Rogue Keeper on 21/8/2008 at 10:01
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Russia lost any claim to neutrality when it started funding and supplying separatist militias in South Ossetia. Since that's evidently been going on for more than a decade, one might profer that Russia's "peacekeeping operation" never had any legitimacy.
Wish you could never fight for your right to independence which nobody wants to acknowledge.
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South Ossetians are "mostly Russians" because Russia has been doling passports out to all and sundry. I'm sure its motives for doing so were perfectly noble...
Incidentally, I wonder if you would be supportive of George Bush if he handed every Cuban an American passport, then invaded when Raul Castro refused to let Cuba become part of the United States. Somehow I doubt it!
Most South Ossetians gladly accepted the passports, as they allow them work or study in Russia and send money back to their poor region. That's far easier than work and study in Tbilisi with Georgians staring at them badly, Georgian nationalists don't like South Ossetians. Your parable with Cuba/US would be appropriate if the US would supply American passports to hypothetical separatist pro-US Cuban region. The main difference is Cuba was never a legitimate part of American federation and it has much more different ethnical backround.
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No, it is his legal right. Leaders are not bound to abide by the results of illegitimate referenda in disputed territories, never mind those in which only one of the relevant ethnic groups bothers to partake (and most of those having already been ethnically-cleansed from the area).
By this logic it is also legal right of Russia to claim their interests in Caucasus which they influenced and shaped for hundreds of years. Saakashvili has natural right to respond to attacks from armed South Ossetian militias. But this time he decided to attack civilians in large scale - you suggest it's an appropriate response to provocations from separatist militias? Then Russia has natural right to protect other ethnical Russians and Ossetians if it perceives them as it's citizens, from harm. Would be Great Britain (with great imperial past of it's own) ignorant, if nation X started firing rockets at British citizens somewhere in your former colony? Certainly!
Saakashvili is as much a honest, progresive democrat as Putin. Read his rich records. Georgian elections in 2003 were internationally observed as seriously rigged. Indeed, if he has no respect for fair democratic competition, it is unlikely he would respect some „illegitimate referenda“ of people who democratically express the will to be independent.
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Oh please. Russia has been engineering this operation for years. Supplying secessionists with guns, undermining Georgian territorial integrity by giving passports to the South Ossetians, sending 400 troops into Abkhazia under the pretext of rebuilding a railway, sabotaging Georgian gas pipelines
Unclear backround (“Russia dismisses the accusations, claiming the charges were set by Chechen terrorists; the Chechen separatists rejected the accusation.“)
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shooting down Georgian drones with MiGs, attempting to bomb a Georgian radar installation,
Again very unclear backround. Even though international investigations came to conclusion that Russian aircrafts indeed attempted the sabotage, OSCE maintains „that it was extremely difficult to have a clear picture, given the conflicting nature of the experts' findings“ and refused to support version of either side.
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ethnically cleansing Georgians from Russia itself... Russia has done everything it possibly can to provoke a conflict with Georgia, simply so it can annex parts of that tiny country as punishment for folowing a democratic path and seeking closer ties with the free West.
Plausible. Russian nationalist xenophobia towards Georgians is no secret - and neither is Georgian nationalist hatred of South Ossetians. However it is interesting you are using vocabulary of Georgian government here. The term “ethnical cleansing” has very drastic connotations and is inappropriate for this kind of deportation and displacement. Some ethnic Georgians in Russia have been abused and persecuted, but they have been not deported to concentration camps or massively killed to ethnically “clean” Russia.
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Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper that is critical of their increasingly tyrranical government (and for whom award-winning journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked until the Russian government assassinated her two years ago) has an excellent article on the level of planning that the Russians put into the operation, which has helpfully been translated into English here.“
Possible, but one article can't reveal full picture of what's really going on in Kremlin. It should be admitted that Novaya Gazeta could have agenda of it's own when it comes to internal Russian politics. Curiously, one of it's owners, Mikhail Gorbachev has view of his own and he makes sense :
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081101372.html)
Even if the secret plan for takeover was completely true, Saakashvili gave them very bold casus belli. Moscow has denied making any attempt to overthrow Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, but it has called on him to resign, claiming it “can no longer work with him.” Putin and Sakashvili dislike each other on personal level a lot and that makes negotiations very difficult.
But do you really think Putin and Medvedev are stupid enough to swallow Georgia militarily back into their federation? OH PLEASE, like if they couldn‘t predict international consequences! Likewise I wouldn't be surprised if White House would find Saakashvili as unreliable, making fatal childish errors and will look for replacement. This situation has proved that a small country in sphere of Russian influence can't count on US help as much as they would like to, because White House is pretty much aware they're gambling, if they support former USSR nations. Or if they aren't, this situation should make them seriously think about it. It's sad but in geopolitical practice, superpowers and their relationships have priority and happiness of small nations is secondary.
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And here we have evidence that Saakashvili was left with two options - allow Russian-funded Ossetian terrorist militias to launch attacks on Georgian villages, or put a stop to it by taking military action. Under the circumstances, I don't see how he had any choice but to send Georgian troops into South Ossetia.
That's fucking interesting, don't you think, as both sides claim they had “no other option.”
But you see, there is also law of nature - if you provoke the big one, you may just get what you ask for. Saakashvili is a stupid president. Even Georgian opposition knows that. Even considerable percentage of Georgian nation knows that.
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Really BR, just because Georgia and the USA are on the same side does not make Georgia the bad guys here. Judge each situation on its merits, not on your own personal biases. What we have here is a fledgling democracy which has been invaded and partially-anschlussed by a massive dictatorship on the same pretext that Hitler used to invade the Sudetenland. It doesn't take a genius to work out who is right and who is wrong in this instance.
I think I made clear enough that I don't mark Georgia as bad guys, but Saakashvili. Even 242 got it when he said “I don't mean that I consider any side 100% righteous“ but his bias against Russia is understandable since his country has been directly pushed around by Russia for centuries. Your bias isn't understandable here.
What we have here is small corrupted not democratic president versus big corrupted not democratic president. Moreover interests of superpower A against interests of superpower B. It doesn't take a genius to understand that much.
Since you suggest to judge each sitation on its own merits and right after that you single handedly make a limping comparison to Hitler's invasion to Sudetenland, ITT we talk about sins of Great Britain now. I have 1938 Munich Agreement to complain about. Why did the GB sign that, why did you sell him part of us? Did you expect the wolf will be happy with Czechoslovak sheep and shuts up? Chamberlain was a coward.
