SubscribeRussias On Edge Of South Ossetia Capital
From an elated Reuters:
Russia forces on edge of South Ossetia capital: website
By Margarita Antidze
MEGVREKISI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russian armored vehicles have entered the northern edges of the capital of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, the separatists’ press service reported on its website on Friday.
“Russian armored vehicles have entered the northern suburbs of Tskhinvali,” the website cominf.org reported, adding that Georgian troops had started to retreat.
Moscow said its troops were responding to a Georgian assault to re-take the breakaway region, and Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili said the two countries were at war.
Russia would cut air links with Georgia from midnight on Friday, the Russian Transport Ministry said.
Saakashvili told BBC World television Russia had been massing troops on the northern border of Georgia for months.
” They have been calling it training exercises, but they have not been concealing the fact that they are training these troops for use inside Georgia,” he said.
“The way the escalation went was we came first under extensive artillery barrage from the separatists … but in the end I was told that Russian armored vehicles started to cross the Georgian border. And that was exactly the moment when I had to take this decision to fire back.”
The United States on Friday asserted its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and urged an immediate ceasefire. NASTO [sic] and the European Union have joined calls for a halt to fighting…
A South Ossetia minister said more than a thousand people had died in overnight shelling by Georgian forces of their capital Tskhinvali, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.
“According to our information, as a result of the night-time shelling of Tskhinvali … the number of fatalities is more than a thousand,” Nationalities Minister Teimuraz Kasaev told the news agency by telephone.
A senior Georgian security official said Russian planes had bombed the Vaziani military outside the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The Interior Ministry said later three Georgian soldiers were killed…
Saakashvili, who wants to take his small Caucasus nation into NATO, has made it a priority to win back control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another rebel region on the Black Sea.
The issue has bedeviled Georgia’s relations with Russia, angered by Tbilisi’s moves towards the Western fold and its pursuit of NATO membership…
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the Georgians of driving people from their homes. “We are receiving reports that a policy of ethnic cleansing was being conducted in villages in South Ossetia, the number of refugees is climbing, the panic is growing, people are trying to save their lives,” he said in televised remarks from the ministry…
Medvedev vowed to defend Russian “compatriots” in South Ossetia, where most people have been given Russian passports.
“We will not allow their deaths to go unpunished,” Interfax quoted him as saying…
Isn’t it funny how the Soviet Union Russia always waits for the world’s attention to be elsewhere when they do their little incursions.
In this case it is the Olympics. Back in 1979, it was Christmas when they invaded Afghanistan.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the Georgians of driving people from their homes. “We are receiving reports that a policy of ethnic cleansing was being conducted in villages in South Ossetia, the number of refugees is climbing, the panic is growing, people are trying to save their lives,” he said in televised remarks from the ministry.
Another well known Soviet Russian ploy.
Indeed, Hitler said the same thing right before he went into Czechoslovakia.
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20 Responses to “Russias On Edge Of South Ossetia Capital”
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August 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Has anybody been following this?
From CNN:
Has Georgia’s charter in NATO been confirmed yet, if so, would that put us in a de facto war with Russia?
Scary stuff.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Ethnic cleansing, what are the ethnic backgrounds of the Georgians, bit in the dark here, or is it just a property grab?
August 8th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
South Osetia, Georgia - Georgia has finally explicitly shown its true intention in foreign policy - attack and kill innocent people in Southern Osetia. Hundreds of people are currently under fire from Georgian side. Neighbour states, such as Russia, are struggling to help. The intention is clear: just render help to the people that are currently in struggles. I really don’t know why it is presented as an attempt to occupy territories by most news agencies. I just do not believe that a country that has always made efforts to intensify peace in the region. Moreover, Russia has sent humanitarian aid, the troops being only the result of Georgian army shooting Russian peace-keeping forces.
President Saakashvily has given an order - kill innocent people - by commiting a treacherous attack on civilians, not military forces. How can such a man appear on the screen of leading news broadcasting agencies and say his country is under attack. The current conflict has been initiated by Georgian government and distorted by news agencies.
August 8th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
“Although on the night of the invasion the Czechoslovak Presidium declared that Warsaw Pact troops had crossed the border without the knowledge of the ČSSR government, the Soviet Press printed an unsigned request, allegedly by Czechoslovak party and state leaders, for ‘immediate assistance, including assistance with armed forces’.” from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring)
August 8th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Notwithstanding wondersz1 post, South Ossetia is part of Georgia, and therefore is not a showing of it’s ‘foreign policy’. South Ossetia is within the boundries of Georgia based upon the borders agreed to in 1933, and was re-iterated when the Soviet Union dissolved. Thus, this is an internal problem for Georgia. The escalation came about because Russia, under Putin’s puppet-mastery, has decided to derail the NATO talks with Georgia. Russia has opened direct economic and military aid with ’separatists’ (who also happen to be drug-dealers) within the borders of a sovereign nation - something that would rightfully anger any sovereign nation.
Think of it this way - what if Mexico decided to offer financial and military aid to ’separatists’ (who also happen to be drug-dealers) in Arizona. And to support those ’separatists’, the Mexican Army sent armed military personnel into southern Arizona. A state of war would exist betwen those two countries. Oh wait…
August 8th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Arctain — And yet, the Texas ANG is giving free medical care to border crossers from Matamoros while Mexican soldiers harrass our border guards. Un-freakin’-believeable!
August 8th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
The majority of people living in Southern Ossetia are ethnic Russians. Moreover, the Georgian ‘peace-keeping forces’ shoot 10 Russian peace-keepers. Would any country allow such events to take place without intruding? Most refugees from Southern Ossetia are heading to Russia - would people head for the country that’s attacked them? I don’t think so.
August 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“The majority of people living in Southern Ossetia are ethnic Russians.”
Er, not quite. At least according to the latest census figures, which says that only 2.1% of the population is ethnic Russian.
Perhaps this will help:
South Ossetia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ossetia
August 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
wondersz1 -
And the majority of people living in some regions of southern Arizona are ethnic Mexicans…
And what were Russian peace-keepers doing in Georgia in the first place? Georgia didn’t ‘invite’ them there.
That’s because Russia has surreptitiously given South Ossetians - contrary to International Law - Russian passports (thus making them Russian citizens). Where would you go if you were a separatist in Georgia with Russian citizenship?
Georgia is an ally, a pro-Western democracy, and brave to stand up to the invading Russians. May Russia have all the luck they had in Afghanistan.
August 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
One more thing: if South Ossetia is part of Georgia, why do Georgian military kill civilians in South Ossetia. If Georgian military really treated them as co-fellows, would they fire missiles in the region? Again, it is Georgia that started the turmoil, killed people (and Russians as well) with Russia only trying to prevent genocide.
BTW, Russian peace-keeping forces observed the situation in the region, which is a part of international agreements (it’s not only Russians that peace-keeping forces consisted of, but for some reason Georgian peace-keeping forces chose them as targets as well)
Speaking about passwords, if you lived in Arizona (and were an ethnical Mexican) and were offered a Mexican passport (assuming you still retain American citizenship) and accept it, would it drive you to Mexico. People make their choices based on the judgement as to where they feel better and who they really are.
Russia does not have an objective to invade Georgia, rather it wants Georgia to stop killing civilians. So, your comment about Afghanistan is not at all relevant.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:01 am
I’m sure that the Georgians are killing civilians much as we were/are killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only thing missing are reports that all of the civilians were in a “wedding party”. If they’re not wearing the uniforms of a recognized military they’re technically civilians, but that doesn’t mean they’re innocents.
August 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Russia does not have an objective to invade Georgia…
Yes it does. It’s called “gaining territory” and “re-establishing the Soviet Union.”
Putin’s an un-reconstructed KGB officer, and he’s behaving true to form, utilizing Medvedev as a front-man. We’re seeing traditional Russian foreign policy as practiced by the tsars and the Communists: Invade, and claim “they forced us.”
I hope Georgia blunts the assault, and kicks Russian ass. I also hope that there will be military aid from the countries that were held captive by Russia for so many years…I seriously doubt the Russians want to face a force made up of Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Czechs who’ve come to assist the Georgians. While I doubt that such aid would be forthcoming, I’d still like to see it…just for the sheer irony of the “Great Defender of the Slavs” being given their just desserts by other Slavs and the Magyars.
August 9th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
This way you can claim everyone a terrorist. Until clear evidence is gathered, it is definitely erroneous to state anybody’s affiliation to terrorist groupings. There has been massive destruction of living apartments by Georgian missiles. Kindergartens, schools and hospitals have been seriously damaged. Would you also justify that by plain saying that people in these kind of buildings might have hostile intentions no matter what kind of uniforms they were in?
It is called real commitment to the international agreements currently in force (Russian peace-keeping forces have been in the region for a long time with a mission to observe the commitment of Georgia and autonomous regions to the agreement signed shortly after Soviet Union dissolution - which says it is not legitimate for Georgia to enter military force in the region and commit violent attacks). With many people under fire holding Russian passports, Russian peace-keeping posts being shot at (noteworthy that those are not them who fired first), I see Russia’s move as a decisive step to maintain stability.
Unlike Georgian government, Russia is also rendering humanitarian aid to the civilians in trouble due to military actions.
August 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Perhaps we should reconsider Wondersz 1’s position regarding ethnicities. After all, cannot we be seeing justness of struggle of brave Chechnyan and Dagestani peoples from under heel of criminal oppressor’s boot? For what do we have Committee for State Security - here called CIA?
The Irish news service (RTE) is reporting that Russian warplanes bombed two villages in the other contested area of Georgia, Abkhazia. But Abkhazian separatists claimed they were not Russian planes, but their own that did the bombing. Following the very same line, I pray that Georgia uses “its very own” B 2 Stealth Bombers to close the Roki tunnel and put and end to this. Some may recall that the US faced MIG fighter pilots in Korea that were so fluent in Russian that they never spoke anything else. It did not become WW III.
A fair (but old) map of the area can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps.....n_1994.jpg
August 9th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
What? Sorry Wondersz1, your premise and conclusion here borders on the laughable.
The
SovietRussian “peace-keeping forces”, to which you refer, were placed there over the objections of the Georgian government by the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). The CIS is basically an extension of the old Soviet bloc. Georgia announced their decision to withdraw from the CIS and join NATO back in 2007.http://tinyurl.com/6xy9u
And guess who the Executive Secretary of the CIS is? Why it’s none other than Sergei Lebedev, Putin’s hand picked former Director of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service and of course a former member of the KGB, just like the majority of Putin’s cronies.
http://tinyurl.com/5mr4a2
Wondersz1, now tell me again how the
SovietRussian “peace-keepers” are just there to protect the peaceful South Ossentians and the Russians truly have no hidden agenda by invading Georgia.August 9th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Wondersz1,
In regards to schools, hospitals & apartment buildings being bombed, if in fact true, that proves nothing. Have you ever heard of insurgents using human shields? It has worked pretty well at times for our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, as it provides very dramatic news footage for propaganda purposes.
August 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Those are Georgian troops that started the slaughterhouse. They are using missile launcher called ‘Grad’. To get the idea you should know just one specific feature of the weapon: it has very limited aiming capabilities, which basically means that you can only launch missiles into some area, not a specific building or a site, thus killing the majority of people there. Now answer a simple question: how can Georgian troops (who’ve been using ‘Grad’ since the very beginning of their aggression against South Ossetia) know that the areas they were launching missiles at had no innocent civilians? Please, keep in mind they were firing at the capital of South Ossetia with most population being civilians, not military. Was the whole city that was entirely demolished by Georgian military only comprised of insurgents? What’s the difference between a war on terrorism and slaughterhouse? In the first case you only shoot terrorists because they intentionally put other people’s lives in danger for getting what they want; in the second case you shoot everybody you don’t like. What’s the situation in South Ossetia? There definitely are tensions between a state and a region, sometimes involving gunfire. Then Georgia starts a large-scale military operation against all of the South Ossetia even without rendering an opportunity for civilians to leave the territory of military actions (which was not the case in Iraq and Afghanistan). Nor did Georgia render any significant assistance to refugees afterwards.
Here comes Russia with real humanitarian aid to refugees. Russia has already accepted to its territory 20,000 refugees, allocated so many South Ossetian students in its universities, given shelter to people forced out of their houses. So far no such great volume of assistance has come from any other country.
Speaking about legacy, I want to stress that Russian peace-keeping forces observed the agreement between South Ossetia and Georgia only - it was not in any way imposed by CIS. Georgia may want to join NATO, no matter whether any other country wants so or not, but it cannot violently break the agreement it stepped into. By the agreement Russia has a supervisor role, while being guarantor of the stability in the region. By accepting this role Russia takes certain responsibility for lives of people and peace there. In no way is it an invasion as it has been publicly announced in leading news channels, but an attempt to force Georgia to peace negotiations and stop an aggression of its own. Should Georgia agree to cease fire and render its actions to consort with the policy of peaceful negotiations, most of the Russian military would be withdrawn.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
wondersz1,
Once again, you seem to be creating a version of the story that doesn’t track with reality. As has already been pointed out to you, Georgia was well within it’s constitutional and sovereign right in its attempt to maintain the structural integrity of its borders - which is why Georgia launched an offensive against the separatist-drug dealers that Moscow seems to love so much. Russia, starting about 2 years ago, decided to contravene international law and give the South Ossetians Russian citizenship (with passports). Russia also decided - again, contrary to international law - to provide economic, military and political structure and aid to a group of separatist-drug lords within another country (albeit, another country -Georgia - that despised the dictatorial oppresion hammered and sickled down from Moscow so recent in Georgia’s memory). By doing so, Russia was able to create the facade that, if Georgia decided to battle the separatist-drug lords, Russia could come to the ‘defense’ of the ‘Russians’ living in South Ossetia. And that is exactly what happened.
As far as the so-called ‘lack of surgical’ strikes carried out by Georgia - you know as well as I do, that the best way to avoid non-combatant casualities is for Russia to cease her adventure into the heart of Georgia. If all Russia wanted to do was provide humanitarian aid to ‘Russians’ (South Ossetians), they wouldn’t have opened another front in Abkhazia (another province where Russia has interjected usurpation), nor invaded the rest of Georgia, blockaded her ships, bombed her military bases, and generally decided to overthrow the pro-western Georgian democracy. Basically, this was an excuse for Russia to recapture militarily what she could not convince with her ‘freedom’ - I wonder why the Georgians wanted to join NATO, given that.
Your words are disenginuous at best, and downright dishonest and full of typical Soviet-style propoganda at worst. Had you stayed off the phone with your puppet-masters back in Moscow long enough to hear the news, Georgia has already asked for a cease-fire - long before Russia decided to extend the offensive into the heart of Georgia (outside South Ossetia), and long before Russia attempted to sieze the Caspian pipeline. Perhaps Russia’s whole ruse is nothing more than an attempt to stop Eastern oil from flowing into Europe by any means other than Russian.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
wondersz1,
I wonder, if when Putin drives Saakashvili from office (as his Foreign Minister said was the only acceptable solution to the US Ambassador recently), you will re-think your claim that what Russia is doing is “…In no way an invasion…”.
Or perhaps you will spin this as another “peace-keeping” mission of the Russian army - that this path to freedom is for the collective good. If you do, you will just be solidifying the perception that Putin’s brand of ‘democracy’ smells awfully like a hammer and a sickle. Is the Ukraine next? Will Azerbajni people once again be collectively relocated to the Eden of Siberia? Will Poland need to watch her step when she continues her pro-western democracy? Will Romania once again have her sons sent to the glorious coal mines of Abakansky to fire the engines of the Motherland?
Russia has shown her true colors with her support of the terrorists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and her further adventure into the heart of Georgia to overthrow a democratically-elected government. She has sided with the evil of the world.
Once again, I repeat - may you have all the luck you had in Afghanistan.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Thank you Arctain for beating me to the punch with your reply.