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Today, about 300 soldiers (mostly ethnic Ossetians) from the Russian military base returned to South Ossetia of their own free will, because they thought they had been left for dead during a special operation in Ukraine. The former president of South Ossetia called not to draw hasty conclusions and not to accuse the guys of desertion, but to carefully investigate the situation when soldiers are sent to combat operations without full outfit and stocks of weapons, warm clothing and protective equipment. Returned soldiers on the border of Russia and South Ossetia. They hitchhiked home. additional detail on this incident from...

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Friday Atlantic op-ed blamed Russia’s assault on Ukraine on former President Donald Trump, tying Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion to the January 6 Capitol riot. In an opinion piece that used the word “democracy” 47 times, Clinton claimed Putin, the “implacable enemy of democracy,” attacked Ukraine in part because “Republican leaders are abandoning core tenets of American democracy even as the stakes in the global contest between democracy and autocracy are clearer and higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War.”

In a stunning sequence of events, the Russian military opened fire then seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in an unprovoked attack on the Black Sea last Sunday. In the melee, several Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 captured. Moscow followed up this flagrant act of war by parading the sailors on Russian television to give clearly coerced confessions of guilt. This attack is but the latest escalation in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine that has been churning since 2014. It’s also the first great test for the Trump administration regarding Russia and one that will have lasting consequences on...

If you googled “Invasion of South Ossetia” on Monday of this week one of the sites near the top of the list was the vitriolic anti Georgian propaganda web site “war.georgia.su” which detailed Georgian atrocities and planned atrocities against the peace loving people of South Ossetia. When I first saw it, the first thing that caught my eye (other than the over the top blood dripping pro anti Georian propaganda) was that the domain name itself. It did not end in “ge” as in Georgia but “su”, the domain name of sites in the former Soviet Union. This made me...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is showing telltale signs that he intends to extend his control over Ukraine and perhaps elsewhere in Eastern Europe, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers said Sunday. Beyond assembling military armor and tens of thousands of troops along the Russia-Ukraine border, Putin is moving troops in northern Georgia and planting intelligence officers in Ukraine, the Michigan Republican told “Fox News Sunday.” He said Russian troops in the northern region of Georgia, known as South Ossetia, are on the move, perhaps to go into Armenia or toward the Baltic Sea. “There’s no way I’d take this...

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that strains between Russia and the West have plunged the world into a "new Cold War". With tensions high over the lingering Ukraine conflict and Russia's backing of the Syrian regime, Medvedev said: "All that's left is an unfriendly policy of NATO against Russia". "We can say it even more clearly: We have slid into a new period of Cold War," he said, speaking at the Munich Security Conference. "Almost every day we are accused of making new horrible threats either against NATO as a whole, against Europe or against the US or...

T wo months after announcing plans to hold a referendum on the incorporation of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation, the de facto president of the largely unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, has set a tentative timeframe for doing so. He told journalists on December 28 that the referendum should take place "long before" the presidential ballot due in April 2017. Tibilov simultaneously proposed renaming the region the Republic of South Ossetia -- Alania, by analogy with the contiguous Republic of North Ossetia -- Alania, which is a Russian Federation subject. The Ossetians, an Indo-European people,...

T he separatist leader of South Ossetia has proposed holding a referendum on whether the Georgian breakaway region should join Russia. Leonid Tibilov said reuniting with Russia "is a century-long dream of the South Ossetian people," in comments quoted by the Interfax news agency on October 19 after talks with Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. Tibilov said he was sure the public and political leaders would support the idea. Tibilov and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an "alliance and integration treaty" in Moscow on March 18. That pact was denounced by both the European Union and the United States. Moscow...

Military sources told debkafile Thursday, Aug. 12, that a threat from Georgia was not the reason why Russian posted advanced S-300 interceptor batteries Russia in Abkhazia and air defense weapons in South Ossetia on the northern shore of the Black Sea -as Moscow officially maintained, but rather possible moves by the US and/or Israel against Iran and its nuclear facilities. Georgia's armed forces do not run to the sophisticated warplanes, missiles or drones that would warrant establishing the high-powered S-300 interceptors for defending the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Ordinary air defense batteries would do for deterrence. Therefore, US military...

Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government. Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10. As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so "full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War." H. R. 758 is a Russophobic rant full of falsehoods and steeped in superpower hypocrisy. Among the 43 particulars in the House indictment is this gem: "The Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Georgia...

In Kosovo and Honduras, Obama-ite foreign policy gave Putin effective precedent.‘Your independence is irreversible, absolutely irreversible.” So declared Vice President Joe Biden, thrilling a parliamentary assembly in Pristina, Kosovo. These were still the early months of the Obama administration, and the vice president was touring the Balkans to take a victory lap in the breakaway Serbian territory whose independence he’d done so much to champion as an influential senator. As Vladimir Putin tucks away Crimea, just as he clawed South Ossetia and Abkhazia back from Georgia five years ago, Kosovo is worth remembering. So is President Obama’s staunch support of...

CYPRUS is the only European Union member-state which did not vote in favour of a UN resolution that recognised the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees and their descendants to their homes throughout Georgia, it emerged yesterday. Cyprus was among 78 countries which abstained from voting – 48, including all EU countries voted in favour, 19 voted against. The resolution was passed on Wednesday. “Following extensive debate … the General Assembly today adopted a resolution that recognised the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees and their descendants to their homes throughout Georgia...

Now that Vladimir Putin has allowed the Russian electorate to rubber-stamp him back into power, he can return with redoubled purpose to his consistently regressive interference in world affairs. That nobody is surprised at his obdurate defense of the regimes in Tehran and Damascus speaks volumes. Dictators support dictators, don't they? At this point Mr. Putin apparently doesn't mind much that anyone should include him in that category. After all, if Putinism could be defined by any single principle, if it had a formula, it would have at its core the "power now people later" approach common to all strongmen....

Russia launched large-scale military exercises involving thousands of troops across parts of its southern regions on Monday which Georgia said would violate its territory. The Defence Ministry said the sweep of the week-long "Caucasus 2009" manoeuvres would include the volatile, mainly-Muslim regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia - continuing focus of rebel groups seeking to prize the area from Moscow's control. Moscow sees the Caucasus mountains area as a strategically vital zone, the approach to prime agricultural and industrial regions and an important energy transit route. The Kremlin views any challenge here as a threat to the overall security and...

Russia secured on 17 February the right to maintain a large, long-term military presence in the Georgian rebel region of Abkhazia, signing a deal for a military base that was condemned by Tbilisi and the West. The base will accommodate at least 3,000 Russian land troops, already stationed in Abkhazia, for at least 49 years, Abkhaz officials said. "This agreement creates a foundation for the development of Abkhazia as an independent state," Medvedev said at a signing ceremony in the Great Kremlin Palace. Moscow recognised Abkhazia in August 2008 after crushing an assault by US ally Georgia on another pro-Russian...

NATO on Wednesday denounced as "invalid" a Russian pact establishing a military base in the rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia, urging Moscow to revoke it. "NATO considers invalid agreements between Russia and the (Georgian) territories," which its 28 member nations do not recognise, alliance spokeswoman Carmen Romero said. The Russian-Abkhaz deal, signed in Moscow Wednesday during an elaborate "state visit" by rebel leader Sergei Bagapsh, builds on previous agreements allowing Russia to maintain thousands of troops and border guards in Abkhazia. The base pact allows Russian forces "to defend the sovereignty and safety of the republic jointly with the armed...

IF JUSTICE were the ultimate goal, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, and Mikheil Saakashvili, his Georgian counterpart, should appear together in court in The Hague. As their countries’ commanders-in-chief, both violated international law during the war in Georgia. So suggests this week’s European Union report on the war. Behind them should sit Vladimir Putin, the mastermind of Georgia’s dismemberment, and the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who also acted illegally.

Who Is It Good For? BBC Monitoring 7 August 2009 An oppositionist Russian website says South Ossetia’s leaders are angling for another war that neither Russia nor Georgia really wants. [A year after the August war between Georgia and Russia, the rhetoric sounds familiar, with each side accusing the other of aggression. Many Russian media have speculated on whether or not war will break out again. Others, including Boris Vishnevskiy, the author of this commentary, suggest that Moscow has bought itself a headache through its support of South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity – TOL.] Text of Boris Vishnevskiy report: "Just...

MOSCOW, August 3 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Communist Party will hold protests outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow on Friday to mark Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said on Monday. "We will hold protests in front of the U.S. embassy on [August] 7 in connection with the anniversary of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, or more precisely [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili and his mercenaries' traitorous attack on a brotherly republic," Zyuganov said during a press conference in Moscow. The head of the Communist Party's Moscow department, Vladimir Ulas, said the U.S. embassy was chosen for the protests...

U.S. Republican senator, John McCain, said what the Georgian people had “accomplished since the Rose Revolution – in terms of democratic governance, a western orientation, and in domestic reform – is of historic magnitude.” He was speaking at an annual reception of the Georgian Association in the USA in Washington on May 20, where Senator McCain was awarded with the Association’s special award for his “outstanding and unconditional support to Georgian Independence and US-Georgian Friendship.” “Although it has been merely eight months since the world’s attention was riveted by Russia’s invasion, and while the stories may have faded from the...