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BUCHAREST, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- What happened with Kosovo foreshadows a similar direction in South Ossetia, the visiting Romanian President Traian Basescu said on Wednesday in Chisinau. "At present, sovereign and independent countries are dismantled in the name of collective rights of the minorities," Basescu said when talking with his Moldovan counterpart Vladimir Voronin. "This is what happened with Kosovo and Serbia lost a part of its territory, and the things foreshadow a similar direction in South Ossetia and, should I dare say it, in Abkhazia," the Romanian president stressed. "You know that Romania is among the countries that did...

via translation - Moscow. August 20. INTERFAX.RU - Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov said that Russia's upper house of parliament is ready to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for that would be the will of the people of these republics. "The Federation Council is ready to recognize the independent status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, if people so wish these republics, and if it so decides president of Russia," - told reporters the Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, who arrived in North Ossetia and accompanies a shipment of humanitarian aid, prepared Members of the Federation Council. He...

Excerpt - POTI, Georgia -- Russian troops briefly seized control of the economically vital Georgian port of Poti Tuesday morning, a day after Moscow said it had begun pulling its forces out of Georgia. ~ snip ~ The Russians also confiscated five jeeps and an armored Humvee belonging to the U.S. armed forces, according to Alan Middleton, CEO of Poti Sea Port Corp. He said the equipment was used for joint U.S.-Georgian military exercises and was sitting in the Poti container terminal ready to be shipped back to a U.S. base in Europe. "I suppose the U.S. won't be impressed...

RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF SAYS RUSSIA STARTS TROOPS PULLOUT FROM GEORGIA CONFLICT ZONE

Excerpt - MOSCOW, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The leader of the breakaway region at the heart of the Georgia-Russia conflict said on Monday he would ask Moscow to station a military base on the territory of South Ossetia. Asked in an interview with Reuters if he would like a permanent Russian base in the region, South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said: "We will ask the leadership of the Russian Federation for there to be a Russian military base on the territory of South Ossetia because Russian citizens live here." ~ snip ~ "International observers will no longer be present on...

More than 130 Georgian civilians are being held captive by South Ossetian authorities in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, after being rounded up and herded into a single room in the interior ministry headquarters here, the Guardian has learned. The prisoners, who were plucked off the streets according to their nationality soon after hostilities broke out 10 days ago, are being kept indefinitely in the hope of exchanging them for Ossetian civilians allegedly abducted by Georgian soldiers during the conflict. One interior ministry official confirmed the plan, saying: "We hope there will be an exchange soon." The 131 "hostages" are being...

15 August 2008 Serbian defence officials denied selling weapons to Georgia, after Russia said assault rifles made in country’s arsenal Zastava were used in the recent conflict in South Ossetia. A defence ministry official said the weapons were most likely sold to Georgia by one of the other former Yugoslav republics, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. The M70 assault rifle is an improved copy of former Soviet Kalashnikov AK47. Both share the same caliber of 7.62x39 mm, but the Yugoslav version has an integral rifle grenade sight and is of much better quality. --- n 2007, workers from Zastava Oruzje...

Compare, for instance, the geese of Kosovo and South Ossetia. Slobodan Milosevic's goose ended up percolating on the stove of an international tribunal in The Hague, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization stirring the pot. The Serb leader escaped being a convicted war criminal only by dying before the end of his trial. Having jumped from the sinking ship of communism to the leaky lifeboat of patriotism in the early 1990s, Milosevic tried but couldn't prevent the disintegration of Yugoslavia. He then attempted to stave off the disintegration of Serbia by resisting the secession of Kosovo, a province with an...

• Saakashvili: a lie that Georgia started it; • Tbilisi ready for international investigation; • Merkel: no time for putting blame; President Saakashvili has strongly brushed off any suggestion that it was his administration to blame for armed conflict with Russia and said Georgia was ready for international investigation to find out what led to the conflict. At a joint news conference with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, President Saakashvili was asked to comment on allegations that he also was partially responsible for the crisis because of attacking breakaway South Ossetia. Saakashvili said in a response that it was Russia which...

GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russia announced to the West it would begin withdrawing forces from Georgia on Monday after a war that dealt a humiliating blow to the Black Sea state and raised fears for energy supplies to Europe. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had told him by telephone that forces would begin leaving around midday on Monday. Sarkozy, representing the European Union, said failure to pull out under a ceasefire deal would have "serious consequences" for ties with the EU. Sunday saw no evidence of fighting, but Russian troops continued to man...

What began as a skirmish has become a tragedy of global importance. As Russian soldiers brought a campaign of vicious reprisals to civilians, Georgia endured a nightmare. But those ten days also shook the world: Vladimir Putin has revealed his ambition to extend Moscow's power and challenge the military dominance of Europe and the US It began when five men stole into the rustic village of Tkviavi. With its plum trees, walnut groves and vines, Tkviavi was one of a jigsaw of picturesque villages beneath the hulking mountains of central Georgia. Up the road was Tskhinvali - the grim Soviet-style...

Update: Now we know where the western half of the Georgian Army is located - Kutaisi(5) Textbook invasion of Georgia. Tactical pause. Cease fire allegedly brokered. Russia insists on doing "recon" and defending against any attacks. Some firing continues. Reports of 30,000 refugees, mostly women and children, fleeing north to Russia (the men, apparently, are remaining behind as irregular militia fighting with the Russians). Other reports indicate at least 60,000 fled south east to Tbilisi from parts of Ossetia and the town of Gori. Time for a map to see how the situation is shaping up (Library, University of Texas,...

DOZENS of haggard Georgian captives were marched through the rebel city of South Ossetia today as separatists called on Tbilisi to recover the rotting corpses of its soldiers. The mostly elderly men - apparently all civilians - walked with their heads bowed and their hands behind their backs, escorted by armed guards. Locals stopped to take pictures on their mobile phones. Some pointed and laughed as the detainees marched through Tskhinvali. One woman said: "Those are the prisoners? But they're just old men!" Seventeen of the men were brought to the courtyard of the separatist territory's defence ministry to sweep...

Aug. 9, 2008 (EIRNS)—Following his service to his British masters in the Balkan wars of 1990-91, George Soros convened a series of meetings inside Serbia, that were to launch the "Rose Revolution," the "Orange Revolution," and the series of phony democracy insurgencies designed to undermine nation-states and create a "ring around Russia" for a future British-inspired confrontation. One of the key operations run by Soros, as indicated in a LaRouche Political Action Committee press release, "LaRouche Denounces `Obama's Godfather' George Soros," was to topple Georgia President Eduard Shevardnadze, and bring in Mikhail Saakashvili, the Colombia University-trained project of Soros's "Open...

The Russian invasion of Georgia was not a spontaneous response to what Moscow called “genocide” in South Ossetia but had been planned in detail since April, (snip) It is generally agreed that the spark for the war was the Nato summit in Bucharest in April at which Georgia was promised membership of the western alliance, (snip) By the start of August, Russian military engineers repaired the railway linking Russia to Abkhazia, allowing the sudden appearance of heavy military equipment that was later used to attack and loot the Georgian army base at Senaki, (snip) The Russian-backed separatists stepped up attacks...

Russia cemented gains made in its war with Georgia today when a peace deal, signed by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, allowed Russian peacekeepers to remain in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and temporarily patrol outside the area.

Russia: After hearing the hard, cold facts of Russia's brutal occupation of Georgia, the West has no choice but to respond harshly to Vladimir Putin's regime. Failure to do so would only invite further attacks. Apologists for Russia say it really had no choice: Because of "genocide" in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia had to intervene. It was an "emergency." It wasn't.

I hope everyone has heard about the war in South Ossetia and Georgia. You probably are convinced by what the media reports, in particular that “Russia is the aggressor against innocent Georgia”. Our government is backing Georgia and also telling us about Russia’s aggression. But that is a lie. I have always made fun of the conspiracy theory people, but I find myself in the same position–criticizing the government and sounding crazy. But I cannot keep quite when such an injustice is going on; so please do not take my words as that of a crazy man who hates America–on...

The phone may not have rung at 3 a.m., but when word came of Russia's brutal invasion of neighboring Georgia, one of the two presidential candidates instinctively understood the adventure's long-range implications. And one did not. Indeed, the crisis in the Caucasus is giving voters real insight into how John McCain and Barack Obama might handle a foreign-policy emergency. In his first public reaction, Obama merely called on "Georgia and Russia to show restraint" - a reflexive exercise in what Sen. Joe Lieberman rightly labeled "moral neutrality." Then Obama called for a UN Security Council resolution condemning Russia - apparently...

Georgia Conflict - Open Thread #4 Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 15, 2008 - 10:08am Topic: Policy/PoliticsTags: georgia, pipelines, russia [list all tags] Russia has won in the conflict in Georgia, and we are in the process of sorting out what happens next. Various ones have written what they see happening. GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT SHOWS EU'S ENERGY VULNERABILITY But this week's offensive, during which British Petroleum shut down an oil pipeline and temporarily stopped pumping gas through Georgia, has called into question plans for a Eurasian corridor free from Russian interference. "The Caspian region is wondering what this...