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SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned ex-Soviet Moldova on Monday against repeating Georgia's mistake of trying to use force to seize back control of a breakaway region. Russia sent peacekeepers to Moldova in the early 1990s to end a conflict between Chisinau and its breakaway Transdniestria region and is trying to mediate a deal between the two sides. Transdniestria, one of a number of "frozen conflicts" on the territory of the former Soviet Union, mirrored the standoff between Georgia and its rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia until they erupted in war earlier this month. Russia...

Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, is traveling to the nation of Georgia, which has seen intense fighting with Russian forces over the past month, her husband said Monday. John McCain announced the trip at a fundraiser in Sacramento, California, telling the crowd, “Cindy is not here today, and I am sorry she is not, but she is on her way to the little country of Georgia.” The wife of the Arizona senator will return on Wednesday, CNN's Dana Bash reported. Cindy McCain is traveling with the U.N.'s World Food Program and plans to meet with Georgian...

Russia's upper house of parliament has voted unanimously for a resolution calling on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognise Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The Federation Council voted 130 for the resolution with none against. Both houses of the Russian parliament are scheduled to discuss the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia at extraordinary sessions today. France, which brokered a ceasefire in the conflict which has killed hundreds of people and made thousands more homeless, has called a September 1 meeting of EU leaders to discuss the crisis and review relations with Russia. German Chancellor...

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has dismissed former Vostok battalion leader Sulim Yamadayev, a powerful former Chechen rebel at odds with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, after he fought Georgian troops in South Ossetia, a source in the Chechen administration said Friday. Serdyukov signed an order discharging Yamadayev, who had a federal warrant out for his arrest on murder charges but, in murky circumstances, ended up fighting with Russian troops in their defeat of Georgian forces over control of Tskhinvali, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media. The order...

<p>IGOETI, Georgia - Russian forces pulled out of positions deep inside Georgia on Friday, two weeks after thousands of troops roared into the small Caucasian nation aboard hundreds of armored vehicles.</p> <p>The movements came after Russia's defense minister said President Dmitry Medvedev had ordered a pullback and promised that Russian forces would withdraw to separatist regions and surrounding security zones by the day's end.</p>

Gerhard Schroeder under fire after blaming Georgia for 'detonating' war with Russia Germany's former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been told he should "keep his mouth shut" after appearing to support Russia's invasion of Georgia. By Tony Paterson in Berlin Last Updated: 11:54PM BST 23 Aug 2008 The 64-year-old Social Democrat already has a reputation as a Kremlin apologist and was widely criticised for taking a £200,000 a year job with the Russian energy company Gazprom after he left office in 2005. Not only is he friends with the Russian premier and former president Vladimir Putin - whom he has referred...

The U.S. ambassador to Russia has told a Russian daily that Washington strongly urged Georgia not to invade its breakaway province of South Ossetia . . . .

The theme was Russia’s victory over Georgia; the spirit was Second World War defiance; the music was from Leningrad — and the conductor was from London. Surrounded by soldiers and barbed wire, hundreds crowded into the centre of Tskhinvali to see Valery Gergiev conduct the Maryinsky Orchestra from St Petersburg as Russia staged a victory concert amid the ruins of the capital of South Ossetia. From the mournful first bars of Shostakovitch’s Symphony No 7 (known as the Leningrad) in the makeshift arena, it was clear that the theme of the night was a stirring appeal to patriotism and the...

President of Armenia Serge Sakisian on his meeting with the Defense Ministers and the Secretary General of CSTO stated that issues of national self-determination must be solved on the basis of people's free will, "Today, we are strongly concerned over the crisis in South Ossetia. This is a humanitarian disaster, which needs to be overcome quickly. In these circumstances, we welcome the joint initiative of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy - the six-step plan of how overcoming the present situation and to attain long-term peaceful resolution," the Armenian President said. Mr. Sarkisian added that the tragic...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's foreign minister said the link is clear — U.S. and Western support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia has helped fuel tensions in Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia. Minister Vuk Jeremic was quoted by the Vecernje Novosti daily on Thursday as saying the recognition of Kosovo's independence on Feb. 17 by the United States and its NATO allies has "destabilized" other parts of the world. "We have pointed out to the international community from the very start that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo could present a dangerous precedent," Vuk Jeremic was quoted as...

LONDON (Reuters) - BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday exports of Azeri oil from Turkey should resume next week after repairs to the $4 billion (2.1 billion pounds) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline damaged by a fire two weeks ago. The line can pump up to 1 million barrels per day of oil, equal to more than 1 percent of world supply, from fields in the Azeri part of the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan in Turkey. Its closure had supported world oil prices, which fell initially on news that it was reopening. "We've taken the decision to start dynamic integrity...

Excerpt - While it is almost certainly true that Moscow's action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas. Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences? 1. Russia...

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...