeded by Georgian police and army stationed along the road. A Reuters correspondent saw a military ambulance, snipers and rocket-propelled grenades. The convoy was initially shadowed by three low-flying Russian combat helicopters, which later left. Russian troops this week pushed out of South Ossetia as far as Gori in a counter-offensive to drive out Georgian forces who had tried to recapture the separatist South Ossetia region. Moscow declared a halt on Tuesday to military action but says it is securing Georgian military installations and abandoned arms dumps. On Thursday, Russian troops were spotted in Gori, the Black Sea port of Poti, and the western town of Zugdidi, which lies near another breakaway region, Abkhazia. Georgia has been calling for the Russian troops to pull back from Gori, alleging that irregular militias from over the border in the North Caucasus have moved in behind them and are looting and burning Georgian villages.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMos...BrandChannel=0

Russian Tanks in Georgia's Poti - Witnesses


Russian forces sink Georgian ships: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXe9rLDW0U

Russian tanks rolled into the Georgian port town of Poti on Thursday, accompanying trucks carrying troops to the port, witnesses said, but Russia denied its forces were there. "Just a few minutes ago they (Russians) entered Poti in tanks," a Poti shipping agent, Nikoloz Gogoli, said by telephone at about 0900 GMT. "Some of the guys have blue signs, badges, which means they should be peacekeepers." Vakhtang Tavberidze, acting harbourmaster in the port of Poti, said Russian peacekeepers had arrived at the military port accompanied by military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, and removed unidentified equipment. "Yesterday they came to the commercial port, but today they only came to the military port, to the coast guard area," Tavberidze said by telephone. "They took away some equipment." "This is looting," he added. "People are afraid to go in there. It might be mined." Asked about the reports, Russia's deputy chief of the general staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said: "There are no Russian armour or troops in the city of Poti now." Nogovitsyn offered no further comment. Gogoli said the tanks did not enter the port and were moving in the direction of an old military base. Guards at the port said the tanks were accompanying troop trucks and moved away from the port once the trucks had parked inside. One guard said a truck was carrying around 20 troops and identified them as peacekeepers. A Reuters staff photographer on the scene was barred from entering the port. Earlier, Tavberidze said that Russian troops sank six Georgian cutters stored at Poti on Wednesday. He said no one was hurt. Gogoli and Tavberidze said the cutters, old military boats, were not fired on from sea or air. Russian troops warned bystanders of their plans, Gogoli said. "I think what they did was blow them up with some explosives," he said. Russia denied the previous day that its troops had entered Poti.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSLE126209

Russian FM: Forget Georgian territorial integrity


Russian troops must stay on alert in conflict zone - Medvedev: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD415eyg87I

Russia's foreign minister says the question of Georgia's territorial integrity is a dead issue, a clear sign that Moscow is giving full backing to two separate regions in the wake of recent fighting and could absorb them. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the statement Thursday simultaneously with the announcement that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting in the Kremlin with the separatist regions' leaders. "One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/...ia-Georgia.php

Fear Rises Among Defeated as Invaders Show No Sign of Retreat


How long shall we stay in Gori? As long as we want to," the young Russian tank commander replied with casual arrogance. A mile down the road Georgian troops endured the sweltering heat for a second day, waiting for the Kremlin's permission to enter their own city. There was no sign yesterday of the Russians abiding by their pledge to withdraw from the strategic town of Gori, and hand it over to Georgian forces. Instead, just as Condoleezza Rice was due to speak about Russian withdrawal, an armoured column, escorted by helicopter gunships, moved out of the city to advance a further seven miles inside the country, taking up positions near the village of Igoeti.

The Russian presence in Gori, as well as in Abkhazia and the port of Poti, which is in Georgia "proper", is the reality of Moscow's might on the ground and the symbol of Georgia's national humiliation. By taking Gori and adjoining areas the Russians hold a strategic position little more than an hour's tank drive to the Georgian capital. They have also bisected the country east to west, controlling movement of traffic while positioning themselves close to the BTC pipeline, which carries energy supplies through Georgia to western Europe. The "peace" agreement brokered by the French government is now widely seen as an act of betrayal. A Georgian officer in an army convoy from Tbilisi which had come to a halt near the remains of a bombed Georgian tank, said: "We do feel let down, do you blame us? What happened to our allies? We do not know what will happen in the future but it looks like we may lose parts of our country."

A Georgian army base near Gori was partly destroyed by the Russians, who also sank five ships and patrol boats off Poti and bombed military airfields. The campaign group Human Rights Watch also accused Russia of using cluster bombs in civilian areas. The organisation said warplanes had dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs on Gori and the town of Ruisi this week, resulting in the deaths of 11 people including the Dutch television cameraman Stan Storimans. The Russians denied the claim. Georgian forces, heavily outgunned, have not engaged the Russians, with commanders privately admitting that to do so would have led to further pulverising attacks. Meanwhile, Ossetian, Cossack and Chechen militias which had entered the region continued to terrorise the local population, looting and burning, adding to the atrocities against civilians carried out by both sides.

The severity of the problem has been acknowledged by some senior Russian officers. Maj-Gen Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Borisov, in charge of Gori, said: "Ossetians are killing poor Georgians, this is a problem and we are trying to deal with it". He said his troops had been ordered to stop the abuse and arrest those responsible. Most of the atrocities occurred in Georgian enclaves in separatist South Ossetia and villages in Georgia proper outside Gori. Around 80 per cent of the population of Gori had fled and the town had been without water and power for three days. Yesterday, the Russians allowed some humanitarian aid to go through, but the numbers of those fleeing the violence continued to grow in refugee camps. Misha Amashvilli left his home in the village of Karbi in South Ossetia with his family of seven after, he said, his neighbour had been killed by militia. "We have nothing left and we cannot go back home ... our lives have been destroyed and I do not think our government or America can change that."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...at-898988.html

74 Russian army men killed in Georgia fighting

Russia today said at least 74 army men were killed and 171 injured in five days of fierce fighting triggered by Georgia's attempt to regain control over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. At least 19 servicemen were also reported missing, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Col-Gen Anatoly Nogovitsyn said and added that Russia has asked the Georgian military to exchange lists of POWs and persons missing in action. However, he was unable to give exact number of Georgian soldiers killed in action. Gen Nogovitsyn hinted that several black Americans and other foreigners were among the Georgian troops killed in the Russian operation. Russian army stopped active military operations in Georgia on August 12 but were told not to leave the positions where they received this order. "Some units are protecting transportation facilities, primarily the Zari road, through which humanitarian aid is being delivered and an independent medical battalion started working in Tskhinvali," he said. Meanwhile, the United States has cancelled upcoming joint military exercises with Russia, its first concrete response to the armed conflict in Georgia, as officials consider broader reprisals following Moscow aggression. A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity yesterday said, the August 15-23 exercises involving Russian, French, British and US warships in the Sea of Japan "have been scrapped." The exercises were to involve an onshore component in the Russian port of Vladivostok.

Source: http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite...0?OpenDocument

Georgia and the West: Goebbels Would Have Been Happy!

The war in South Ossetia is a war of medieval atrocity unleashed by a country whose culture is based on Orthodox Christianity, a country claiming to be "a young democracy" and seeing itself as part of the "humane" Europe. The aggression launched by the current Georgian regime and its puppeteers is marked by extraordinary cruelty and cynical lies. Tbilisi would have never dared to do what it did without the support of the US. Even in Ancient Greece, there was an understanding that wars can be fair or unfair. The civilized West, part of which Georgia is trying to be, is obsessed by human rights and believes to be superior to the Greeks, but this does not prevent some (Georgia) from perpetrating genocide and others (Europe and the US) - from encouraging the aggressor.

The analysis of the way the aggression began - without a formal declaration of war - and of the overall conduct of the Georgian leadership makes one ask a number of questions. One of them is: can a crazy fanatic be regarded as a human being? The answer is - definitely not! The crimes committed in South Ossetia - the killings of women, children, and senior citizens, the deliberate extermination of civilians - are instances of inhuman conduct. Specialists in ethical anthropology (Boris Didenko) either explain this type of behavior by brain disease or attribute it to the specifics of conduct of super-aggressive human species. In the latter case, their intentions simply cannot be changed. In the Russian language, such individuals are called non-men. These are monstrous creatures more dangerous than any wild beasts. The protracted standoff in South Ossetia is something much greater than just a regional conflict. Nor has it ever been exclusively a conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia. It also has axiological, moral, and geopolitical dimensions. The unexpectedness and unjustifiable atrocity of the current war, the careful planning of its military and informational offensives show clearly that one of the objectives was to provoke Russia's inadequate response. Moscow was expected to act inadequately, and those who planned the aggression calculated the options open to Russia.

Option 1: Russia's nonintervention and a withdrawal of the peacekeepers (or the limitation of their activity to the defense of their checkpoints). By the way, this mode of behavior was typical for peacekeeping forces of various levels throughout the conflict in Yugoslavia. Operation Storm and Operation Flash launched by the Croatian army in May-August, 1995 against the unrecognized Republic of Serpska Krajina were particularly similar to the Georgian offensive in South Ossetia. One of the results of the above operations was the total (and, as I firmly believe, deliberate) demise of the entire UN system of peacekeeping and region security measures. The world literally watched the flight of 250,000 Serb civilians and the bombardment of refugee convoys by Croatian warplanes. The Serb population in the region decreased by 90.7% following the Croatian offensive which was silently OKed by the international community (1)! Confident of the US support, Saakashvili's regime hoped to achieve a similar result in South Ossetia. Croatia practically turned into a mono-ethnic state. No matter what had been promised, at that time Serbs saw no help from either the Serbian Republic or Belgrade. It is well-known what happened to the Pale and Belgrade leaders later - betrayal is never rewarded by happiness. Russia chose to act otherwise.

In the horrible days of the tragedy, Russians not only truly fulfilled their peacekeeping obligations, but - above all - they also did not betray their countrymen in South Ossetia. This means a lot! Option 2: desired by the US instigators of the war and the Georgian aggressor: Russia's direct involvement in an armed conflict with Georgia. The failure of the expectation made Saakshvili change his plans on the first day of the war. On August 9, the Georgian Fuhrer gave a 10-minute interview to CNN, which opened an obviously synchronized anti-Russian campaign in the Western media. Currently, the main theme is that Russia used all of its military might against the tiny Georgia. Having such dedicated followers could make Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels happy. As for Saakashvili, he has learned by heart not only Goebbels's notorious commandment "A lie repeated 100 times becomes the thruth", but also the ninth comandment of national socialism which said "Do what must be done in the name of the New Gemany without shame! " (2). In the case of Saakashvili, it could read the same but with "the New Georgia" instead.

Over the past several days, the independent and objective Western media have been launching an all-out mankurtization campaign. The term mankurt was introduced into modern languages by well-know Soviet-era novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov in his The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. According to an ancient Turkic myth, a fresh raw camel hide would be put as a cap on the thoroughly shaven head of a captive meant to be turned into a slave. The slave with his hands tied and with a large wooden stock around his neck preventing him from reaching his head would be left in a desert for several days. Once the hide would start drying it would shrink and bind to the head, thus causing intolerable sufferings further strengthened by thirst. In a while the victim either died or lost the memory of the past life and became a perfect slave having no independent will and totally subdued by its master. In the modern world, the complex procedure of suppressing human will and ability to think and to analyze has become extremely simple and is known as brainwashing.

Judging by the dirty lies about the war waged by the Georgian leadership against civilians and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, the biased Western media and political leaders of the Euro-Atlantic civilization regard their own citizens as mankurts. The global success of brainwashing during the Croatian, Bosnian, Kosovo, Chechen, Iraqi, Crimean, Transdnistrian and other crises is renowned. The aggression of mankurts was invariably directed at the nations designated by the masters - Serbs, Russians, Iraqis... What could prevent Georgia from resorting to the familiar technology? Here is an example: the interview given to CNN by Russian envoy to the UN Security Council V. Churkin, in which he condemned the barbarian conduct of the Georgian aggressor, was aired with a caption saying that Russia was bombing Georgian towns, and the title remained on the screen throughout the broadcast. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer would have explained the current policies adopted by Western media as follows: "invariably, the source of lies is the intention to dominate others by suppressing their will in order to reaffirm one's own. Consequently, lies as such stem from injustice, greed, and anger".

Western journalists who never visited South Ossetia and used the footage from Russian media consistently avoided mentioning the following appalling figures: 2,000 people - over 15% of the population of South Ossetia - had been killed in less than 24 hours. The international community so preoccupied with human rights issues does not seem to be concerned about the people trapped without water, electric power, and food under the ruins of Tskhinvali. Why is it that Russia is the only country to supply humanitarian aid to South Ossetia? What has happened to your hearts, humane Europeans? Have you forgotten how to use Internet? Do you no longer have satellite TV? Are you really so afraid of alternative information sources?

***

To an extent, my criticism of the Western media and their audiences applies to Russian news agencies and TV channels as well. We must be doing a fairly poor job if it is so easy to portray Russia as the aggressor and the suppressor of the Caucasus! It is common knowledge that whoever has information has power. In the case of Russia, the issue is extremely serious: its national security and the protection of its national interests are impossible without informational security, which must be promoted by everyone here from the President to a provincial newspaper journalist. Anyhow, we are people, not mankurts!

Source: http://www.iras.ir/English/Default_v...0Been%20Happy!

The Balkan Roots of the War in South Ossetia

The current developments in the Caucasus are a manifestation of a broader tendency which is going to play a fundamental role in the global politics for years to come. The crimes committed by the Georgian regime led by M. Saakashvili became possible not only as a result of the military-technical assistance massively provided to Georgia by the US and other countries touting their democratic images, but also due to the collapse of the system of international law which took place on February 17, 2008. On that date, Albanian extremists proclaimed the independence of Kosovo, another conflict zone in the Eurasian space. According to various UN resolutions, Kosovo had to remain a part of Serbia and an international peacekeeping mission was deployed in Kosovo under the UN flag. Western countries not only raised no objections to the unilateral declaration of the Kosovo independence, but welcomed it as the optimal solution.

Throughout the months after the declaration, Moscow kept warning that the "Kosovo independence" would undermine the entire system of international relations. The Kosovo scenario would equally attract the leaders of numerous separatist movements worldwide and the regimes eager to suppress opposition by force. In February and March, international politics watchers followed with a great deal of surprise the cacophony in Tbilisi's official assessments of the Kosovo phenomenon. Already on February 18, the very next day after the Kosovo Parliament had voted for independence, Georgian Foreign Minister Davit Bakradze said Georgia did not recognize the independence of Kosovo. He said that Georgians were united on the issue regardless of their individual political preferences1. As for the unity, it was clearly an overstatement - already on March 29 Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze said in an interview to Estonian media that "since the friends of Georgia had recognized the Independence of Kosovo" it would be quite natural for Georgia to do the same2. The statement outraged the opposition which condemned it as unacceptable in the light of Georgia's problems with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili sided with the opposition on the issue and said that Georgia had no plans to recognize the independence of Kosovo.

The uncertainty of Georgia's stance is explainable. The country is struggling to combine loyalty to the US in every aspect of politics with at least a shadow of common sense at the face of the threat posed to Georgia's positions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the self-proclaimed Kosovo independence. The truth is that the illegitimate outcome in Kosovo absolved politicians like Saakashvili of any legal limitations whatsoever. If the Kosovo Albanians could forge a country of their own by means of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing, what could prevent Tbilisi from cleansing Ossetians from South Ossetia? Ordering the invasion of South Ossetia and planning a similar aggression against Abkhazia, Saakashvili was simply trying to benefit from the fact that after February 17 the UN, the OCSE, the Council of Europe, and likewise organizations were no longer the guarantors of the international law. Saakashvili's reckoning was absolutely correct in this respect. The Georgian Fuhrer did make a mistake, but of a different kind: as in the not-so-distant past, he and his US patrons expected to meet no resolute opposition from Russia.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a diplomat shared with me certain details of the discussions between Russia and the US in the UN Security Council during the crisis in South Ossetia. The US supported by Great Britain was promoting its vision of the situation with great hypocrisy and stubbornness. Allegedly, there were no 2,000 civilian fatalities in South Ossetia and no 30,000 refugees who fled the Republic. Even if there were any civilian casualties, the people were killed by Russian air strikes. When asked whether they recognized the fact that Russian peacekeepers had been killed, US diplomats mumbled that indeed that was pretty odd, but at the moment it was Russia who was the cause of tensions and had to be stopped. The Russian delegation invoked the recent hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, during which the UN Security Council kept trying for a whole month to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and thus to stop fire from the Israeli side, but the US neutralized the attempts. Americans replied that it was a different type of a situation, there were terrorists and they had to be suppressed. They also claimed that the situation in Yugoslavia was different and had nothing to do with the current developments in the Caucasus. My source said that at the moment talking to Americans in the UN Security Council was completely useless.

All that remains is to admit that Moscow's recurrent warnings concerning the imminent demise of the entire system of international relations as a result of the "Kosovo independence" did not help. Now that the collapse is an accomplished fact, there are no reasons for Russia to refrain from acting according to the new rules of the game, and not only in South Ossetia but also in other regions where it has vital interests, including the Balkans.

Source: http://www.iras.ir/English/Default_v...outh%20Ossetia

Georgia and the West: Goebbels Would Have Been Happy!

The war in South Ossetia is a war of medieval atrocity unleashed by a country whose culture is based on Orthodox Christianity, a country claiming to be "a young democracy" and seeing itself as part of the "humane" Europe. The aggression launched by the current Georgian regime and its puppeteers is marked by extraordinary cruelty and cynical lies. Tbilisi would have never dared to do what it did without the support of the US. Even in Ancient Greece, there was an understanding that wars can be fair or unfair. The civilized West, part of which Georgia is trying to be, is obsessed by human rights and believes to be superior to the Greeks, but this does not prevent some (Georgia) from perpetrating genocide and others (Europe and the US) - from encouraging the aggressor.

The analysis of the way the aggression began - without a formal declaration of war - and of the overall conduct of the Georgian leadership makes one ask a number of questions. One of them is: can a crazy fanatic be regarded as a human being? The answer is - definitely not! The crimes committed in South Ossetia - the killings of women, children, and senior citizens, the deliberate extermination of civilians - are instances of inhuman conduct. Specialists in ethical anthropology (Boris Didenko) either explain this type of behavior by brain disease or attribute it to the specifics of conduct of super-aggressive human species. In the latter case, their intentions simply cannot be changed. In the Russian language, such individuals are called non-men. These are monstrous creatures more dangerous than any wild beasts.

The protracted standoff in South Ossetia is something much greater than just a regional conflict. Nor has it ever been exclusively a conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia. It also has axiological, moral, and geopolitical dimensions. The unexpectedness and unjustifiable atrocity of the current war, the careful planning of its military and informational offensives show clearly that one of the objectives was to provoke Russia's inadequate response. Moscow was expected to act inadequately, and those who planned the aggression calculated the options open to Russia.

Option 1: Russia's nonintervention and a withdrawal of the peacekeepers (or the limitation of their activity to the defense of their checkpoints). By the way, this mode of behavior was typical for peacekeeping forces of various levels throughout the conflict in Yugoslavia. Operation Storm and Operation Flash launched by the Croatian army in May-August, 1995 against the unrecognized Republic of Serpska Krajina were particularly similar to the Georgian offensive in South Ossetia.

One of the results of the above operations was the total (and, as I firmly believe, deliberate) demise of the entire UN system of peacekeeping and region security measures. The world literally watched the flight of 250,000 Serb civilians and the bombardment of refugee convoys by Croatian warplanes. The Serb population in the region decreased by 90.7% following the Croatian offensive which was silently OKed by the international community (1)! Confident of the US support, Saakashvili's regime hoped to achieve a similar result in South Ossetia. Croatia practically turned into a mono-ethnic state. No matter what had been promised, at that time Serbs saw no help from either the Serbian Republic or Belgrade. It is well-known what happened to the Pale and Belgrade leaders later - betrayal is never rewarded by happiness.

Russia chose to act otherwise.

In the horrible days of the tragedy, Russians not only truly fulfilled their peacekeeping obligations, but - above all - they also did not betray their countrymen in South Ossetia. This means a lot! Option 2: desired by the US instigators of the war and the Georgian aggressor: Russia's direct involvement in an armed conflict with Georgia. The failure of the expectation made Saakshvili change his plans on the first day of the war.

On August 9, the Georgian Fuhrer gave a 10-minute interview to CNN, which opened an obviously synchronized anti-Russian campaign in the Western media. Currently, the main theme is that Russia used all of its military might against the tiny Georgia. Having such dedicated followers could make Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels happy. As for Saakashvili, he has learned by heart not only Goebbels's notorious commandment "A lie repeated 100 times becomes the thruth", but also the ninth comandment of national socialism which said "Do what must be done in the name of the New Gemany without shame! " (2). In the case of Saakashvili, it could read the same but with "the New Georgia" instead.

Over the past several days, the independent and objective Western media have been launching an all-out mankurtization campaign. The term mankurt was introduced into modern languages by well-know Soviet-era novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov in his The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. According to an ancient Turkic myth, a fresh raw camel hide would be put as a cap on the thoroughly shaven head of a captive meant to be turned into a slave. The slave with his hands tied and with a large wooden stock around his neck preventing him from reaching his head would be left in a desert for several days. Once the hide would start drying it would shrink and bind to the head, thus causing intolerable sufferings further strengthened by thirst. In a while the victim either died or lost the memory of the past life and became a perfect slave having no independent will and totally subdued by its master.

In the modern world, the complex procedure of suppressing human will and ability to think and to analyze has become extremely simple and is known as brainwashing. Judging by the dirty lies about the war waged by the Georgian leadership against civilians and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, the biased Western media and political leaders of the Euro-Atlantic civilization regard their own citizens as mankurts. The global success of brainwashing during the Croatian, Bosnian, Kosovo, Chechen, Iraqi, Crimean, Transdnistrian and other crises is renowned. The aggression of mankurts was invariably directed at the nations designated by the masters - Serbs, Russians, Iraqis... What could prevent Georgia from resorting to the familiar technology?

Here is an example: the interview given to CNN by Russian envoy to the UN Security Council V. Churkin, in which he condemned the barbarian conduct of the Georgian aggressor, was aired with a caption saying that Russia was bombing Georgian towns, and the title remained on the screen throughout the broadcast. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer would have explained the current policies adopted by Western media as follows: "invariably, the source of lies is the intention to dominate others by suppressing their will in order to reaffirm one's own. Consequently, lies as such stem from injustice, greed, and anger".

Western journalists who never visited South Ossetia and used the footage from Russian media consistently avoided mentioning the following appalling figures: 2,000 people - over 15% of the population of South Ossetia - had been killed in less than 24 hours. The international community so preoccupied with human rights issues does not seem to be concerned about the people trapped without water, electric power, and food under the ruins of Tskhinvali. Why is it that Russia is the only country to supply humanitarian aid to South Ossetia? What has happened to your hearts, humane Europeans? Have you forgotten how to use Internet? Do you no longer have satellite TV? Are you really so afraid of alternative information sources?

***

To an extent, my criticism of the Western media and their audiences applies to Russian news agencies and TV channels as well. We must be doing a fairly poor job if it is so easy to portray Russia as the aggressor and the suppressor of the Caucasus! It is common knowledge that whoever has information has power. In the case of Russia, the issue is extremely serious: its national security and the protection of its national interests are impossible without informational security, which must be promoted by everyone here from the President to a provincial newspaper journalist. Anyhow, we are people, not mankurts!

Source: http://www.iras.ir/English/Default_v...0Been%20Happy!

The Balkan Roots of the War in South Ossetia

The current developments in the Caucasus are a manifestation of a broader tendency which is going to play a fundamental role in the global politics for years to come. The crimes committed by the Georgian regime led by M. Saakashvili became possible not only as a result of the military-technical assistance massively provided to Georgia by the US and other countries touting their democratic images, but also due to the collapse of the system of international law which took place on February 17, 2008. On that date, Albanian extremists proclaimed the independence of Kosovo, another conflict zone in the Eurasian space. According to various UN resolutions, Kosovo had to remain a part of Serbia and an international peacekeeping mission was deployed in Kosovo under the UN flag. Western countries not only raised no objections to the unilateral declaration of the Kosovo independence, but welcomed it as the optimal solution.

Throughout the months after the declaration, Moscow kept warning that the "Kosovo independence" would undermine the entire system of international relations. The Kosovo scenario would equally attract the leaders of numerous separatist movements worldwide and the regimes eager to suppress opposition by force. In February and March, international politics watchers followed with a great deal of surprise the cacophony in Tbilisi's official assessments of the Kosovo phenomenon. Already on February 18, the very next day after the Kosovo Parliament had voted for independence, Georgian Foreign Minister Davit Bakradze said Georgia did not recognize the independence of Kosovo. He said that Georgians were united on the issue regardless of their individual political preferences1. As for the unity, it was clearly an overstatement - already on March 29 Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze said in an interview to Estonian media that "since the friends of Georgia had recognized the Independence of Kosovo" it would be quite natural for Georgia to do the same2. The statement outraged the opposition which condemned it as unacceptable in the light of Georgia's problems with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili sided with the opposition on the issue and said that Georgia had no plans to recognize the independence of Kosovo.

The uncertainty of Georgia's stance is explainable. The country is struggling to combine loyalty to the US in every aspect of politics with at least a shadow of common sense at the face of the threat posed to Georgia's positions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the self-proclaimed Kosovo independence. The truth is that the illegitimate outcome in Kosovo absolved politicians like Saakashvili of any legal limitations whatsoever. If the Kosovo Albanians could forge a country of their own by means of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing, what could prevent Tbilisi from cleansing Ossetians from South Ossetia?

Ordering the invasion of South Ossetia and planning a similar aggression against Abkhazia, Saakashvili was simply trying to benefit from the fact that after February 17 the UN, the OCSE, the Council of Europe, and likewise organizations were no longer the guarantors of the international law. Saakashvili's reckoning was absolutely correct in this respect. The Georgian Fuhrer did make a mistake, but of a different kind: as in the not-so-distant past, he and his US patrons expected to meet no resolute opposition from Russia.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a diplomat shared with me certain details of the discussions between Russia and the US in the UN Security Council during the crisis in South Ossetia. The US supported by Great Britain was promoting its vision of the situation with great hypocrisy and stubbornness. Allegedly, there were no 2,000 civilian fatalities in South Ossetia and no 30,000 refugees who fled the Republic. Even if there were any civilian casualties, the people were killed by Russian air strikes. When asked whether they recognized the fact that Russian peacekeepers had been killed, US diplomats mumbled that indeed that was pretty odd, but at the moment it was Russia who was the cause of tensions and had to be stopped. The Russian delegation invoked the recent hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, during which the UN Security Council kept trying for a whole month to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and thus to stop fire from the Israeli side, but the US neutralized the attempts. Americans replied that it was a different type of a situation, there were terrorists and they had to be suppressed. They also claimed that the situation in Yugoslavia was different and had nothing to do with the current developments in the Caucasus. My source said that at the moment talking to Americans in the UN Security Council was completely useless.

All that remains is to admit that Moscow's recurrent warnings concerning the imminent demise of the entire system of international relations as a result of the "Kosovo independence" did not help. Now that the collapse is an accomplished fact, there are no reasons for Russia to refrain from acting according to the new rules of the game, and not only in South Ossetia but also in other regions where it has vital interests, including the Balkans.

Source: http://www.iras.ir/English/Default_v...outh%20Ossetia

Petropolitics at Heart of Russia-Georgia Clash - August, 2008


Interestingly, a day before the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline was set-ablaze in eastern Turkey. According to some news reports this action was said to have been carried out by PKK fighters; or was it the work of the GRU in anticipation of the Georgian invasion? Now there is talk in Moscow that the pipeline in question may not be allowed to resume its operation. With approximately half of the West's oil/gas imports already in Russian control, the chances of finding a new route that can bring Central Asian/Caspian Sea energy to the West free of Moscow's control are fading quite fast. Russia's global energy dominance is clearly on the rise.

Arevordi


***


Petropolitics at Heart of Russia-Georgia Clash


August, 2008

Firemen struggle to extinguish the fire at the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline near the eastern Turkish city of Erzincan August 7, 2008. The BTC pipeline is still ablaze after an explosion and may not repon for another one to two weeks, a senior source at Turkey's state-owned pipeline company Botas told Reuters on Thursday.

In both geopolitical and economic terms, the United States appears a loser in the Russia-Georgia conflict. If the pipeline crossing Georgia, bringing approximately a million barrels of Caspian oil a day to the West, remains shut down for much longer, it could result in higher oil prices. "We could see $4 a gallon gasoline again," warns Edward Yardeni, an American consulting economist. The 1,100-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline provides only about 1 percent of the global demand for oil. But, as Prof. Michael Klare of Amherst College notes: "There's not a lot of spare [crude oil] capacity" in the world. In the long-running struggle for control of Caspian oil and gas and influence in the ex-Soviet states of that region, the clash has been a blow to US clout. "The Russians come out of this as winning this round," says Professor Klare. "They are the power brokers in this part of the world…. But there will be more skirmishes to come."

Klare, author of "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy," sees the conflict as "not a battle for democracy," as portrayed by Washington. "It was a battle for energy," he says. Oil reserves underneath the Caspian Sea are believed to be huge, perhaps as much as 200 billion barrels. That compares with the estimated 260 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia. In his State of the Union Address in 1980, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed what has become known as the "Carter doctrine." It stated that the US would use military force if necessary to defend its national interest in the Persian Gulf region. Carter saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at that time as "a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil." President Clinton, as Klare sees it, expanded the Carter doctrine "more or less" to include Caspian oil. The BTC pipeline, taking crude from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, where it is loaded on tankers for the international market, was "Clinton's brainchild," says Klare.

President Bush has heated up what Klare regards as a struggle over vital resources, rather than a throwback to the cold-war era or classic balance-of-power politics. In that struggle, the US helped Mikheil Saakashvili win the presidency in Georgia after its 2003 "Rose Revolution" and helped build up and train Georgia's armed forces. When the American-educated Saakashvili attempted to show his mettle and restore the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia's control, the Russians took the opportunity to show who is boss. Klare worries that an American military adviser might be hit inadvertently by a Russian bomb, raising US-Russia tensions further. "Throughout the Caucasus, the US has been striving to establish pro-American governments for strategic reasons," says William Beeman, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota. One reason aside from Caspian oil, Professor Beeman suspects, is to provide a staging area for possible attacks on such perceived enemies as Iran and Syria.

The $4 billion BTC pipeline, managed by and 30 percent owned by British Petroleum, was routed through Georgia to avoid sending Caspian oil through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Russia. A 10-mile pipeline could have connected Caspian oil to the well-developed Iranian pipeline system. Beeman charges that millions in government bribes changed hands to place the pipeline in its tortuous route. Georgian authorities charged Russia with trying to bomb the pipeline last Tuesday, a pipeline that had been buried deep in a trench for the sake of security. BP stated it was unaware of such bombings. In any case, the BTC flow of oil – about $1 billion worth every 10 days – had already been stopped by an earlier fire at a facility in Turkey. Kurdish rebels, known as the PKK, claimed the fire was their responsibility.

There have been plans to take the same Georgia route for a Caspian natural-gas pipeline ending in Europe. Klare considers the Russian action as partially a warning that this is not a good idea. Such a pipeline would offer serious competition to Gazprom, the giant Russian oil-and-gas conglomerate. Russia supplies one-quarter of the oil and half the natural gas consumed in Europe, and the revenue is seen as key to Russian prosperity. The European Union has been keen on the Georgia plan as a way to gain bargaining power and reduce the risk of supply cutoffs. But the Russia-Georgia war may have reduced the prospects for such a gas pipeline getting financing and European backing. "I wouldn't hold my breath," says Klare. He advocates that the US, EU, Russia, and the Caspian states develop a comprehensive regional energy plan for Caspian oil and gas.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0816/p14s01-cogn.html

Russia: BTC Pipeline is 'Dead'

A Turkish energy ministry official confirmed that the BTC pipeline blast was a terrorist act. But what’s more, Russia’s international politics advisor to the Russian Duma declared the pipeline “dead” and that it would never operate again. An adviser to the Russian parliament also claimed the closed pipeline would not be opened again and declared the line is “dead”. “The world and countries in the region have seen that not NATO, but Russia is the only one who could secure the energy routes,” Alexander Dugin, international politics advisor to the Russia’s Duma, told Turkish Cumhuriyet daily. “In this context, regarding Turkey’s energy politics, it should be said that the BTC is not running at the moment and it will not run again.” How can they know it will not run again? Because they have the communist PKK at the ready to ensure it stays dead with more bombings if necessary. Earlier this week, we asked “Did Russia Employ Communist PKK Ahead of Georgia Invasion?” The PKK took responsibility for the BTC pipeline bombing. But it remains likely that the communist terrorists got marching orders from Vladimir Putin, one of the opening kinetic salvos into the drive on Georgia. The comment above from Alexander Dugin is a clear indicator for those not already aware that Russia’s intent in Georgia extends far beyond the dirt and people in the former Soviet republic. The larger target is western Europe and the United States. But the conflict is too hot to term it Cold War II. At least in Georgia - and Turkey, if one believes as I do that the PKK acted on Russian request or direction.

Source: http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2...eline-is-dead/


In related news:


Georgian rail bridge blast hits Azeri oil exports

Azerbaijan suspended oil exports through ports in western Georgia on Sunday after an explosion damaged a key rail bridge there. Georgia accused Russian troops of blowing up a railway bridge west of the capital Tbilisi earlier in the day, saying its main east-west train link had been severed. Russia strongly denied any involvement. "Transportation of oil and oil products in the western direction by railway has been suspended," Azerbaijan's state railway company said in a statement read out on television. It gave the bridge explosion as the reason for the suspension. "The last shipment made by this railway contained 15 tanks," it said. Another 72 oil tanks had been due to be sent to next-door Armenia before the railway link was cut off, it said. The railway line runs from Tbilisi, through the Russian-occupied Georgian town of Gori, before splitting in three and running to the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi and southwest to just short of the Turkish border. Azerbaijan is emerging as an important oil supplier to the West and its fast economic growth depends heavily on revenues from oil exports from the land-locked Caspian Sea. Last week it suspended crude shipments via its key, BP-operated (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan link to Turkey after a fire damaged it. Earlier this week BP closed the pipeline taking crude from Azerbaijan's Caspian port of Baku to the Georgian port of Supsa on the Black Sea, citing fighting between Georgian and Russian troops. A pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk currently remains Azerbaijan's only oil export outlet.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt...43375520080816

Russia-Georgia conflict raises worries over oil and gas pipelines

Several important lines pass through Georgia, and for Europeans and others, the routes represent a crucial counterbalance to Russia's control of energy resources.


Russia's invasion of neighboring Georgia has raised doubts about the security of oil and gas pipelines that cross through the former Soviet republic and the wisdom of further investment in the transport lines. The foray also put an emphatic stamp on Russia's growing influence over the region's natural resources and, by proxy, over Europe. MapThe pipelines, supplying about 1% of the world's daily oil needs, have not been damaged by the fighting, but the prospect of that led pipeline part-owner BP to shut down one of the oil lines as a precaution Tuesday. A second oil export line has been out of commission since last week because of a fire in Turkey. "The Russians have clearly demonstrated their military capability of getting very close to the pipelines," said Edward Chow, an energy expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And they also sent the Black Sea fleet off the Georgian coast, so they also have demonstrated that they can blockade Georgia anytime they want."

The pipelines begin in Azerbaijan and pass through Georgian territory en route to ports on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, where tankers take the crude mostly to Western Europe. Chow worries about whether transit lines through Georgia will remain secure in the long run and whether additional foreign investment would be safe. Russia is an energy giant on two continents through the state-controlled Gazprom, its largest company. Gazprom produces 85% of the nation's natural gas, controls 17% of the world's reserves and is a major supplier to countries across Central Asia and Europe. Its former chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, was elected Russia's president in March.

For Europeans and others, the routes through Georgia represent a crucial counterbalance to Russia's control over pipelines and energy resources. Some hoped expansion projects throughout Georgia might further loosen Russia's grip over European energy supplies. Those projects were not far along, Chow said, but in light of Russia's actions, "investors would have to reconsider how attractive those projects are." James L. Williams, publisher of the Energy Economist newsletter, was blunt about the possible repercussions. "For Russia, control of Georgia and the pipeline would restore much of its influence over many of the former satellites of the U.S.S.R.," he said. "It would have the clear benefit of increasing Russia's energy chokehold on Europe."

Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, believes an assertive Russia flush with oil and natural gas revenue can exercise its power by controlling crucial resources. "When the Russians are trying to claw back their power, energy is the major lever in their pursuit to do so," she said. However, political and economic analyst Natalia Leshchenko of consultant Global Insight believes the pipeline issue has been overblown. "The Georgian president brought in the whole pipeline issue to probably send more worries to the West, and especially to the European consumers, to draw more attention to the conflict," she said. "It's not that we should ignore it, but it's certainly not a cause to panic." So far, energy markets have shrugged off the risk. The cost of oil fell again Tuesday, dipping $1.44 to $113.01 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The closing price was more than $34 below the peak posted on July 11. The most prominent among the existing pipelines is the 1,000-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line, which can carry up to 1 million barrels of crude a day from the Azerbaijani coast on the Caspian Sea, through Georgia and Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

The BTC is owned by a consortium of companies. It was expected to carry more than 900,000 barrels of oil a day this month for export, bypassing routes that would have taken the oil through Russia and subjected it to that country's transit fees. Deliveries through the BTC pipeline were halted Aug. 4 after a fire along the Turkish portion of the route. A Turkish separatist group claimed responsibility for the incident. BP also shut down a smaller line, the Western Route Export pipeline, which was recently overhauled. It can carry up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day from Baku on the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa. Also as a precaution, BP also shut down the South Caucasus gas pipeline, which transports natural gas from Baku through Georgia into Turkey. That gas is not exported.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,3564413.story


Russia's Strike Shows The Power Of the Pipeline


It was surely not lost on Russia's bully in chief, Vladimir Putin, that the oil giant BP decided to shut down the pipeline that runs through parts of Georgia controlled by Russian troops. Indeed, that was one of the aims of the cross-border incursion. Putin understands better than anyone that oil and gas are the source of Russia's resurgence as a military and economic power and his own control over the Russian government and key sectors of its economy. It is oil and gas that provide the money to maintain Russia's powerful military, along with a vast internal security apparatus and network of government-controlled enterprises that allow the president-turned-premier to maintain his iron grip on the levers of political and economic power.

A little pipeline history: It was just as Putin was coming to power in 1999 that an agreement was reached to create the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The project would allow Azerbaijan and its production partner, BP, to bypass Russia and transport their newly drilled oil instead through Georgia and Turkey to a port in the eastern Mediterranean. Because of its control of the only pipeline system linking former Soviet republics with the West, Russia had been able to extract most of the profit from any oil and gas that these newly independent countries could produce. But with BTC, which had the active support of the U.S. and European governments, Russia would lose its monopoly chokehold, opening the way for Western oil companies to make multibillion-dollar investments in the energy-rich Caucasus states.

No sooner was BTC completed, however, than Western officials began exploring the possibility of other pipelines that could reach beyond Georgia and Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan, which was thought to have some of the world's largest gas reserves. Their interest was not only in "energy security" and the prospect of oil riches for Western energy companies, but also in promoting Western-style democracy and free-market capitalism in the former Soviet republics. In time, much of their efforts focused on a $12 billion project known as Nabucco, named after the Verdi opera, that would take gas across the Caspian sea, through Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, finally reaching a terminal near Vienna. With Europe already dependent on Russia for a quarter of its natural gas, and that number set to rise with construction of a new northern pipeline running under the Baltic Sea to Germany, European leaders were keen to find alternative sources of natural gas. The effort took on greater urgency in winter 2006 after Russia briefly cut off supplies in its gas-pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Nabucco also became a top priority of the Bush State Department -- in particular, of Matt Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and C. Boyden Gray, a Bush family confidante who was named a special envoy for Eurasian energy, who began actively courting the leaders of Azerbaijan. Putin, quite correctly, viewed Nabucco as part of a larger campaign by Washington to contain and isolate Russia and limit the expansion of its burgeoning energy empire. With Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, Putin launched his own competing proposal called South Stream to build a new pipeline to the Caucasus. Suddenly the Russians were offering to pay Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan multiples of what they had previously offered to secure long-term supply deals. They penned an agreement with Italy and its oil company, Eni, to build a pipeline that would run under the Black Sea from Russia to Europe and end up at the same Austrian terminal as Nabucco. And Russian officials offered highly favorable transit agreements, ownership shares and guaranteed gas supplies to secure transit agreements from Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

To industry observers like Ed Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nabucco has always looked more like a diplomats' pipe dream than a viable economic project. Its promoters had not only failed to secure supply and transit agreements but also had yet to identify an oil company eager to champion the project and finance the pipeline. Now, with its successful military incursion, Russia has raised serious doubts in the minds of Western lenders and investors that a new pipeline through Georgia would be safe from attack or beyond control of the Kremlin. What we've been reminded once again is that Vladimir Putin is perfectly willing to sacrifice the rule of law and the good opinion of others to protect the Russian empire and the energy monopoly that sustains it. The techniques he used to bring Georgia to heel, while more lethal and destructive, have the same thuggish quality as the techniques Putin uses to silence domestic opposition and to expropriate the energy assets of Yukos, Shell and BP.

For the United States and Europe, this ought to be sufficient warning about the folly of extending membership in NATO or the European Union to every one of Russia's neighbors, particularly when they are unwilling to back it up with military action. But it also is a reminder of the futility of trying to co-opt Putin by offering him a seat at the G-7, membership in the World Trade Organization or the honor of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. We may not be willing to send troops to Tbilisi, but at the least we should be willing to deny Russian companies the right to raise capital on Western stock exchanges, extend their pipelines into Western markets or use their energy profits to buy up major Western companies. Vladimir Putin thinks he has looked into the soul of the West and discovered that we need him more than he needs us. It's time to convince him otherwise.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...203003_pf.html


RUSSIA ATTACK: CONSEQUENCES FOR GEORGIA PIPELINE AND POTI PORT


The British Petroleum pipeline that brought Georgia into the international spotlight has been turned off after six days of sporadic Russian bombing in the country. BP spokesperson Rusiko Medzmariashvili stated that the Baku-Supsa pipeline, the older of two BP pipelines that cross Georgia, has been shut down "as a precautionary measure." She did not specify a date for the decision. The larger Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is also not operating due to a fire in eastern Turkey, she said. Medzmariashvili confirmed that no oil is currently heading out of Baku for the Black Sea cost, although he added that "alternative routes are being considered right now." Among the alternatives are rail lines and other, smaller pipelines crossing Georgia.

The decision comes after nearly a week of fighting between Georgia and its northern neighbor, Russia. Russian bombs have hit the western coast of Georgia, including the towns of Senaki, Zugdidi and Poti, which is just 13 kilometers from the Supsa terminal. Early on August 13, a land attack sank two ships adjacent to the port, according to Alan Middleton, chief executive officer of the Poti Port Corporation. The strike was the second Russian attack on Poti since full-scale hostilities began on August 8. On August 9, approximately 20 bombs were dropped on the commercial port and the surrounding area. While the port was largely unharmed, the bombs reportedly killed 11 people and injured nearly 80 others. Port employees told EurasiaNet that the bombs disintegrated into shrapnel-like metal balls upon impact. "[Russia] purely just dropped the bomb to try to kill people and cause mayhem, " Middleton said in an interview the following day. "[It] certainly did." The port, however, remains "fully operational."

Middleton estimated daily losses for both the Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA), which operates the port, and the government, at a "conservative" $1 million per day. Ras Al Khaimah, a United Arab Emirates concern, purchased a 51 percent stake in the port this past April; the government holds a 49 percent share. During a recent guided port tour, no serious damage to facilities could be seen. The bombing resulted in some holes in metal cargo containers and broken windows in the customs office. Middleton said that the port is working at "limited capacity" because workers refuse to come back. That sense of wariness can be felt throughout Poti. A day after the August 9 bombing, the usually busy central market was quiet. Most cars were headed out of town, after a government warning that more bombing was expected. At the Maltaqza Hospital near Poti, doctors remained on high alert. All injured bombing victims were being relocated to other hospitals in the area in preparation for more wounded, according to hospital director Zeinab Charchalia.

Although the hospital had kept over 40 doctors and surgeons on call, the facility suffered from a lack of personnel and equipment, she said. The attack, according to Nino Mcheglishvili, the assistant director of Poti’s health service, was a surprise for the town. "We expected to take injured from Tskhinvali or Senaki. Not our own," she said, adding defiantly that "whatever happens, we will not leave town." Middleton also expressed optimism that life at the port would soon return to normal. RAKIA’s $200 million investment plans are still on track, including the development of a free economic zone near the port, he stressed. "We are in it for the long-term," he said. Editor’s Note: Molly Corso is a freelance reporter currently based in western Georgia.

Source: http://www.eurasianet.org/department...av081308.shtml

Beaten Georgia Feels Humiliated By Russia - August, 2008

After the bloody beating Georgia got at the hands of Russia Turks/Azeris will be even more afraid of stepping out of line in the Caucasus. However, I am glad Armenia stayed out of this mess. Realizing that Russian intentions in Georgia was merely to destroy Tbilisi's war making capability and punish Saakashvili's government and not to annex the country, official Yerevan could not risk totally ruining its already stressed relations with the Georgian government. Let's not forget that the vast majority of imported goods and supplies, including food, natural gas and benzine, gets to Armenia via Georgia.
 

Although I'm upset that the war ended a bit fast, I was, nevertheless, very impressed by Russia's war making capabilities - both on the battlefield and within the halls of government. This was nothing less than a massive victory for the Russian Federation and its regional allies. This was also one of the rare instances in recent history where Moscow actually enjoyed the moral high ground and executed the war virtually flawlessly. What Moscow accomplished with its limited military resources in the region (between 10-15 thousand soldiers) and within a few short days was simply put - outstanding. We need to take into consideration that South Ossetia is a rugged and forested territory that favors the defender, in this case the invading Georgian force. Georgian forces, trained, armed and funded by the West, Turkey and Israel had also been preparing for this invasion for several years. Nevertheless, within two short days the Russian military thoroughly routed the Georgian invasion force, a force that was armed with modern multiple rocket launchers, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank rockets and heavy armor. Without any real trouble Moscow also managed to take the war deep into Georgian territory threatening Tbilisi and was able to bring Saakashvili's government to its knees within three/four days.

And, as predicted, NO ONE was able to do anything for Tbilisi.

 

Which leaves one wondering, what was Saakashvili thinking when he gave the order to invade South Ossetia? Could this be a case of treason, insanity or a classic case of miscalculations rooted in blind/extreme nationalism... In my opinion, it was a combination of all three: Georgians were blinded by their extreme nationalism and hate and allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that the West would help them in time of real need. As a result, Saakashvili's government was found to be utterly incompetent and in a sense treasonous because their actions led to the destruction of their nation. Through all this, Armenia currently enjoys the highest standing within the region.

Nonetheless, this was the blood letting that Moscow needed to carry out in order to show the world that beyond its harsh political rhetoric, increasing wealth and flashy military parades it is fully capable and ready to execute major military operations flawlessly using minimal resources.

Arevordi
***

Georgia Says Russian Troops Still Fighting Despite Accord

August, 2008

Georgia on Wednesday accused Russia of attacking and occupying the central Georgian city of Gori, in flagrant defiance of an agreement struck only hours earlier to end the war that flared up last week. There were unconfirmed reports that a column of Russian tanks had left Gori and was on the road toward Tblisi, the Russian capital. “As I speak, Russian tanks are attacking the town of Gori,” Mr. Saakashvili said. His protests were joined by the leaders of several former Soviet countries from Eastern European, who were in Tblisi to show their support for Georgia. Valdas Adankas, the Lithuanian president, said: “Let the world finally wake up and take action, and provide security for the region. We are creating a situation that could get out of hand.” The Russian attacks on Gori could not be independently confirmed and Russia denied that its tanks were in Gori. The confusion underscored the fragility of the agreement, which Russian and Georgian leaders, still seething at one another, signed under pressure from Western countries eager to prevent the escalation of the conflict in the volatile Caucasus region.

Outside of Gori, black smoke could be seen rising from the city from the direction of a Georgian military base. Inside the city, there was the sound of small arms fire and two tank rounds were fired, but the firing later died down. Russian troops had apparently taken up new positions on the outskirts of Gori. They said they were stationed there to protect the population from irregular fighters who were reported to be stealing cars in the area. Two Russian tanks blocked the entrance to the town on the road from Tblisi. About 20 soldiers stood nearby, holding Kalashnikov rifles and smoking. Their commander, who gave only his first and middle names, Mikhail Petrovich, said the troops were securing the area against harassment from both sides in the conflict. He said there was sporadic shooting fired by locals and from thieves, including “non-local Ossetians,” an apparent reference to pro-Russian irregulars. White smoke rose from behind a nearby hilltop and some gunfire could be heard. Mr. Saakashvili and Mr. Medvedev agreed early Wednesday morning on a framework that could end the war, after five days of fighting.

Declaring that “the aggressor has been punished,” Mr. Medvedev had announced early Tuesday that Russia would stop its campaign, although Russian airstrikes had continued during the day as mediators tried to broker the agreement. By 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Saakashvili had agreed on a plan that would withdraw troops to the positions they had occupied before the fighting broke out. But the situation on the ground remained complicated on Wednesday. In western Georgia, in the town of Senaki, about five Russian personnel carriers and a tank were parked inside a military base, from which they had previously withdrawn. Residents and a police official said Russian troops had looted refrigerators and food. One Russian tank had crashed, apparently accidentally, through a fence and was sitting in the front yard of a house as soldiers fixed it. Whether the agreement takes holds, Russia has achieved its goals, effectively creating a new reality on the ground, humiliating the Georgian military and increasing the pressure on a longtime antagonist, Mr. Saakashvili.

Russian authorities make no secret of their desire to see Mr. Saakashvili prosecuted on war crimes in The Hague, and could well try other measures to undermine him. Mr. Medvedev also authorized Russian soldiers to fire on “hotbeds of resistance and other aggressive actions.” As the conflict cools and hardens, the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, could wind up permanently annexed by Russia. But in signing on to an accord, Russia appears to have stopped short of a full-scale invasion that would have set off a broader cold-war-style confrontation with the West. Its actions have already aroused widespread alarm about Russia’s redrawing of the geopolitical map, and some fear that they could undermine democratic gains in a region that was once part of the Soviet sphere. But Mr. Saakashvili’s military attack on the South Ossetians, which set off the crisis last Thursday, has also drawn criticism as needlessly provocative. “The tanks should go. I hope they will,” Mr. Saakashvili said on Tuesday, as he emerged from a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who carried the document from Moscow to Tbilisi.

“There was a degree of constructive ambiguity” in the document that allowed the announcement to be made, said a senior European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Western negotiators, who had shuttled between the Georgian and Russian governments for days, said they were optimistic that the crisis was under control. “Traditionally, we will see a few skirmishes, but frontal attacks and positioning will end,” said Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb of Finland, the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Bush administration is expected to cancel a scheduled naval exercise with Russia and to press NATO to prohibit a Russian warship from joining a separate alliance exercise. A cancellation would be the first concrete reprisal against Russia for its military actions in Georgia. As the news of an impending cease-fire filtered across Georgia on Tuesday, citizens reacted with relief and defiance. At a rally in Tbilisi, a euphoric crowd waved signs that read “Stop Russia,” and Mr. Saakashvili announced Georgia’s withdrawal from the “Russia dominated” Commonwealth of Independent States. “I saw Russian planes bombing our villages and killing our soldiers, but I could not do anything, and this will always be with me,” he said. “I promise that I will make them regret this.”

The presidents of five former Soviet satellite states and republics — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Poland — flew into Tbilisi and appeared beside Mr. Saakashvili in a show of solidarity. “I am a Georgian,” said Toomas Hendrick Ilves, the president of Estonia. In Gori, citizens ventured out of their hiding places and began to sweep up glass and debris. Cars began to move on the streets of the city. Izmar Chivolidze sat on a curb that was stained with blood and strewn with broken glass. “Putin did this,” he said, speaking of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “Putin created this circus.” Other areas of the country remained on a war footing. In the port of Poti, bombing was heard an hour after Mr. Medvedev’s statement early Tuesday morning. Under attack by Abkhaz and Russian forces, Georgia later withdrew its remaining soldiers from the Kodori Gorge after four days of attacks, said Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for Georgia’s Interior Ministry. He said 22 civilians had been killed after Mr. Medvedev said the campaign would end. “Russia has said it has ended its invasion, but in reality, it has not,” Mr. Utiashvili said. “We should all prepare for the worst.”

The long-running dispute between Russia and Georgia boiled over on Thursday, after Mr. Saakashvili ordered Georgian forces to move into South Ossetia, a breakaway region with strong ties to Russia. Russian authorities say 2,000 people were killed in fighting around Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and more than 30,000 refugees fled over the Russian border. These numbers could not be confirmed independently, and some analysts believe that Russia is citing them to bolster its war crimes allegations against Mr. Saakashvili. During talks throughout the day between Mr. Saakashvili and Mr. Sarkozy, the French leader had to call Mr. Medvedev twice to clarify points that had concerned the Georgian president. Mr. Saakashvili insisted that Russian peacekeepers remaining in the disputed territories be the same ones previously stationed there, and not crack troops swapped in anticipation of fighting. He also insisted that there be no discussion of the breakaway regions’ seceding from Georgia. Once Russian and Georgian forces pull back, international mediators will have to confront a flurry of problems. Will Russian and Georgian troops withdraw to their positions of last Thursday, before the latest fighting broke out, or to their positions in 1991, when the dispute over Georgia’s enclaves began?

Who will enforce a cease-fire — the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which currently monitors South Ossetia; the United Nations, which monitors Abkhazia; or some other organization, like the European Union? France is seeking support from its European Union partners for the deployment of European peacekeeping monitors, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Diplomats have tried to keep the parties to the conflict focused on short-term practical steps — first, a cease-fire, second, allowing humanitarian aid into the war zone, and third, withdrawing troops. Only then, said Mr. Stubb, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would Russian and Georgian officials begin a peace effort to address the actual causes of the conflict. Sergei Markov, of Moscow’s Institute for Political Studies, said Western pressure had some effect, but Kremlin strategists became worried about doing permanent damage to Moscow’s already troubled relationship with Georgia. “Our relationship with Georgia is more important, so that Russia will have influence over the whole south Caucasus, just as it has for centuries,” he said.

The cease-fire negotiations coincided with bombing and artillery barrages that landed mostly on the outskirts of the city of Gori, and in villages in a plain to the north. Five people, including a Dutch journalist, were killed when a missile landed on Stalin Square. As Mr. Medvedev was making his announcement early Tuesday that the military campaign would be halted, Russian troops were spotted farther inside Georgia on the western front, south of Abkhazia. The troops drove through the port city of Poti, digging into positions on the city’s outskirts. There were reports that Russian troops were engaged in similar activities in the western Georgian towns of Zugdidi and Kareli, an American official said. A dozen armored vehicles guarded a bridge connecting Poti to Batumi, another Black Sea port. The troops, who spoke Russian and wore patches indicating they were paratroopers, said they were peacekeepers. A Georgian police official, who would not give his name because he was not authorized to speak, appeared downcast. He said he had had no contact with the Russians. “We have no orders to talk to them,” he said. “They came here themselves.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/wo...tml?ref=europe


Beaten Georgia Feels Humiliated By Russia


(A soldier gestures from a tank beside his comrade as part of a Russian military convoy travelling on its way on a main road leading to the Georgian city of Zugdidi, which is about 350 km away from Georgia's capital Tbilisi, August 13, 2008. Georgia accused Russia on Wednesday of sending tanks from South Ossetia into the Georgian town of Gori but Russia issued a swift denial and an eyewitness said the town was empty.)


OUTSKIRTS OF GORI, Georgia — - The Russian bombs and shells were falling fast Tuesday afternoon, dropping unseen through mist that clung to the mountains and wisped over the valleys. Panicked refugees pressed the gas pedal to the floor and roared toward the capital city of Tbilisi, trying to outrun the explosions. Russian helicopters hung low over the foothills. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had already said that the "operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace" was finished. But here in Georgia, the war dragged on. "They want to destroy us," groaned Aftondil Huroshvili, who begged for a drink of water in a crowded hospital ward in Tbilisi. The retired topographer was strolling through Gori's central square when Russia bombed the post office. Shrapnel from the blast shattered his lower leg. The Conflict By The Numbers "They want to invade and take everything," he said, rolling his balding head back and forth in pain. "Why are they doing this?" As a battered country waited Tuesday to see whether a cease-fire would finally come to fruition, it was clear that Russia had already made its point. It took just five days of war to deal a shattering blow to Georgia's collective psyche. People who had started to divorce themselves from the ominous, Soviet-era sense of threat from their massive northern neighbor, who had started to dream of NATO membership and Western-style democracy, have just learned a hard lesson in their own vulnerability.




"We are like an example for the others, that Russia can do the same to anybody," said Nikoloz Kvachatze, a young doctor in Tbilisi's Republic Hospital. "They must be stopped. They won't stop by themselves. They'll start with Georgia, and then it will be Poland and Estonia and Ukraine." Until this week, some Georgians believed that their newly improved armed forces, trained and outfitted with help from the United States, might hold their own against Russia's much larger but aging military. There was a sense that Georgia was moving beyond the reach of Moscow's ire and would soon find a place among Western states. Many thought that Georgia's gestures of solidarity, from the troops sent to fight alongside the Americans in Iraq to the street named after George W. Bush, might induce the United States to back them up militarily if they ever found themselves menaced by Russia. But they were wrong.




After Georgia launched a surprise attack to seize control of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, killing hundreds of civilians and a handful of Russian peacekeepers, they found themselves alone — and facing Moscow's wrath. "They are invading us, and it's happening in the 21st century, and the whole world is watching," said Teia Tsvertsvadze, a slim paramedic who wore a wooden cross tied around her neck on a string. "We're frustrated. If we were given more active support, maybe Russia wouldn't dare." This war has neatly illustrated that Russia has the military might to overcome Georgia in just a few days. Russian troops have at times appeared to be showing off: Cutting main roads only to relinquish them; occupying towns in Georgia proper and then leaving again; dropping bombs on military and civilian targets at will. "The morale of the people is destroyed," said Vaso Suramelo, 46, staring in dismay at the smoldering hills.




The remains of a hard battle littered the country road leading into Gori from the capital. Burned-out tanks and broken-down artillery canons lay scattered like forgotten toys on the charred roadway. Two hulking personnel carriers had smashed into one another, head-on. Passing cars slowed down and eased around them. But the soldiers were gone. The road to the capital stretched out, half-deserted and stripped of military protection. There were signs Tuesday that the war could be drawing to an end, but many Georgians remain skeptical. Russia will continue to fight, they said, until they take over the entire country, or until the Georgian government falls. "They have no right to do it," said ambulance driver Shalva Gokashvilli. "They want to keep us under control, to keep us from NATO. They never wanted us to be independent." "The Russians never keep their promises," Gokashvilli spat out.

Source: http://www.courant.com/news/nationwo...0,953425.story


Georgia Claims Russian Tanks Enter Key City


Georgia is accusing Russia of sending tanks into the strategic city of Gori despite a cease-fire in the fight over two pro-Russian breakaway Georgian regions. Georgian National Security Council Secretary Alexander Lomaia told reporters Wednesday that about 50 Russian tanks and armored vehicles had entered the city. Russia has denied the presence of tanks, but says troops have set up several checkpoints near the largely-abandoned city. There were no reports of combat. Both Georgia and Russia have agreed to the main points of a French-brokered peace plan which calls for the withdrawal of forces from two Georgian breakaway regions and free access for humanitarian aid workers. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the European Union should deploy peacekeeping monitors to help diffuse the situation. Kouchner spoke Wednesday ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium. Georgia's Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili says that 175 Georgians have died in five days of air and ground attacks. Russia says the death toll is at least 1,500. There are no independently confirmed casualty figures. South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990's but have not been internationally recognized.

Source: http://voanews.com/english/2008-08-13-voa9.cfm


Russian troops roll into key city despite truce


ORJOSANI, GEORGIA - AUGUST 13: Russian soldiers sit atop their armoured vehicles, August 13, 2008 near Orjosani on the main road between Gori and Tblisi in Georgia. Russia has denied reports of Russian troops advancing on Tblisi, as a fragile ceasefire holds in the region.

Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape. Georgian officials said Gori, a central hub on Georgia's main east-west highway, was looted and bombed by the Russians before they left later in the day. Moscow denied the accusations, but it appeared to be on a technicality: a BBC reporter in Gori reported that Russians tanks were in the streets as their South Ossetian separatist allies seized Georgian cars, looted Georgian homes and then set some homes ablaze. "Russia has treacherously broken its word," Georgia's Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said Wednesday in Tbilisi, the capital.




Georgians run away from an approaching Russian military convoy, near Gori, Georgia northwest of capital Tbilisi, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008 Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, smashing an EU-brokered truce designed to end the six-day conflict that has uprooted 100,000 people and scarred the Georgian landscape.


An AP reporter saw dozens of trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori, roaring southeast. Soldiers waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!" But the convoy turned north and left the highway about an hour's drive from the Georgian capital, and set up camp a mile off the road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian troops were near Gori to secure weapons left behind by the Georgians. To the west, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists pushed Georgian troops out of Abkhazia and even moved into Georgian territory itself, defiantly planting a flag over the Inguri River and laughing that retreating Georgians had received "American training in running away." The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia.




Smoke rises from a Georgian army base outside Gori, Georgia, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008. About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning, according to a top Georgian official Alexander Lomaia. Complete confirmation of Lomaia's claim was not possible, but an APTN television crew in Gori saw some Russian armored vehicles Wednesday morning near a military base there.


In Washington, President Bush said he was skeptical that Moscow was honoring the cease-fire and announced that a massive U.S. humanitarian effort was already in progress, and would involve U.S. aircraft as well as naval forces. "To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe and other nations and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis," Bush said. The EU peace plan calls for both sides to retreat to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of fighting late Thursday. That phrasing apparently would allow Georgian forces to return to the positions they held in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and clearly obliges Russia to leave all parts of Georgia except South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili criticized Western nations for failing to help Georgia, a U.S. ally that has been seeking NATO membership. "I feel that they are partly to blame," he said Wednesday. "Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible ... but so are those who fail to react. In a way, Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us."




Russian at first denied that tanks were even in Gori but video footage proved otherwise. About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori in the morning, according to Lomaia. The city of 50,000 lies 15 miles south of South Ossetia, where much of the fighting has taken place. Russian deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn admitted that Russians went into Gori, but not in tanks. He said Russians were looking for Georgian officials to talk to about implementing the EU truce but could not find any. A Russian government official who wasn't authorized to give his name said Russian troops checked a Georgian military base near Gori and found lots of abandoned weapons and ammunition, then moved the ordnance to a safe place as part of efforts to demilitarize the area. Some of the Russian units that later left to camp outside the city were camouflaged with foliage. The convoy was mainly support vehicles, including ambulances, although there were a few heavy cannons. There were about 100 combat troops and another 100 medics, drivers and other support personnel.




About six miles away from the camp, about 80 well-equipped Georgian soldiers were forming what appeared to be a new frontline, armed with pistols, shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and Kalashnikovs. Sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Russians responded to Georgian snipers. "We must respond to provocations," Nogovitsyn said. Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev has insisted they stay.


In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia they had controlled. "This is Abkhazian land," one separatist told an AP reporter over the Inguri River, saying they were laying claim to historical Abkhazian territory. The fighters had moved across a thin slice of land dotted with Georgian villages. "The border has been along this river for 1,000 years," separatist official Ruslan Kishmaria told the AP on Wednesday. He said Georgia would have to accept the new border. Nogovitsyn admitted Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori — the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn.


Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. Its Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot in Soviet times and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics. For several days, Russian troops held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi's outskirts Wednesday. Later in the day, Georgian officials said the Russians pulled out of Zugdidi. "They just don't want freedom, and that's why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it," he declared to thousands at a jam-packed square in Tbilisi. Leaders of five former Soviet bloc states — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine — also appeared at the rally and spoke out against Russian domination.


Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree Wednesday saying that Russian navy ships deployed to the Georgian coast will need authorization to return to the navy base Russia leases from Ukraine. The World Food Program sent 34 tons of high-energy biscuits Wednesday help the tens of thousands uprooted by the fighting. Russia has accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died. Georgia says at least 175 Georgians have died in Russian air and ground attacks. The Russia-Georgia dispute also reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued Russia for alleged ethnic cleansing.

Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g..._6oVwD92HHK0G1


Russian convoy drives fresh fears of war


THE fragile ceasefire between Georgia and Russia was in jeopardy overnight after a Russian convoy headed towards the nation's capital. The BBC reported that a convoy of about 60 vehicles, mainly troop carriers, progressed 15 to 20 kilometres east from Gori along the road to Tbilisi. But it said the convoy then turned north, away from the capital. A spokesman for the Russian Government said the convoy was not bound for the Georgian capital, but was demilitarising the area near the South Ossetian border so that Georgia could not launch new attacks. The troops, which had been on Georgia's main east-west highway between Gori and Tbilisi, "never planned" to travel to the capital, the spokesman said. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili earlier told CNN that forces were moving towards Tbilisi, and were trying to encircle the city. "The Russians are encroaching upon the capital. They are making a circle," Mr Saakashvili said, adding: "We will protect our capital until the last drop of our blood. We will never surrender to the Russians." Mr Saakashvili said Georgian forces were stationed in and around Tbilisi and vowed an "all-out resistance" to the Russian forces. His comments came just hours after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Russia and Georgia had agreed a fragile ceasefire after five days of bitter conflict.


Russia, however, has accused Georgia of failing to pursue an "active withdrawal" from South Ossetia. "Georgian forces have begun their pull-back toward Tbilisi but no active withdrawal has yet been observed," General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the staff of the armed forces, told reporters. Bowing to vastly superior military might, Mr Saakashvili had earlier said he would accept a Russian ceasefire agreement to end a five-day conflict, despite terms some have described as humiliating. Mr Saakashvili appears to have all but given up his bid to reclaim two disputed regions on the Russian border. Russia, which said it had suspended military operations, continued bombing sites deep in Georgia hours later. The head of its national security council, Alexander Lomaia, said about 50 Russian tanks had entered Gori, 25 kilometres south of South Ossetia, about eight hours after Georgia accepted the ceasefire. Russia denied the claims.


The United States has cancelled planned joint military exercises with Russia, as officials consider broader reprisals in protest at Moscow's offensive. The August 15-23 exercises were to involve ships from Russia, France, Britain and the US in the Sea of Japan, and an onshore component in the Russian port of Vladivostok. Top US officials were studying responses to Russia's "disproportionate" attacks on Georgia, after demanding Moscow make good on its promise to halt the offensive. Analysts said the peace plan, backed by France and the European Union, left no doubt Russia had won the conflict. Russia clearly saw it as an opportunity to reassert dominance over an area it viewed as part of its historic sphere of influence. Georgia, a former Soviet republic, gained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/world/russi...j.html?page=-1


And in related news:




Ukraine imposes restrictions on Russian navy


Ukraine imposed new restrictions on Russian naval vessels based at Sevastopol on the Black Sea as former Soviet bloc states lined up to show support for Georgia in its fight with Russia.

President Victor Yushchenko raised the prospect of revoking an agreement that allows Russia to use the Crimean port until 2017 if Russian commanders defy the new restrictions. The presidential decree requires vessels blockading Georgia to ask Kiev's permission to return to the treaty port. Reasserting control over its near neighbours is at the heart of Russia's foreign policy. It has ruthlessly cut winter energy supplies to secure compliance from Eastern Europe and used Russian-speaking minorities from the Baltics to Central Asia as leverage against states courting the West. Mr Yushchenko joined the leaders of Poland and the Baltic states on a solidarity mission by a self-described group of "captive nations" of the USSR, to Tbilisi on Tuesday. Even before yesterday's decree, Mr Yushchenko had faced domestic criticism for adopting positions that inevitably antagonise Moscow. Ukrainian political analyst James Hydzik said the president had put the country in Moscow's crosshairs. He said: "Protestations of neutrality from the Ukrainian government are not helped by the visit [to Tbilisi], at least from the Russian standpoint."

Russia has used a mixture of bluster and threats to resist efforts by Georgia and Ukraine to join Nato. But even states that are members of the EU are not immune from Kremlin intimidation. "In the Baltic states and Ukraine, independence is still seen as something fragile and not necessarily built to last," said Bartosz Cichocki, an expert at the Polish Institute for International Affairs. "So if it's not defended actively, it can't last." In the aftermath of the Russian assault on Georgia, many former Soviet citizens doubt that the West can restrain Moscow. Even confidence in Nato's charter guarantee that all states will aid any member attacked from abroad has been shaken. "People are certainly afraid that Russia could attack Lithuania just like Georgia," said Lithuanian political scientist Kestutis Girnius. "And you see that kind of view among politicians," The legacy of Soviet domination still haunts Russia's relations with its former allies. "We came to fight since our old neighbour thinks that it can fight us," Polish President Lech Kaczynski said in Tbilisi. "This country thinks that old times will come back, but that time is over. Everyone knows that the next one could be Ukraine, then Poland." Poland and the three Baltic countries yesterday raised objections to a French ceasefire plan, criticising it for not explicitly guaranteeing Georgia territorial integrity.

Not all ex-Soviet states are anti-Kremlin democracies. But even pliable Belarus, a Soviet-style dictatorship with a mutual support pact with Moscow, was admonished by the Kremlin for not offering enough support. Moscow has challenged world opinion before, most notoriously its agents used radioactive material to poison defector Andrei Litvinenko in a London hotel. But the Russian operation in Georgia has raised calls to isolate Russia to the forefront of international politics. Both candidates in the US presidential election have condemned Moscow's aggression. Senator John McCain had already signalled he would toughen policy towards Russia if elected by securing its expulsion from the G8. Guided by the foreign policy specialist Robert Kagan, Sen McCain hopes to establish a league of democracies to contain authoritarian states, principally Russia and China.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...sian-navy.html


Rice told Georgia to avoid conflict with Russia: report

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice privately warned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to avoid a conflict with Russia during her trip to Tbilisi in July, The New York Times reported Wednesday. "She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table," an unnamed senior US official who accompanied Rice on the trip told the newspaper. The message was delivered during a private dinner on July 9, the report added. Publicly, however, during the trip Rice blamed Russia as a source of continuing unrest in the country. Russia "needs to be a part of resolving the problem and solving the problems and not contributing to it," she said at a July 10 joint press conference with Saakashvili. Rice's July visit to Georgia came amid increased diplomatic confrontation between the Washington and Moscow over Georgia's desire to join NATO, as well as the status of the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Despite the public bravado, top US officials warned the Georgians not to allow the conflict to escalate through until hours before Georgia launched its attack, the newspaper reported. The top US envoy for the region, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, received a phone call from Georgia's foreign minister on Thursday saying their country was under attack, the report stated. "We told them they had to keep their unilateral cease-fire," the unnamed official told the newspaper. "We said, be smart about this, don't go in and don't fall for the Russian provocation. Do not do this'." Saakashvili did not inform Washington ahead of the offensive, senior US officials told the newspaper. "The Georgians figured it was better to ask forgiveness later, but not ask for permission first," an administration official told the newspaper. "It was a decision on their part. They knew we would say no'."

Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...h8eOXcJKXZwRuw


Georgia's Israeli arms point Russia to Iran

With the eruption of fighting between Russia and Georgia, Israel has found itself in an awkward position as a result of its arms sales to Georgia. Israel is now caught between its friendly relations with Georgia and its fear that the continued sale of weaponry will spark Russian retribution in the form of increased arms sales to Iran and Syria. After fighting broke out late last week between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Israel's Foreign Ministry over the weekend recommended suspending the sale of all weapons and defense-related equipment to Georgia, the daily Ha'aretz newspaper reported. The paper quoted an unnamed senior official saying that Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons."

Israel's immediate concern is that Russia will proceed with the sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, which would help it defend its nuclear installations from aerial attack. Israel, like the US, believes that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing a bomb, and Israeli leaders have refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike aimed at derailing Iran's nuclear aspirations. Israel recently conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that was widely viewed as a rehearsal for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear installations. But with the US and Europe resorting to diplomatic pressure in the form of sanctions to deter Iran, Israel is loathe to anger Russia, which until now has opposed harsher sanctions on Tehran. Israel's relations with Georgia have been close, partly because there is a large Georgian xxxish community in Israel. In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some US$200 million worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems and training by former senior Israeli officers.

"Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili told Israel's Army Radio in Hebrew shortly after the fighting erupted. Israel is not a major supplier of arms to Georgia, with the US and France supplying Tbilisi with most of its weaponry. But the arms transfers have attracted media attention partly because of the role played by some high-profile Israeli figures, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo, who conducted business in Georgia on behalf of Israel Military Industries. According to media reports, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, a senior commander in the 2006 Lebanon war who resigned after the release of a highly critical report on the way the war was conducted, served as an adviser to Georgian security forces. Further attention was drawn to the Israel-Georgia arms trade earlier this year when a Russian jet shot down an Israeli-made drone being operated by the Georgians.

Even though weapons transfers were modest in scope, Russian diplomats began increasingly relaying to Israel their annoyance over its military aid to Georgia, including the special forces training provided by security experts. Israel decided about a year ago to limit military exports to defensive equipment and training. New contracts weren't approved as the arms sales were scaled back. Georgia's request for 200 advanced Israeli-made Merkava tanks, for example, was turned down. There were reports in Israel that the sale of the tanks didn't go through because of a disagreement over the commission that was to be paid as part of the deal. But Amos Yaron, the former director general of the Defense Ministry, insisted it had to do with "security-diplomatic considerations" - a clear reference to the sensitivity of the arms sales to Georgia. Israel, Yaron added, didn't want "to harm Russian interests too much". Asked about the motivation to initially engage in the sale of weaponry to Georgia despite concerns it might anger Russia, Yaron replied: "We did see that there was potential for a conflagration in the region but Georgia is a friendly state, it's supported by the US, and so it was difficult to refuse."

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH14Ak02.html