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Russia's president said Sunday his country will give military aid to the two separatist regions at the center of the war with Georgia — signaling Moscow has no intention of backing down in the face of Western pressure.

To be sure, the killing of tens of hundreds of people in the Caucasian region of South Ossetia in a sudden military onslaught by Georgia will turn out to be a landmark event in post-Soviet Russia’s relations with the West. Conceivably, a chapter in the post-Cold War era is ending. Blood has been drawn in the Caucasus, which history shows, is never easy to wipe away. Feuds are known to run for decades even if they bear verisimilitude to family squabbles. The crisis in southern Caucasus was slowly building up ever since Kosovo, the breakaway province of Serbia, declared independence...

[Excerpt]....“So fast forward to early August. You have a town, Tskhinvali, which is Ossetian, and a bunch of Georgian villages surrounding it in a crescent shape. There are peacekeepers there. Both Russian peacekeepers and Georgian peacekeepers under a 1994 accord. The Ossetians were dug in in the town, and the Georgians were in the forests and the fields between the town and the villages. The Ossetians start provoking and provoking and provoking by shelling Georgian positions and Georgian villages around there. And it's a classic tit for tat thing. You shell, I shell back. The Georgians offered repeated ceasefires, which...

The President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, officially declared Saturday his country's support of Russia and of their decision to recognize South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence. With their President's declaration Venezuela became the second country to officially recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Belarus is the other one - they declared earlier their support of the decision of the Russian government. "We support Russia. Russia has all the right to defend their own interest," Chavez said in a televised statement.

Russia warned that Kosovo's independence would create a dangerous precedent. Georgia shows how it did. In February, with U.S. backing, Kosovo declared its independence—nine years after NATO went to war to end Serbia's thuggish behavior in the province. Shortly after Kosovo hoisted its new national flag, Russia, Serbia's patron, warned (in the words of its foreign minister) that the theory of secession used to strip away Kosovo had "created a precedent" applicable elsewhere. Now, in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Georgia—supposedly for the protection of separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia—it's a good time to pause and ask, was...

Chairman of the Central Muslim Board of Russia, Supreme Mufti, Sheikh ul-Islam Talgat Tajuddin addressed regional Muslim boards and believers appealing for them to render necessary help and support to the people of South Ossetia and all those who suffered from the humanitarian catastrophe in the territory of this republic. REGNUM correspondent reports referring to the Central Muslim Board's press office. The Supreme Mufti of Russia has also called on the whole Muslim world to recognize independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. ''Russian Muslims, like all our compatriots, support decision of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on recognition of independence...

Tony Halpin in Moscow The Kremlin moved swiftly to tighten its grip on Georgia’s breakaway regions yesterday as South Ossetia announced that it would soon become part of Russia, which will open military bases in the province under an agreement to be signed on Tuesday. Tarzan Kokoity, the province’s Deputy Speaker of parliament, announced that South Ossetia would be absorbed into Russia soon so that its people could live in “one united Russian state” with their ethnic kin in North Ossetia.

Spiegel: OSCE observers fault Georgians in conflict Europe News Aug 30, 2008, 9:52 GMT Hamburg - European observers have faulted Georgia in this month's Caucasus conflict, saying it made elaborate plans to seize South Ossetia, according to the German news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday. In a report to appear in its Monday edition, it said officials of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had said acts by the Georgian government had contributed to the outbreak of the crisis with Russia. Spiegel said OSCE military observers in the Caucasus had described preparations by Georgia to move into...

"The 'entente cordiale' did not work," Russia's NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has said, referring to accords between Britain and France signed in the early 20th century that put a line under centuries of hostility and conflict. "Relations should now be pragmatic," he said. "The good performance of our army in Ossetia has already impressed our partners," he added. "We should do everything to uphold this impression and end once and forever any temptation by our partners to resolve any problems by force.."

Major Malkhaz Dumbatze was in a celebratory mood. His 14 Georgian tanks had just taken control of the rebel South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and he was already looking forward to a trip to Israel to study new battle command systems. The jets flying over the city, where his men were mopping up Ossetian snipers, he took to be Georgian fighters. Major Dumbatze is still going to Israel, but now it is to have reconstruction surgery on his legs. The aircraft he had spotted were in fact Russian, and one of them dropped two bombs on his armoured unit. Speaking with...

AUGUST 29, 2008 Ethnic cleansing of Georgians in the now seperated Provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Russia has officially recognized as indepenednet, is now proceedingat a rapid pace. Georgian homes and villages are being burned and raised and Georgian civilians are being forced to leave...many with nothing but what they can wear and carry, if that. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced that Georgia was officially breaking diplomatic ties with Russia, ordering its diplomats and staff to leave Moscow and return to Georgia. The action comes as a direct Georgian response to Moscows recognition of its two Provinces...

The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) released date on deployment of the Russian military on various locations on the Georgian territory as of August 27. “All locations and numbers given here are double-checked,” the ministry said. “MIA could not verify all information available and the actual number of both Russian military equipment and personnel on the ground may be much higher.” Below is the data as provided by the Georgian MIA: Locations of the Russian illegal check-points in the Eastern Georgia, including Shida Kartli, other adjacent areas of “South Ossetia” and “South Ossetia” itself according to the MIA sources...

Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia has signalled that it will formally seek to merge with Russia. This move would amount to Russia’s annexation of an area of another state and the redrawing of the map of a corner of Europe. South Ossetia, with a largely Russian population of only 70,000, has no viable future as an independent state and observers believe that its only realistic option is to join its giant neighbour. President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia discussed this option with his South Ossetian counterpart, Eduard Kokoity, earlier this week during a meeting in Moscow. Znaur Gassiyev, the Speaker...

A Georgian Foreign Ministry official said Friday Georgia is to recall all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow because of the Russian military presence in Georgia. Nato Chikovani says Georgia will withdraw its staff on Saturday, following a parliamentary vote in favor of the move on Thursday. Russian news agencies cite Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nestrenko as criticizing the move, saying it will not benefit bilateral relations. Georgia is angry at the lingering presence of Russian troops in Georgia despite Russia's promise to withdraw in accordance with an EU-brokered cease-fire. Also on Friday, officials in South Ossetia said...

Russia and South Ossetia will sign a military agreement next week allowing Russia to set up a military base in the breakaway region, Tarzan Kokoity, the acting vice-speaker of the South Ossetian parliament, said on August 29. He said that the agreement was expected to be signed on September 2, Interfax news agency reported. Interfax quoted an unnamed “military-diplomatic source” in Moscow as saying that Russia was planning to establish three military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In particular, he said, the plan envisaged bases in Gudauta and Ochamchire in Abkhazia. Georgia has long claimed that the Gudauta military...

Russian-backed paramilitaries are “ethnically cleansing” villages on Georgian soil, refugees and officials told The Times yesterday. South Ossetian militiamen have torched houses, beaten elderly people and even murdered civilians in the lawless buffer zone set up by the Russian Army just north of Gori. The violence, close to the border with the breakaway republic recognised by Russia this week as independent, has prompted a new wave of refugees into Gori, 40 miles north of Tbilisi. People who had started to return to their villages in the area are now fleeing for a second time, joined by many elderly people who...

Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea. Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets. Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert. "They have been told...

AFTER barely 100 days in office, the soft-spoken Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, has been cast in the unlikely role of war leader. His initial job appeared to be as Vladimir Putin’s spokesman. But he quickly got a taste for war. On Tuesday August 26th he stood beneath the two-headed Russian eagle and solemnly announced the Kremlin’s decision to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The decision, Mr Medvedev argued, was forced on him by Georgia’s “genocide” against South Ossetia. But the argument is spurious. It is true that, in the early 1990s, when Georgia was barely a state,...

Both sides had an interest in escalating the conflict, say political analysts. Russia wanted to show that Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, was an irresponsible firebrand who could not be trusted with the responsibilities of Nato membership. Georgia, meanwhile, wanted to paint Russia as the imperial aggressor it has traditionally been in the Caucasus, which would have strengthened Tbilisi’s case for Nato membership. Each can be seen to have acted swiftly, with a great deal of preparation, later trying to make their behaviour appear spontaneous. Mr Saakashvili, despite repeated denials, clearly drew first. But Russia was not far behind, indicating that...

TSKHINVALI, Georgia (AP) — The interior minister of the separatist-held region of South Ossetia says his forces have shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane. Mikhail Mindzayev said the drone was shot down over South Ossetia on Thursday by local forces.