by Damozel | After ousting Georgian troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has signed a pact for military support to the two separatist enclaves. (BBCNews) A BBC update scrolling across the top of the page says that they are arguing that they have the right to build military bases there. Yes, I'm sure that will go down well with Georgia and supporters in the West. More on that when more is available.
As for the treaties, they just signed, according to Reuters:
The treaties formalize military, diplomatic and economic co-operation between Moscow and the separatist regions, which Russia recognized as independent states after its brief war with Georgia last month.
"We will show each other all necessary support, including military support," Medvedev said.
"A repeat of the Georgian aggression ... would lead to a catastrophe on a regional scale, so no one should be in doubt that we will not allow new military adventures. No one should have any illusions." (Reuters)
In other words, if Saakashvili tries to carry out his promised "unification" of Georgian territories..... No.
The Georgians, on the other hand, have assembled evidence that Russia's military crossed into South Ossetia a full day before the Georgians entered the region to quell violence by bombing the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali. (Reuters) As you will recall, the Russians have argued all along that they were obliged by their peace-keeping responsibilities to go into South Ossetia to protect them against Georgian "ethnic cleansing" once it began to take place.
Russia says it was morally obliged to send troops and tanks into South Ossetia last month to prevent what it called a Georgian genocide against the region's residents. Moscow's action drew widespread international condemnation (Reuters) .
But, um, oops:
The intercepts circulated last week among intelligence agencies in the United States and Europe, part of a Georgian government effort to persuade the West and opposition voices at home that Georgia was under invasion and attacked defensively. Georgia argues that as a tiny and vulnerable nation allied with the West, it deserves extensive military and political support. (NYT)
American intelligence considers these intercepts "credible," not conclusive. But credible. But not conclusive.(NYT) In fact, it's not clear that they referred to troop movements at all. The Russian UN attache points out that at the time Georgia initiated the attack on South Ossetia, President Medvedev was on a cruise, the Minister of Defense was on vacation, and Vladimir Putin was at the Olympics. (NYT)
Aha! But perhaps they orchestrated their vacations so they would look "busy elsewhere"? To quote Doonesbury's Uncle Duke (who was talking about another nationality), the Russians are "an especially tricky people."
Or...maybe Saakaskhvili thought that with Putin and the other lads safely away, he could hit South Ossetia with impunity. (The Guardian) The region has had de facto independence since the Nineties and, it appears, wishes to reunite with North Ossetia across the border. It does not wish to be part of Georgia.
As these guys say in an August 8 op-ed, it's historically been difficult to say who fired the first shot in any of these outbreaks in the Caucasus. On August 8, when the fight broke out, they certain had a somewhat less reflexively-friendly-to-emergent-democracies view of Saakashvili than the Western leaders have since evolved.
Observers had little doubt that the operation to take South Ossetia back under Georgian control bore the hallmarks of a planned military offensive.
It was not the result of a ceasefire that had broken down the night before - it was more a fulfilment of the promise the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, had made to recapture lost national territory, and with it a measure of nationalist pride.
The assault appears to be have carefully timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympics when the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was in Beijing.
Tom de Waal, of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and an expert on the region, said: "Clearly there have been incidents on both sides, but this is obviously a planned Georgian operation, a contingency plan they have had for some time, to retake [the South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali.
"Possibly the Georgians calculated that, with Putin in Beijing, they could recapture the capital in two days and then defend it over the next two months, because the Russians won't take this lying down."
If Georgia calculated that Russia would be inhibited by Putin's presence at the Olympics, that soon backfired.(The Guardian)
Sorry to sound flip---the situation has been appalling from the standpoint of civilians--- but I just don't care what either side says, especially since it doesn't change the fact that Saakashvili flattened the South Ossetian capital and Russia took advantage of the opportunity to push right into Georgian territory and destroy its infrastructure long, long after being asked, then told, to leave.
As far as I can tell, Saakashvili was waiting for his chance to reclaim that territory; and the Russians may well have been hoping that he would try. Perhaps both sides behaved self-servingly and opportunistically, to put it mildly.
But getting back to his intercepted calls.
Russia has not disputed the veracity of the phone calls, which were apparently made by Ossetian border guards on a private Georgian cellphone network. “Listen, has the armor arrived or what?” a supervisor at the South Ossetian border guard headquarters asked a guard at the tunnel with the surname Gassiev, according to a call that Georgia and the cellphone provider said was intercepted at 3:52 a.m. on Aug. 7.
“The armor and people,” the guard replied. Asked if they had gone through, he said, “Yes, 20 minutes ago; when I called you, they had already arrived.” (NYT)
They say that they were always moving military hardware in and out of South Ossetia (NYT), which seems easy enough to believe since they've clearly been shit-stirring in the region for quite some time. (NYT) A Russian general points out:
“Since we had here a battalion, they need fuel, they need products; naturally you have movement of troops,” he said. “But not combat troops specifically sent there to fight.” He added, “If it were a big reinforcement, then we wouldn’t have lost about 15 peacekeepers inside.”. (NYT)
"Peacekeepers" being doublespeak for "military personnel.". (NYT) For their part, the Georgians point out that under the peacekeeping agreement, the Russians weren't supposed to be "rotating" anything at all except during daylight hours. (NYT)
And, of course, Saakashvili---whom, sorry, I just don't trust--- flattened South Ossetia's capital (BBC photos here). Certainly, the long-standing hatreds haven't diminished since he made what some western cynics doubtless consider, based on his campaign promises and earlier successes, to be a real-estate grab. They hate Georgia and Georgians in South Ossetia. (BBCNews) Rupert Wingfield-Hayes of the BBC wrote:
"God forbid that the Georgians ever return," one old pensioner says.
"They're beasts. They killed my neighbour and her little baby. They are too dangerous to have living here next to us."
This sentiment is shared by every single Ossetian I meet. There are few high-rise buildings in Tskhinvali, the capital of the self-declared Republic of South Ossetia.
The sides of the few old, Soviet-style apartment blocks are peppered with bullet holes.
There are also some very large black, gaping holes - the result of Georgian artillery fire on the night of 7 August, when the military moved in to try and take this town. (BBCNews)
I'm just saying. It doesn't have to be that one side was wrong and the other right. The Russians were not "unprovoked" as foreign policy ignoramus Sarah Palin and Saakashvili's special friend, John McCain, argue (NYT) ; but the Russians were certainly not justified in pushing on into Georgia and in what they---apparently trailed by angry South Ossetian "irregulars,"according to some BBC News Reports--- did afterwards.
Putin, in the meantime, wonders about the insistence of the West on believing Georgia's version of events rather than Russia's.(NYT) They aren't denying that they moved troops into South Ossetia, mind you. They just say this was "part of the normal rotation and replenishment of longstanding peacekeeping forces there.".(NYT)
Anyway, the Secretary General of NATO has reiterated support for the Georgians and hopes for its "accelerated" integration into the alliance, while pointing out that Georgia has a way to go in the "emergent democracy" line. (BBCNews)
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, speaking in Tbilisi at the first meeting of the Nato-Georgia Commission, did not say when Georgia might join the alliance.
And he emphasised that the country still had to make democratic progress. While they are keen to offer Georgia fulsome [sic; that word does not mean what I think the BBC writer thinks it means, unless the intent was flippant] support, he says, Nato rules say that ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes must be resolved before membership can be offered. (BBCNews)
He's definitely not happy with Russia's current position.
"Russia's use of force was disproportionate and Russia must now comply with all elements of the six-point plan," Mr de Hoop Scheffer said, referring to the EU-brokered ceasefire deal that calls for all forces to withdraw to positions occupied before the conflict.
"At the same time, despite the difficult situation, we expect Georgia to firmly stay the course of democracy and reform," the Nato chief added....
Earlier he said the post-conflict situation was "difficult to swallow", since Russia appeared intent on maintaining troops in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"If the Russians are staying in South Ossetia with so many forces, I do not consider this as a return to the status quo," he told the Financial Times.. (BBCNews)
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